John 15:18-21 (NIV)
“If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first. 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. 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. They will treat you this way because of my name, for they do not know the One who sent me.”
Jesus was always painstakingly honest with His disicples, even when they weren’t able to process all that He was telling them. He knew that eventually the Holy Spirit would bring back to their minds all that He had taught them and would help them to understand it (John 14:26).
Jesus knew that after He ascended to heaven, after the disicples had been filled with the Holy Spirit and launched into ministry, they would be persecuted and maligned, just as He had been. He needed to clearly communicate that to them so that when it happened they would remember His words and not get dismayed or lose faith.
Jesus painted the issue as that of two kingdom that were incompatible with each other, and thus would always be at odds with each other. One was the kingdom of God, which John had come to announce (Matthew 3:1-2), and which Jesus had come to make real. Jesus had called his followers into this kingdom and was teaching them how to live in it. The other was the kingdom of the world, the kingdom to which the vast majority of the people of the world belonged. Ironically, even the Jewish religious leaders belonged not to the kingdom of God, but to the kingdom of the world, demonstrated by their persecution of Jesus.
Jesus knew that these two kingdoms would not, could not, peaceably coexist. The oppression and violence were never to come from the people of the kingdom of God. The tools of God’s kingdom are not swords and spears, but light, and love, and grace. But He knew that the people of the world’s kingdom would try to silence the people of the kingdom of God just as they had been trying to silence Jesus, even going so far as to torture and kill those who refused to be silenced.
Note that Jesus traces this persecution to its source: ignorance of God. The people of the world, despite their protestations that they see clearly and are behaving rationally when they persecute the people of the kingdom, are actually wretched, pitiful, poor, blind, and naked (Revelation 3:17), they simply don’t realize it. Their hearts are depraved because they are deprived of a relationship with God, are walking in the dark, and have been mastered by the enemy of people’s souls.
The only hope for those who are in the dark is for the people of the kingdom of God, the bearers of the light of the world (Matthew 5:14-16), to not back down when persecution flares up, but to double down on their work of taking the light into the darkest places of the world, and freeing the prisoners of darkness from its grasp.
Father, we need this word just as much today as they did back in Jesus’ day. The kingdom of this world is still working to silence the people of the kingdom, to pressure us out of the public square, and urging us to put our lights under a bowl for our own safety, or to avoid offending others. This is exactly in line with what Jesus predicted for us, not some anomaly. But even in this, we are instructed to stay the course, as Jesus did; to let our lights shine in the world, as Jesus did; and to stay faithful to our mandate (Matthew 28:18-20), just as Jesus did to Your mandate for Him. Thank You for this reminder, this encouragement, and Your promised presence to carry us through. Amen.
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