23 He who hates me hates my Father as well.
Jesus just said that the world hates Jesus’ disciples because they hate Jesus’ own name and because they don’t know who really sent him. Now he puts those things together: When the world hates Jesus, the world hates God the Father. A pagan might think of “Heavenly Father” or “Father God” or the “Sky Spirit,” but if he rejects Jesus Christ, Jesus who gave up his life for our sins, who gave us his body and blood in the Lord’s Supper, who washes away our sins in baptism—anyone who rejects Jesus rejects and even hates Jesus’ true Father in heaven. Jesus didn’t come into the world without proof of who he is. The next thing he said to the disciples pointed back to some of this proof:
24 If I had not done among them what no one else did, they would not be guilty of sin. But now they have seen these miracles, and yet they have hated both me and my Father. 25 But this is to fulfill what is written in their Law: ‘They hated me without reason.’ (NIV)
For many Jews, especially those who were not political or religious leaders, the miracles of Jesus were all the proof they needed. “When the Christ comes,” they said, “will he do more miraculous signs than this man?” (John 7:31). But the leadership had a different reaction. “The chief priests and the Pharisees sent temple guards to arrest him” (John 7:32).
Once again John records Jesus words using the perfect tense in Greek, but more than that, he recalls that Jesus’ sentence was quite elegantly laid out. There is a “both…and” construction in verse 24, and the “both” and the “and” apply to both of the verbs: “seen” and “hated,” and both of those verbs apply to both direct objects, “me” and “my Father.” In effect, what Jesus is saying here is this: “They have seen these miracles, and they still see them to this day. And they have seen me and seen my Father, and they continue to see me and my Father, yet they hate me and my Father, and they continue to hate me and my Father to this day.” That’s a lot of accusation with a lot of wallop. But it fulfills the testimony of two or three witness which we saw a few days ago in both of the Psalms we looked at: “those who hate me without reason” (Psalm 35:19) and “Those who hate me without reason outnumber the hairs of my head” (Psalm 69:4).
This hatred from the world is something we will face. When we do, we need to remember that this isn’t about us, it’s about people rejecting Jesus; people rejecting God himself. At those times, we stand alongside Jeremiah as the king hacked apart his scroll with a knife and burned the pages one by one. We shiver with Joseph in prison while other prisoners dream of their fate and their future. We are bound with the same chains that bound Paul in Rome. And if we run and hide, we hide with David, afraid for his life but with God’s hand to guide him. And if we face death, we face it with Stephen, and we will “see heaven open and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God” (Acts 7:56).
It’s because of Jesus that we do these things. How can we help but love him and shout his name with hoarse throats against the hurricane of blasphemy that the world hurls back at us? He has taken away our sins, and he has taken away their sins, too. So we keep on shouting, we keep on patiently reminding; we keep on happily explaining what Jesus did for us, because what he did for us he did for the whole world.
Something extra:
Ecclesiastes 9:5-6
5 For the living know that they will die, but the dead know nothing; they have no further reward, and even the memory of them is forgotten. 6 Their love, their hate and their jealousy have long since vanished; never again will they have a part in anything that happens under the sun. (NIV)
Luther put it bluntly: “They have no further reward is a Hebraism for what we would say: It is all over for those who are dead.” The phrase, “the dead know nothing,” is not just a reference to the bodies of the dead, which no longer live and fall into decay or dust and become mixed with the sea or the soil. It also applies to the spirits of the dead, which go into the Judgment and are placed by God into heaven or hell, but no longer have knowledge of what happens on earth. This is what Isaiah said, too: “Abraham does not know us, or Israel acknowledge us” (Isaiah 63:16). And the Psalm does not expect yes for an answer when it asks, “Are your wonders known in the place of darkness, or your righteous deeds in the land of oblivion?” (Psalm 88:12).
This means that now is the time for men and women to hear about Christ. There is no limbo where people will receive a second chance. There is no Purgatory where corruption will be sanded away from human flesh over the timeless stretch of eternity. It’s not that the Bible is silent about such things, it’s that passages like this one specifically say that it is not so. The ancient church father Jerome tried to train this passage to jump through hoops like a little dog working for a scrap of meat to say that the dead know ‘something,’ but not about anything on earth, and therefore they’re in Purgatory. He was making what Luther calls “a foolish quibble.” There is no more chance for the dead. That’s why we reach out with the gospel like we do. If there were truly a Purgatory, then hell would lose all its terror: Why not enjoy all the sinful “pleasures” of life and gratify ourselves now if all it means is that we’ll have to wait a little longer in line in eternity?
But that’s hate talking. Hate turns away from Jesus and away from his Father in heaven and throws the Holy Spirit into a little prison cell outside the heart while we wander off to have a good time. Hate puts on new clothes and tries to pretend it can be something else—hate pretends it’s nothing more than a well-deserved night out; hate pretends its just “college years.” Lately hate minces around pretending that it’s an old buttoned-up Puritanical virtue: Tolerance. But whatever Halloween mask it wears, pretty or grotesque, Hate is still Hate. It still stabs Jesus in the guts, and it still throws rocks at God on his throne.
Lord Jesus Christ, drive away our hate and our foolish mockery of your holiness. Bring us to repentance; bring us to your own cross and show us your love, your compassion and your forgiveness. Lift up our eyes to see the world that hates you as the job you’ve hired us to do, to take the fire hose of the gospel to blast away the flames of unbelief, and to do everything we can, by all possible means, to save some.
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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