PODCAST
Warning! Danger Ahead!
December 14th, 2016
John 15:18-27
Who likes or wants to be hated? My neighbors, whether Christian or not, my employer, acquaintances, and friends all appear to like me. So why should we be warned of the world hating us? The “world” is to be understood in a moral sense: the world-order under the control of adverse spiritual forces.*
Christ used a series of opposing statements to warn His disciples as they witnessed for Him before a godless world: The world hates you/hates Me; persecutes you/persecutes Me; does wrong to the servant/does wrong to the Master; the world would love you/but I took you out of the world; you will be treated badly/because you identified with Me; You will be disdained/because they don’t know the Father who sent Me; the world doesn’t listen to you/because it doesn’t listen to Me.
Not listening was nothing new to God. The hatred toward Jesus and the Father happened in fulfillment of what was written, “They hated me without reason” (John 15:25). Recent times have seen an incredible hatred toward Christians.
Author: Pat Kissell
