We’re returning to Jesus and his disciples in the upper room, just a few minutes after the Passover and the Last Supper have finished. Jesus has told his disciples that he is leaving them soon, but that they should keep themselves with him like branches attached to their Vine.
18 “If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first.
To folks like us who speak English, this is a verse that needs a little explaining. If this sentence were spoken by someone from America, then the listeners might possibly believe that the world used to hate Jesus (“it hated me first”), but it doesn’t necessarily hate him any more. But in fact, that’s not what Jesus is saying at all. If we take the time to learn a little bit about Greek verb tenses, then some of the other things that Jesus says (including one of his statements from the cross) are going to make a lot more sense and become more meaningful for us.
In the first part of the verse, “hates” is the simplest form of the verb: the present tense of the word for “hate” which is misei (μισεῖ). You already know this word if you know words like misanthrope (a person who hates men) or misogynist (a person who hates women) as opposed to most English words beginning with mis- which normally means “badly” as in misspeak or mistake. In the second part of the verse, “it hated” is a special form of the past tense called the perfect tense, which in Greek usually means that the action of the verb began at some point in the past, but it continues on into the present moment and beyond. So when Jesus says “the world…hated me first,” he’s saying that when we are hated by the world, we should remember the big picture: the world already hates Jesus and the world still hates Jesus to this day.
19 If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you. 20 Remember the words I spoke to you: ‘No servant is greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will persecute you also. If they obeyed my teaching, they will obey yours also. 21 They will treat you this way because of my name, for they do not know the One who sent me.
Jesus knows that the world will reject the teachings of Christians. Why? Because the world has already rejected Christ. So it shouldn’t come as any surprise to know that we will have opposition to Christ’s own message. But don’t lost sight of the positive things Jesus adds: “If they obey (i.e. believe) my teaching, they will obey (i.e. believe) yours also.”
In verse 21, Jesus leads us to the conclusion of verse 22. He begins by saying that this hatred and unbelief will come because of his own name—because the people who reject Jesus don’t really know God the Father.
22 If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not be guilty of sin. Now, however, they have no excuse for their sin. (NIV)
By “sin,” Jesus isn’t talking about any sin at all, as if people who know nothing of God are sinless in God’s sight. What he means is that if the Jews had kept on with their Old Testament worship and had never known about or heard Jesus, but had kept on looking forward to the coming of the Messiah (like the Samaritan woman at the well in chapter 4), then they would be held as true believers in God’s sight, even though the Messiah had already come. This is something that the apostles encountered with Jews still waiting for the Christ—sometimes they even knew about John the Baptist. Paul ran into this when he was on the road to Ephesus in Acts 19. Some believers (Luke calls them “disciples,” and there were in fact twelve of them) were gathered for worship and Paul had to tell them about Jesus and teach them about baptism (Acts 19:1-7).
But the Jews who heard about Jesus and who listened to him in person for the most part rejected him. That’s why Jesus says, “They have no excuse.” They heard the gospel directly from God himself, but they still rejected it.
When believers turn on God and reject him, they have no excuse. So what about loved ones in our own lives, who were believers once, were perhaps even baptized and even confirmed, but turned away from the cross? These are the lost sheep that give us agony in our own personal spiritual lives. These are the ones we keep praying for. These are the ones we reach out to, any way we can. By keeping open the doors of friendship and of family and of any kind of communication, we let them know that they can turn to us. For them, there is still the chance to turn back to Christ and to be taken back into God’s loving arms. We cannot argue these souls back into the pew, but we can reach out to them with God’s message of forgiveness, we can pray for them, and we can be there for them.
If we love them, we can also begin to have an idea of just how much Jesus loves them, too.
Something extra:
Ecclesiastes 9:3-4
3 This is the evil in everything that happens under the sun: The same destiny overtakes all. The hearts of men, moreover, are full of evil and there is madness in their hearts while they live, and afterward they join the dead. 4 Anyone who is among the living has hope—even a live dog is better off than a dead lion! (NIV)
The promise from Solomon’s lips here is that “Anyone who is among the living has hope,” and he means hope in eternal life. There is no going back to rescue the dead. If they rejected Jesus, they are condemned. If there is some uncertainty—if they died as infants, for example, or if we don’t know their condition of belief—then we take comfort in knowing that God’s love is boundless, and that God is gracious and compassionate, and we leave everything in God’s hands.
But for we who are still living, there is the present time of grace. Now is the moment we have to turn away from our sins, to put our trust and our faith in Jesus, and to know that his forgiveness is complete, and full, and free. It’s ours forever, because of the love of Jesus Christ.
Pastor Smith serves St. Paul’s Lutheran Church in New Ulm, Minnesota. His wife, Kathryn, attended Chapel from 1987-1990 while studying Secondary Education (Theater and Math) at UW-Madison. Kathryn’s father, John Meyer, was also the first man to serve as a Vicar at Chapel.
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