The Gospel of John

The World’s Hatred

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Conversations, Panels and Sermons

Lesson: 51- 70

Genre:

Track: 051

Dictation Name: RR197AC53

Location/Venue:

Year:

Let us worship God. Thus saith the Lord ye shall seek me and find me when ye shall search for me with all your heart. Jesus said blessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness for they shall be filled. Let us pray.

Our Lord and our God we come into Thy presence again mindful of how rich we are in Christ and how poor we are in and of ourselves. Do Thou make us ever mindful of all Thy promises to us in Christ Jesus. Teach us to trust, to walk by faith, to know that Thy hand is upon us for good all the days of our life and Thou wilt never leave us nor forsake us. How great Thou art oh God and we praise Thee. In Christ’s name, Amen.

Our scripture is John 15:18-37. Our subject: The World’s Hatred. The World’s Hatred, John 15:18-37.

“If the world hate you, ye know that it hated me before it hated you.

19 If ye were of the world, the world would love his own: but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you.

20 Remember the word that I said unto you, The servant is not greater than his lord. If they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you; if they have kept my saying, they will keep yours also.

21 But all these things will they do unto you for my name's sake, because they know not him that sent me.

22 If I had not come and spoken unto them, they had not had sin: but now they have no cloak for their sin.

23 He that hateth me hateth my Father also.

24 If I had not done among them the works which none other man did, they had not had sin: but now have they both seen and hated both me and my Father.

25 But this cometh to pass, that the word might be fulfilled that is written in their law, They hated me without a cause.

26 But when the Comforter is come, whom I will send unto you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth, which proceedeth from the Father, he shall testify of me:

27 And ye also shall bear witness, because ye have been with me from the beginning.”

We come now to our Lord’s comments on hatred. Hatred in and of itself is without a moral qualification unless we know what is hated. To hate murder, rape, theft and false witness is morally sound but to hate justice, morality and Christianity is a mark of evil. The same is true of love. If a man loves evil and reviles in it his love is evil. It is simplistic and morally unsound to condemn or approve of love and hate without knowing the object of either. Soon with their Lord gone the disciples would feel the full brunt of the world’s hatred but this would be because of fallen man’s prior hatred for Jesus Christ. We are known by what we love and hate. To idealize love as a universally valid moral trait is to indulge in nonsense because the love of evil is no virtue. But we live in a generation when love is regarded as unconditionally good, no matter what it is you love. And hatred is unconditionally bad no matter what you hate. But we are to hate that which is evil and love only that which is good. It is moral idiocy to insist on a universal love of everything as too many do because it is too often an acceptance of evil. We have today a form of hatred that is widely condemned, homophobia, hating homosexuals, as though that were an evil because hate, they hold, is evil.

The objects of the Marque De Sade’s love cannot be ours. Then in verse nineteen:

“If ye were of the world, the world would love his own: but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you.”

The word world is used five times in this sentence, there is a stress on the difference between Christ’s chosen ones and the world, that is the old humanity of fallen Adam and the new humanity of the second or last Adam, Jesus Christ. This emphasis is strong in character because we are not allowed to blur the dividing line as too many in the world and in the church strive to do. There is an escapable alignment of men in terms of what they are. It is true that both sides have persons who want a blurred line but God does not long permit this. In verse twenty our Lord says:

“Remember the word that I said unto you, The servant is not greater than his lord. If they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you; if they have kept my saying, they will keep yours also.”

The reference is to His earlier statement in John 13:16:

“Verily, verily I say unto you the servant is not greater than his lord neither he that is sent greater than he that sent him.”

The saying reminds them that the treatment given to the Lord determines the treatment accorded to His servants. Jesus Christ was crucified by the world order, the least we can expect is to be rejected and hated. Our Lord’s words here also refer not only to John 13:16 but also to Matthew 10:24-25 where He says:

“The disciple is not above his master, nor the servant above his lord.

25 It is enough for the disciple that he be as his master, and the servant as his lord. If they have called the master of the house Beelzebub, how much more shall they call them of his household?”

Well Jesus was often called a devil, if they say this of Jesus whom they feared how much more readily will they not be ready to say this of us. We are as nothing to them and their vicious abuse comes readily. We need to recognize that when the good we do is attacked by people near and far the hatred is however disguised one of the Lord of whom we serve. Then in verse twenty one our Lord continues:

“But all these things will they do unto you for my name's sake, because they know not him that sent me.”

They are willfully ignorant of God, they hate God. And not knowing Him as their Lord and judge they hate Christ who speaks of God’s claims on all of us and they hate us because they hate Christ. We are going to be hated by the ungodly. The more we clearly manifest ourselves, the more they know we what we are, the more they will resent us. To know Christ is to know God and to know God is to know Christ. This means that the religious leaders did not know Christ because they did not know God. Persecution, abuse and martyrdom can thus become the lot of Christians at the hands of evil men. Some time in future generations ours will be described as one of the ages of persecution and martyrdom. It has been said that three hundred Christians are killed for their faith every day, but again that about six hundred are newly converted. Then in verse twenty two our Lord says:

“22 If I had not come and spoken unto them, they had not had sin: but now they have no cloak for their sin.”

The reference here is to the religious leaders. They lived in the confidence that they truly represented the remote God whose earthly agents they claimed to be. Christ’s coming exposed their unbelief, they believed in themselves not in God. Now they were conscious of their sin as they had not been before. The cloak of self-satisfied and willful ignorance had been stripped from them. In verse twenty three our Lord says that he that hateth me hateth my Father also. God cannot be separated from Jesus Christ. To hate the one is to hate the other. There can be no true religion claiming to worship the God of scripture while rejecting Jesus Christ. When Unitarianism rejected Jesus Christ it was not long, very, very short the time span before it dropped God also. And the mainline churches in this country are now doing the same and in both Catholic and Protestant circles wherever modernism has had its sway the word God is being used for a vague idea, mainly their thinking and has no meaning in and of itself. Then our Lord says in verse twenty four:

“24 If I had not done among them the works which none other man did, they had not had sin: but now have they both seen and hated both me and my Father.”

The sins of the religious leaders included these things: first, they rejected the words of Jesus. But second they rejected His works, or separated them from His person as we see in John 9:24-34 in the healing of the man born blind. Then third when they were compelled to admit a miracle, the raising of Lazarus, they saw it as a good reason to kill Him as John 11:50 tells us. [ 15:03]

Expediency, not faith, governed them. Their knowledge of Jesus Christ led to the hatred of Him and the Father. Verse twenty five, our Lord says:

“25 But this cometh to pass, that the word might be fulfilled that is written in their law, they hated me without a cause.”

The reference is to Psalm 35:19 and 64:4. Now the reference is to the Psalms but our Lord calls it the law. He calls it the law because every word of God is the binding word and the true word. It is their law because the religious leaders claimed it to be so, claimed to be the only valid interpreters of it. They held they claimed the keys to the kingdom, keys from antiquity have been signs of scholarship, of interpretation, the five [unknown] perpetuates it today. So to have the keys to the kingdom as the rabbis claimed meant that they alone could open up the meaning of the Bible. It came to pass that the word might be fulfilled that is written in their law: they hated me without a cause. This word is fulfilled; it became reality in all its fullness. But our Lord says in verse twenty six:

“26 But when the Comforter is come, whom I will send unto you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth, which proceedeth from the Father, he shall testify of me:”

The phrase ‘which proceedeth from the Father’ is used by the eastern orthodox churches to deny the procession of the Spirit from the Son. But since other texts imply procession from both the Father and the Son it is not sound interpretation to invalidate them. The Spirit is our advocate, our comforter, our strengthener. Advocate by the way means our lawyer.

He pleads our case, He is the spirit of truth and the truth is Jesus Christ. His testimony will be in support of Jesus Christ. Then in verse twenty seven:

“7 And ye also shall bear witness, because ye have been with me from the beginning.”

The Holy Spirit and Christ’s disciples bear witness together. They are God’s testimony to a fallen world. Failure to hear and heed this witness is a sin against truth. It is marked by a hatred by truth. Revelation 22:15 speaks of whomsoever loveth and maketh a lie. We fail to understand fallen man until we appreciate the fact that as he develops his rebellion against God he relishes a lie. He loves a lie because it’s a power tool whereby he can manipulate people. The liar lies even when there is no need for a lie because he enjoys playing games with the minds of people. There is a clear line of division between good and evil, between the saved and the unsaved which however blurred by some cannot be erased. The lie and the truth stand forever separate. Precisely because the line cannot be erased the hatred of the world is intense. Our Lord here prepares His followers for the hatred by the world. Let us pray.

“Our Father, give us grace to take heed to Thy word. To know that indeed there is a line of division that people near and far will hate us because we are Thine. Will invent every reason to justify their hatred to us. Teach us to know that when we stand in terms of Thy truth we will be loved, blessed and rewarded by Thee and hated and abused by the ungodly. Make us strong so that in the day of adversity we may stand. In Christ’s name, Amen.

Are there any questions now about our lesson? We live in a time when morality uses, immorality uses the word love as a masquerade. We have never had a time in history when more people claimed to be champions of love and as Elliot in his twentieth century Book of the Dead pointed out, a high percentage of mankind has been killed by slave labor camps, war, famine, massacres, every kind of evil. And yet we claim to be the love century, the time when the love babies are telling us we are on the brink of a wonderful new world of love. So our Lord in these verses tells us that what we face is not a world full of love but a world full of hatred and it is aimed at God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit and us because we are the Lords. Yes?

[Unintelligible Question]

[Rushdoony] Yes. And as I have said often, and need to say many more times I’m sure, we are told that God is a jealous God an avenging spirit, a righteous God, that is a God of justice, and much, much more. When anyone takes a single verse and builds a doctrine on that it is idolatry. We can use the bible for idolatrous purposes if we make an idol out of various texts of the bible. The sad fact is that most church people including pastors have a very small bible.

They may profess to believe it from cover to cover but they have certain favorite passages and they build all their religious faith on those passages and not the whole word of God. And that gives you an idolatrous perspective. You manufactured a God out of your own imagination and this is why some people when you call attention to certain things in scripture they say my God would never do that. That’s idolatry. Dorothy used to know a woman who decided there could be no hell because she knew her son was going there. Well that’s saying you are God, that you are going to determine reality and this has become a common place and a routine fact in our time. And of course if they don’t like what you’re saying about the faith or about their sins they will throw some of these things that are wretched out of context at you. Yes?

[Unintelligible Question]

[Rushdoony] No it is not. Because sin doesn’t exist in the abstract. There is no sin in the abstract. Sin is a name for something people do. You cannot say what murder is apart from what people do. It’s an act by a man against another man or men. So that to hate the sin means you hate those who commit the sin, who have murder in their heart. So that has become in our time a very, very popular way of misinterpreting scripture. How can you hate murder and still love the murderer? How can you hate rape and still love the rapist? Now it boggles the imagination how that would be possible and yet they are telling us that is what we should do. And the worst part of it is you here from time to time of people who do that like a father who said of a rapist murderer that he hated his sin but not him.

His daughter would not have said anything like that. It really is a frightening thing that people are thinking in such a muddled way and it tells us why we are in trouble even though most Americans are in the churches. But their thinking is all wrong and it is not biblical. Well if there are no…yes?

[Unintelligible Question]

[Rushdoony] Yes. The people don’t study the laws of God, I’ll never forget the minister friend of mine who got raked over the coals by a woman who called him, she was about to speak at some woman’s club and I forget what it was that, oh yes, she said where can I find the text ‘honesty is the best policy’ and he said Mrs. So and so, that’s not in the bible, that was a saying in Benjamin Franklin’s Poor Richard’s Almanac and he borrowed it from someone but it’s not in the bible so she became very angry with him and said you don’t know your bible and slammed the receiver. Well too many people in the churches don’t know what their bible is and sometimes when you tell them what is in the bible they are horrified, that can’t be in the bible. Well, let us bow our heads now in prayer.

Our Father, we give thanks unto Thee that we stand not alone but in Thee and by Thy spirit. Teach us day by day so to walk that we cast our every care upon thee knowing Thou carest for us. Give us grace to know that our thinking is weak, our courage often lacking but Thy spirit unshakable all wise and eternal. And Thou hast made us temples of Thy holy spirit. We thank Thee our Father, and now go in peace, God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost, bless you and keep you, guide and protect you, this day and always, Amen.