In the second half of John Chapter 15 Jesus is speaking to His disciples but He’s also speaking to us as Christians today. In vs 18 He says the world is going to hate them. People are going to try to make them miserable. Why? Because they don’t like Jesus!
He’s telling the disciples to get ready for backlash. Get ready to be cancelled. And don’t take it personally because the world won’t be attacking them personally. It will happen because of their relationship with Him. Jesus and His godly standards are offensive to the world and people will take out their feelings on them.
Jesus understands what they’re going to experience because He has gone through it. And He knows the ultimate reason is because the world has really rejected God. Jesus says the world would love them and embrace them if they exercised worldly thinking and did the things worldly people do. But since Jesus has called them to be different, to think differently, and act differently, then they are going to experience hostility.
Jesus said this to the disciples over 2000 years ago but He could say it to us today. When the world calls you intolerant, bigoted, an extremist, a religious nut, or worse— don’t get upset and don’t take it personally. Understand they are attacking and rejecting Jesus.
In vs 26 though, Jesus gives them (and us) a promise—we won’t have to go through this by ourselves. We will always have the Holy Spirit with us to guide us and show us the truth. He will help us stay on course and continuing to follow Jesus, no matter how much opposition we get from the world.
