JOHN 15: 18-19, 20-25, 26-27; 16: 01, 02-04.
PLEASE OPEN YOUR BIBLE TO JOHN 15.
We learned last Sunday that Christians are to love one another even as Christ loved us.
This is evidence we belong to Him. Those who love Jesus keep His commandments. Believers are to love God wholeheartedly and love one another. Those who abide in Christ obey His commands.
The two main points in last Sunday’s lesson were (1) Loving God is basic to following Him. (2) If we love Jesus, we will do what He tells us to do.
The Biblical Truth in today’s lesson is that Christians should anticipate the world’s hating them, continue to testify of Jesus during times of persecution, and remain steadfast and faithful to Jesus no matter what the world does to us.
More Christians died for Jesus in the 20th century than in all the other centuries combined, and the 21st century has not begun any more favorably. While American Christians are largely shielded from the extremes of hatred and persecution experienced by our brothers and sisters around the world, few would deny that our country is becoming more hostile and antagonistic toward Christians and Christian beliefs. Some even foresee a time when believers will be persecuted in our land. Meanwhile, we are too often silenced by possible ridicule.
PLEASE READ JOHN 15: 18-19.
Jesus told His disciples that because the world hated Him, they should not be surprised that the world would hate His followers. Jesus had done the work give Him by the Father, but the world became guilty of rejecting Him.
Jesus told the disciples to respond to the world by testifying to Him just as the Spirit of truth did. Jesus also warned of coming persecution and challenged His followers to remain steadfast and faithful regardless of what happened.
Keep in mind that the words in John Ch. 14 through 16 were spoken by Jesus to prepare His disciples for the time when He would no longer be with them in the flesh. Jesus had just told them to love one another.
Another thing He taught them was about the persecution they would face. The key words in vs., 18-25 are world and hate. Hate is a strong word for reflecting deep negative emotions and drastic antagonistic actions. Some form of the word is found in verses 18, 19, 23, 24, and 25. Paul listed hatred in Gal. 5:20 as one of the works of the flesh.
The opposition between the world and God’s elect is stated in the strongest terms in John 14: 17. The world’s hatred is not due to what the disciples do wrong, but what they do right.
Since Satan is the one who dominates the evil world system in rebellion against God, according to John 14:30, the result is that the world hates not only Jesus, but according to 2 Tim. 3: 12 those who follow Him. Hatred toward Jesus means also hatred toward the Father who sent Him.
The world is defined as “unredeemed society, estranged from God, held in the grip of sin, and the evil one, blind to spiritual truth and hostile to those who have the life of God in them.
Hatred would not be visited upon the disciples in a spirit of anti-Semitism, but as a continuation of the hostility and hatred visited upon Christ. The attack would move from the Shepherd to the sheep.
As sure as their lives reflect Christ, so surely, according to Gal 4; 29 would they attract the hatred of sinful men. Rebuked by the holiness of those who are Christ’s the world shows its resentment.
Friendship with God results in the world’s hatred. Conversely, according to James 4: 4 being friends with the world is to be God’s enemy.
Believers, according to 1 Peter 4: 12-13 might be surprised by this hostility, but they should remember that Jesus was hated from His birth (when Herod the Great sought to kill Him) to His death on the cross.
A fundamental reason for the world’s hatred of a Christian lies in their differences. A believer, having left the kingdom of darkness and having been transferred into the kingdom of God’s Son, has a different joy, purpose, hope and love.
He now has certainty, truth and a standard for life. Christians have been chosen out of the world system by Christ and they now belong to Him. Since they no longer belong to the world….the world hates them. There is a sense in which the world hates the good because the world loves the evil. The hatred against Jesus grew out of the antagonism of evil toward good.
The word if in vs.18 is in a construction that assumes this will happen. It is like saying, “when the world hates you (as it surely will), you will know that it hated Me first.”
Why does the world hate followers of Jesus? They are not part of the sinful world society. If Christians had been of the world, the world would love his own.
Christians are not of the world but of Christ. Therefore, the world hates believers for the same reasons it hated Jesus. At some point believers had been part of the sinful world, but Jesus has chosen them out of the world.
Followers of Christ are to live in the world as witnesses and servants. In John 17: 15-16 Jesus prayed not that His followers be taken out of the world but that they be delivered from the Devil’s grasp. Thus Christians must interact with people of the world without becoming of the world.
PLEASE READ JOHN 15:20-25.
Jesus reminded His disciples of His earlier teaching that the servant is not greater than his lord., This may have been a proverbial saying. In John 13: 16 after washing the disciples’ feet, Jesus said this to teach that if He their Master washed their feet, they should wash one another’s feet.
In John 15:20 Jesus shared this proverb to say, If they have persecuted Me, they will also persecute you.” This is the first use of the word persecute in this passage. The basic meaning of dioko is “to pursue,” but it also came to refer to pursuit in order to persecute. Jesus was persecuted, and He taught His disciples to expect to be persecuted. This is the word in the Beatitudes: “Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness’ sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”(Matt. 5: 10).
The early Christians were told to be sure that if they were persecuted it was for doing right, not for doing wrong. Punishment for doing wrong is justified and a cause for shame, but suffering for what is right is blessed by God.
Some religious people develop a martyr’s complex. They consider every slight to them as the results of their faith. Some religious people suffer ridicule because they bring it on themselves by being pompous and obnoxious.
At the root of hatred and persecution against Jesus’ followers is a lack of any real relationship with God. Jesus said that persecution reveals that the persecutors know not him that sent me. They may claim to know God; they may even claim they are persecuting others in God’s name (see 16:2). But this is not true. Persecution is motivated by the Devil, not by the Lord. Vs. 21 explains the world’s hatred of believers as an ignorance of God.
Vs 22 may easily be misunderstood. Jesus was not saying that they were not responsible for the sin of persecution. They were guilty. What Jesus was emphasizing was the revelation He had given them. By rejecting Him and His teaching, they were guilty of sin against knowledge.
They were already guilty of sin before God revealed Himself in Christ, but by rejecting Him they became more guilty. Vs. 22 sounds as if they would not have known sin, if Jesus had not come. If this were true, God made a mistake in sending Jesus. By this understanding, they would have been better off if Jesus had not come than they were because He came.
Vs. 22 reveals how much Jesus did to bring light into a dark world. The fact that some reject the light and retract further into the darkness is not an argument for not bringing the light. Thos who come to the light find salvation and new life. Those who retreat further into the darkness have no cloak or excuse for their sin. This is spelled out in John3:17-21.
The people who hate Jesus hate his followers, and vs. 23 says, “they also hate God the Father.” God the Father and God the Son are one in spirit and purpose. Some of Jesus’ fellow countrymen refused to recognize Jesus as the divine Son. They thought they could honor God by rejecting Jesus. Christ said that rejecting or hating Him was rejecting or hating God.
No one ever did the works that Jesus did. These works pointed people to the father. By rejecting Jesus they showed their hatred toward father and Son. Jesus saw in the scenario a fulfillment of the O.T. He quoted these words, They hated me without a cause. This probably was from Psalm 69:4, a messianic psalm. The point is: “If David could be hated for no reason, how much more the Messiah who would spring from his loins?” Thus the hatred of the world against Jesus is not only unjustified (‘it is without reason’), but those who hate are condemned out of their own Bible.
When Christians face difficulties and dangers, they can recognize that they are following the way of Jesus. He experienced such things when He was in the flesh, and He will be with us as we pass the same way He walked.
When believers experience hatred from the world, they can draw comfort from knowing that such experiences affirm their relationship to Jesus. There is some comfort in knowing that as Jesus’ followers we never experience any hate that Jesus did not experience.
PLEASE READ JOHN 15: 26-27.
One of the most important themes in John Ch.14-16 is the teachings about the Holy Spirit., This was a key part of how Jesus encouraged His disciples after telling them that He was going away.
In this teaching Jesus used a title for the Holy Spirit found only in this section of John and in 1 John 2:1. He spoke of the Comforter. This is the Greek word parakletos, which means “one called along side to help.” The word has various meanings: “helper,” “comforter,” “consoler,” “exhorter,” and “encourager.” The word was used in non biblical Greek to refer to a lawyer, especially one for the defense, who stood alongside his client in a court of law.
Jesus also called the Paraclete the Spirit of truth. He would guide them into all truth. Jesus promised to send Him to them from the Father.
This is one of several N.T. passages in which Father, Son, and Spirit are listed together. The Father sent the Son to be Savior: the work of God continued through the Spirit. What is the work of the Spirit? The emphasis in John15:26 is on His role in testifying to Jesus.
A martyr is a witness who has been faithful unto death. The apostles were unique witnesses for the Lord because they saw His life and were witnesses of His resurrection. We who have believed their testimonies have our own experiences with Jesus. The Spirit empowers believers as we fulfill the task of witnessing for Him.
This fact is crucial in a study of the world’s hatred and persecution of Christians. Special courage is needed for times when we face hostile people. At such times we may be tempted to deny Christ with our words or by our silence. We need to be faithful witnesses to Him, no matter what the cost.
We have no power within ourselves. As Christians we are weak, and have no ability to stand against the enemy, but, “Greater is He that is us than he that is in the world.”
The same word, offend, appears in John 6: 61, when Jesus asked the would-be disciples, “Does this offend you?” Apparently it did because many of them no longer walked with Jesus. In their case they had been going about to hear Jesus in hopes that He would be the kind of earthy king they wanted.
Jesus refused and called them to the way of the cross, which caused them to look elsewhere for the kind of messiah who would do what they wanted. Jesus did not cause anyone to turn away, but rather He emphasized that following Him meant the cross---His and theirs.
Jesus purpose in John 16:1 was to keep His followers by preparing them to face the persecution that lay ahead. He knew that this coming persecution would severely test the reality of their profession of faith.
If the disciples of the Lord Jesus felt that they had reason to expect that the attitude of the world as such was going to be changed through the preaching of the gospel, they might well be stumbled by what they see as they look back and about them at the present time.
For instance, take our own day. Suppose we really believed that the whole world was to be converted in this age and that all men everywhere were eventually to be changed in attitude toward the Lord Jesus Christ, how discouraged we might well become, for we have seen in our day whole nations turned against the Lord Jesus Christ that once professed to honor Him. And we have seen other lands where the gospel was once permitted banning everything of a Christian character.
They have used methods worse than pagan or papal Rome ever tried, to rout Christianity out of their dominions. But the Lord Jesus Christ told us to expect these things. The attitude of the world as such has never changed. The world hates Christ, the world hates God, and the world hates the gospel of God and those who believe it.
Jesus warned His disciples about this, and even pointed out that men would be so dominated by a lying spirit that they would actually thing that in opposing Christianity they would be glorifying God.
Saul of Tarsus is a sample of this. Saul said when he stood before the council, “I verily thought within myself that I ought to do many things contrary to the name of Jesus of Nazareth, which thing I also did in Jerusalem.” Which thing he did until God, in His grace, stopped him on the Damascus Road, revealed Christ to him, and sent him out to preach the faith he had once destroyed.
Men of the world, religious men, have often assumed, that they were really honoring God in trying to destroy evangelical Christianity.
In our land we thankfully do not face death if we remain steadfast and faithful to Christ, but –people in other lands face such life-and-death choices., We American Christians have trouble with passages such as this, in which there are stern warnings, but especially those that are written in persecution setting. I believe that the persecuted believers of today would understand warnings about denial more than Americans do.
The N.T. writers stressed the need for courage in standing up for Christ. They trusted that their prayers would result in courage that comes from being filled with the Spirit. One role of the Spirit of truth was to reveal the lies in slanders against Christians. Many people believed these lies and felt it justified the persecution of Christians.
Christians were accused of being atheists because they didn’t believe in the old gods.
They were accused of sedition and disloyalty by refusing to worship the emperor., They were said to be immoral because they spoke so much about loving one another and because they had “love feasts.” They were even said to be cannibals because of a misunderstanding about the elements of the Lord’s Supper.
PLEASE READ JOHN 16: 2-4.
Jesus predicted that much persecution will be done by people who think that whoever killed a Christians was serving God. All of the early believers were Jews. They were persecuted by fellow Jews who rejected Christ.
Saul of Tarsus was such a persecutor., He went about his task with great zeal. In Philippians 3: 6 he later confessed that his persecution of believers was considered at the time to be a mark of zeal for God. He measured his zeal for his own religion by the terrors and ravages he inflicted on the Christians.
He was a person who saw persecution from both sides---as a persecutor and as a persecuted believer.
In the early decades of Paul’s ministry the Roman government protected Paul, but by the sixties Nero launched a vicious persecution of Christians in Rome. Some other emperors extended the persecution beyond Rome.
The main issue was a choice between Christ and Caesar, still a religious issue since the Romans expected all people to worship the emperor. Many later periods of persecution also were over religious issues.
The persecutors believed that they were serving God. Indeed, much modern persecution is based on religion-political grounds. Writing in the last years of the 20th century, Nina Shea listed nations with the worst persecution records. Most of these nations based their persecution on anti-God Communism or militant anti-Christians religions.
Not a persecution is the result of official government policy. But much is unofficial persecution, instigated by mob action, often sparked by an incendiary-like person.
Paul’s persecution in Philippi was carried out by the government, but at the insistence of some prominent citizens. (Acts 16: 16-24).
The near riot in Ephesus was led by one silversmith (Demitrus) who stirred up a mob by his accusations that Paul’s message threatened the economic well-being of the city. In this case government authorities intervened on Paul’s behalf ( Acts 19:21-41).
Much mob action, however, is done with the government’s sympathy for the persecutors. Governing authorities look the other way or at least raise no objection. Being put out of the Synagogue was a most painful experience to a Jew.
In John 16:3-4 Jesus explained why He told His disciples these things. He wanted them to know that persecution is not from Jesus or from God the Father. Jesus had taught them many things while He was with them. He was about to leave, but He wanted them to remember His warnings about persecution.
During His earthly ministry Jesus was the One persecuted, not His disciples. After His departure, the persecutors would target His disciples. In Acts 7 Stephen was the first Christian martyr. In Acts 12: 1-2 James, the son of Zebedee was the first apostle to be killed for his faith in Jesus. The Book of Acts does not tell how each apostle was killed, but ancient traditions say that all but John, the brother of James, were killed---and he was sent into exile. Fox’s Book of Martyrs gives detailed explanations of how each died.
Throughout history millions of people have been persecuted for their faith in Christ. Thus it is deeply disturbing to realize that there were more martyrs in the 20th century than in all other centuries combined. This 21st century may supersede that number.
These are our brothers and sisters in Christ. We should be praying for them and doing what we can to deliver them. We should not take such passages as these we are studying as an excuse to do nothing. Paul did what he could to avoid martyrdom. He often used his Roman citizenship as a shield, but he never compromised his stand for Christ to stay alive.
Nina Shea made this disturbing report. “Although history has shown that some of the largest spurts of church growth emerged from periods of persecution. In some places like the Middle East, persecution has led to a vastly diminished Christian presence.
In Iraq the number of Christians has decreased from 35 percent to 5 percent of the overall population; in Iran from 15 percent to 2 percent; in Syria, from 40 percent to 10 percent; and in Turkey from 32 percent to 0.2 percent since the early part of the 20th century.
We should not be surprised that Christians are still being martyred. But we should not use this fact to justify indifference about the issue. Persecution is a reality, but it is not what God wants.
NEXT SUNDAY WE BEGIN A FOUR LESSON STUDY THEME TITLED, “BEING A PEACEMAKER.” THE FIRST LESSON, “HONOR GOD,” IS BASED ON PHIL. 2: 1-8 AND 4:2-9. IT TELLS HOW PAUL DEALT WITH SOME CONFLICTS AND POTENTIAL CONFLICTS IN A CHURCH. A.V. DAUGHERTY <altav@swbell.net>