SERIES: The Gospel of John
No Greater Love; No Greater Hate
SPEAKER: Michael P. Andrus
Introduction: I don’t know how long it has been since you purchased a diamond. For me it was over 29 years ago. But I remember well how the jeweler sold me on it. He pulled it out of a box, flipped it up in the air and slapped it on his wrist, saying, “How do you like that baby!” No, you know better. He did what every jeweler does. He picked it up with special tweezers, placed it on a piece of black velvet, and of course, the whole thing was done under a bright light to make the diamond sparkle against the jet black background. Then he moved it under a magnifying glass mounted within a circle of light to make it appear even more magnificent. I studied that sucker very carefully; I wanted to be certain it was genuine; otherwise, I’d be out my fifty bucks.
The Apostle John, as we have noted many times during our exposition of this Gospel, was a literary master as well as a theological genius. Here in John 15 he sets the great themes of love and hate in juxtaposition to one another in order to help us see Christian love in its true radiance. The hate of the world is the black background against which Christian love stands in relief. While each of these two great themes could easily consume several messages alone, I think it is important for us to see them in contrast, so I want to speak to you this morning on the subject, “No Greater Love; No Greater Hate.”
Christians have experienced the greatest love there is. (15:9-17)
In the first part of chapter 15, as we saw last Sunday, Jesus uses the parable of the vine and the branches to teach His disciples about the importance of remaining in communion and fellowship with Him. In our text today He indicates that remaining in Him will result not only in love but also in hate.
First, He speaks of the love which has no equal. There is nothing more satisfying than to hear someone sincerely express the thought, “I love you.” It is the basis of true friendship, it is the foundation of marriage, it is what binds a parent’s heart to a child. But if these words are so meaningful when spoken by mere men and women, how much more wonderful are they when spoken by the Lord Jesus Christ, especially when we are the ones loved. This is an astonishing love, for there is nothing in us that could legitimately give cause for it. We are sinners. We have rebelled against God. We were His enemies. We are often faithless. Yet Jesus loves us.
Four facts about this love are enumerated here in John 15.
We have been loved with the same kind of love the Father has for the Son. (9) Verse 9 reads, “As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you.” For Jesus to have loved us at all is remarkable, but for Him to love us with the same kind of love that is expressed between the Father and His Son is mind-boggling. What is the Father’s love for the Son like? It is an infinite love, a changeless love, an eternal love.
Someone might be tempted to say, “The kind of love that would require One’s Son to leave His glorious position in Heaven and come to earth to be rejected and crucified like a common criminal is not a very impressive kind of love.” But that would reveal a very inferior understanding of God’s love. In Philippians 2 the Apostle Paul speaks of how Jesus humbled Himself and became obedient to death—even death on a cross! And then the very next words are these: “Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”
My dad disciplined me, made me work when I’d rather play, made me earn my own keep from the time I was 16, and expected a lot of other things that at the time I thought were indications of a lack of love. But I know today these were significant proofs of his love, for he was more interested in what I would become than how much I enjoyed the journey. My father believed in the principle of delayed gratification, something that is not very popular today. He believed that delayed gratification means increased gratification at the right time. God loved His Son the same way, and Jesus loves us the same way. “As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you.” A second fact about the love we have experienced is that …
We have been loved by One who gave the ultimate sacrifice for us. (13) Verse 13 says, “Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.” It is rare that we see people give their lives for someone else, but never in the manner Jesus did. You see, Jesus did not have to die, for He was sinless. That is not true of any of us. We are mortal and must die, so if you or I were to give our lives for someone else, while that would undoubtedly be a great and heroic sacrifice, it would nevertheless mean, at best, that we would die a bit sooner than otherwise. Then too, Jesus knew for certain He would die, and this is not usually the case when a mere man or woman offers his or her life for someone else. Most people who risk death for someone else think they may possibly escape death while yt saving their friend. Few die deliberately. And then, too, those who take calculated risks for a friend almost never expect the pain, the shame, and the desertion which made Jesus’ death unique. All this causes us to say, ‘Behold how he loved us!'”
We have been loved by One who treats us as friends and lets us in on everything. (14-15) Just after delivering the incontrovertible principle that “greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends,” Jesus adds, “You are my friends.” Let me just stop there and observe that it’s quite a different thing for us to say, “Jesus is my friend,” than it is for Jesus to say to us, “You are my friends.”
Every one of us can say, “Jesus is my friend,” for Jesus died for us, He rose for us, He cares for us, and some day He is coming again for us. Do you remember the words Tracy and Lisa sang this morning?
There’s not a friend like the lowly Jesus, No not one! No not one!
None else could heal all our soul’s diseases. No not one! No not one!
There’s not an hour that He is not near us.
No night so dark but His love can cheer us.
Did ever saint find this friend forsake Him?
Or sinner find that He would not take Him?
Jesus knows all about our struggles, He will guide till the day is done;
There’s not a friend like the lowly Jesus. No, not one! No, not one!
But the issue Jesus addresses here in John 15 is not the fact that He is our friend, but that we are Hisfriends. To be called a friend of Jesus is just about the most amazing thing I can think of. Here is the God of creation, the Lord of the universe, the Alpha and Omega, and He says, “You are my friends.”
There is, however, a condition attached to Jesus’ words. “You are my friends if you do what I command.” These words are easily susceptible of misunderstanding. They are not designed to communicate the notion that so long as you don’t make any false moves, Jesus is your friend, and if you mess up He’s out of here! That’s the farthest thing from the picture of the unconditional love of Christ that we find throughout the NT. Had Jesus said, “I am your friend if you do what I command,” that would be conditional love. But when He says, “You are my friends if you do what I command,” the condition is not attached to His love and friendship but to ours. He is always our friend; we are not always His. Only when we are obedient to Him do we show ourselves to be His friends.
Now there’s something else attached to this friendship issue. Look at verse 15: “I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you.” The best way to evaluate the level of friendship you have with another person is simply to ask, “What am I willing to share with that person?” The degree to which you are willing to communicate is the degree of your friendship.
In the OT God’s people, with rare exception, had a relationship to God that was more like a servant/master relationship. Yes, Abraham is called “the friend of God” and David is called “a man after God’s own heart.” But by and large there was a certain distance established between God and His people, and He let them in only on essential truths. But Jesus changed all that. He treated His disciples as intimate friends, not as servants, and He opened all of God’s truth to them. That’s the kind of love He showed.
We have been loved by a love that is to be imitated in our lives. (17) Look at verse 12: “My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you.” And again in verse 17: “This is my command: Love each other.” The love of Christ for us is not offered merely as a theological fact or a quality to be admired or even a truth to be enjoyed. It is all those things but far more: it is an attitude and a course of action that is to characterize our lives in the Church. Are you getting a little tired of hearing this? We saw it twice in chapter 13, twice in chapter 15, and it will come up many times more in this Gospel. Why? Because we need to hear it again and again until we get it.
Now so far this morning we have talked about the fact that Christians have experienced the greatest love there is. But immediately John rolls out the black background against which this diamond of love is contrasted.
Christians have also experienced the greatest hate there is. (15:18-16:4)
American pastors and evangelists have not always been honest about this issue. We have a tendency to proclaim the love of God, the peace and happiness that is available to the believer, plus all the advantages of Christianity over other world views. Some have gone so far as to promise health and wealth to the faithful. And frankly, the only reason such a Gospel has been accepted is that we happen to live in the wealthiest, healthiest nation in the world and have experienced the least persecution of any people in the history of the world.
But friends, the prosperity Gospel doesn’t have too many followers in Bangladesh or Somalia or Sudan. The Gospel Jesus and the Apostles taught included a strong dose of the cost of discipleship and a promise of persecution for those who are faithful. Consider Matt. 5:10-12, 1 Peter 3:12-14, 2 Cor. 11:22-33, I2Tim. 3:12, Phil. 1:29, 1 Thess. 3:3,4. This theme is everywhere, but nowhere is it clearer than here in John 15, beginning in verse 18.
“If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first. 19 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. 20 Remember what I told you: ‘A servant is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will persecute you also. If they obeyed my teaching, they will obey yours also. 21 They will treat you this way because of my name, for they do not know the one who sent me. 22 If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not be guilty of sin; but now they have no excuse for their sin. 23 Whoever hates me hates my Father as well. 24 If I had not done among them the works no one else did, they would not be guilty of sin. As it is, they have seen, 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.’
26 “When the Advocate comes, whom I will send to you from the Father—the Spirit of truth who goes out from the Father—he will testify about me. 27 And you also must testify, for you have been with me from the beginning.
All this I have told you so that you will not fall away. 2 They will put you out of the synagogue; in fact, the time is coming when anyone who kills you will think they are offering a service to God. 3 They will do such things because they have not known the Father or me. 4 I have told you this, so that when their time comes you will remember that I warned you about them. I did not tell you this from the beginning because I was with you,
Whereas earlier in our chapter Jesus spoke of privileges, He now promises persecution. Earlier He exhorted His followers to love, now He warns of the world’s hate. Earlier He spoke of friends, now He speaks of enemies. And in the process, He tells us three primary truths, the first of which is that …
The hate of the world should not surprise us.
Jesus experienced it first, and He is greater than we are. (18, 20) “If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first.” He is not asking us to endure anything that He didn’t endure first or to a greater degree. He blazed the trail when it comes to experiencing hatred, so why should we expect that our lives would be any easier than our Savior’s? Since masters have always lived better and more comfortably than their servants, why should we expect to live healthy and wealthy and long, when our master experienced none of that?
A second reason why we should not be surprised at the world’s hate is the very fact that Jesus warned us so clearly.
Jesus has warned us in advance so we would be prepared. (16:1-4) To be forewarned is to be forearmed. That’s the message of chapter 16, the first 4 verses. Jesus doesn’t want us to be caught off guard with starry-eyed optimism. Still, I am amazed at what slow learners we are! We are shocked at some of the ways in which the Enemy is attacking us, but they are the very areas in which we have been warned. Let me read just a few verses from 1 Timothy and tell me if this isn’t prophetic:
“The Spirit clearly says that in later times some will abandon the faith and follow deceiving spirits and things taught by demons. Such teachings come through hypocritical liars, whose consciences have been seared as with a hot iron. They forbid people to marry and order them to abstain from certain foods, which God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and who know the truth.” (1 Tim. 4:1-3)
Frankly I think the strong move today to treat marriage as unnecessary will eventually lead to a frontal assault on marriage as an institution. And the radical animal rights people will try to do to the beef industry what they have done to the fur industry. They won’t be satisfied until vegetarianism is law. But the passage goes on:
“But mark this: There will be terrible times in the last days. People will be lovers of themselves (narcissists), lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God—having a form of godliness but denying its power. Have nothing to do with them.”
One thing we cannot say is that we have not been warned. The hate of the world should not surprise us. But secondly,
The hate of the world should not discourage us either.
1. It occurs because we don’t fit in. (19) Verse 19 tells us, “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.” This is good news. The very hate of the world is proof that we have a different citizenship. A song we used to sing when I was a boy went like this:
“This world is not my home, I’m just a passin’ through.
My treasures are laid up somewhere beyond the blue.
The angels beckon me from Heaven’s open door,
And I can’t feel at home in this world anymore.”
I’m not sure too many Christians could sing that today, and maybe that’s why I couldn’t find it in any modern hymnbook (besides the fact that the music and lyrics would make a country music lover blush). This world is our home, and we act like we have taken out a permanent lease. Our treasures are laid up at Boatmen’s and we are satisfied to keep the angels at bay until we have enjoyed everything there is to enjoy of the good life right here. Right? We should actually be discouraged if the world does not hate us; that should be cause for concern. It would tell us that the world considers us either safe or irrelevant.
2. It occurs because we are identified with Jesus. (21). Look at verse 21: “They will treat you this way because of my name, for they do not know the One who sent me.” Friends, the name of Jesus is precious to us but it is hated by the world. No other person in the history of the world has engendered the kind of hate the name of Jesus engenders. The world doesn’t hate Buddha or Confucius or Mohammed or Joseph Smith. But Jesus is feared, and Jesus is hated. We see it around the world. In Egypt Christians are routinely jailed and tortured. In Indonesia the same is true. In Israel Jewish people from all over the world are encouraged to immigrate, and it doesn’t matter what faith they are—orthodox, reformed, conservative, agnostic, atheist, Buddhist—It doesn’t matter, butthey cannot believe in Jesus. They will be immediately deported.
But we don’t have to go overseas for examples of the world’s hatred toward those who are identified with Jesus. I feel compelled this morning to make a few comments that might be considered political by some, but so be it. You know, I went for years without ever addressing political or social issues from the pulpit, except as they were directly addressed in Scripture. But lately I have felt compelled to blow a whistle in the ear of a sleeping giant, namely the Church. There are a lot of apathetic Christians who seem to believe that the freedoms and liberties they have always enjoyed are somehow guaranteed just because they are in the Constitution.
It is my view that Bible-believing Christians have experienced the hate of the world to a greater extent here in the past six months than in any time in the history of our nation. The hate I am talking about has not yet resulted in physical persecution, but it is very real, nevertheless. President Clinton, apparently having decided that political and religious conservatives are a hopelessly lost constituency, has decided to make his entire appeal to the extreme segment of the Democratic party. Frankly, that may be good politics for someone in his shoes, but I’m certain it’s not good for our country. Our President has kept virtually every promise he made to the liberal lunatic fringe and almost none that he made to the rest of us.
But perhaps the worst result of all this is that the liberal lunatic fringe has been emboldened to push their ungodly agendas on abortion, homosexuality, anti-family policies, and political correctness. It’s like they are desperate to make all the hay possible during what they fear may be a one-term presidency. Bible-believing Christians are being vilified in the news media, in entertainment, and by public officials.
One of the books which really should be “must reading” for every Christian is Don Federer’s, A Jewish Conservative Looks at Pagan America. Listen to his observations, and remember that this is a Jewish person writing:
“Christians are the only group Hollywood can offend with impunity, the only creed it actually goes out of its way to insult…. The tenets of Christianity are regularly held up to ridicule…. These defamatory portrayals betray a deep-seated hostility…. The stereotypical image of conservative Christians portrayed by media is that they are by-and-large ignorant, superstitious, bigoted and fanatical.” [i]
What troubles me even more than what is happening on the national political scene or in Hollywood or in the media is what is happening in our public schools. For the past nine months a group of parents, including a number from our own church, have been trying desperately to get the Parkway School Board to approve an alternative Family Life Curriculum so that their students do not have to sit under teachers whose attitude toward human sexuality is casual and permissive, who treat the sex act like every other bodily function, and who take all the mystery and sacredness away from what is surely one of the greatest joys of life, when properly used, and surely one of its greatest curses, when improperly used. These parents have not asked for anything bizarre; they are not trying to withhold medical or factual information students need to grow up; nor are they Neanderthals, wanting to regress to proverbial Victorian prudishness.
Yet what they have requested has been roundly rejected, not because it will put a strain on the budget, nor because it will negatively impact any student or parent who wants to continue with the present curriculum, but simply because certain people have convinced the Board that the alternative Family Life Curriculum is part of a national plot by fundamentalists from the religious right to seize control of the public schools. Once an alternative sex ed curriculum is approved, the fear seems to be that they will target creationism, then prayer in the schools, and eventually pictures of Jesus will have to grace every classroom. One of the key speakers before the school board on May 20 claimed that abstinence until marriage is a religious position and since religion has been removed from the public schools by the Supreme Court, we cannot allow an alternative curriculum that directs students toward abstinence.
Where are we, friends, when teaching abstinence is viewed as a dangerous religious intrusion that is harmful to the lives of high school students? The only way I can understand this is to see it as part of the package Jesus warns us about here in John 15: “They will do such things because they have not known the Father or me.” Particularly apropos is Jesus’ observation that a time is coming when the persecutors of His followers will think they are offering a service to God. One of the really amazing things about the Parkway School Board meeting on May 20 was that a number of individuals who spoke, urging the Board not to offer the alternative curriculum that Christian parents were seeking, prefaced their remarks by identifying themselves as religious. “I’m so-and-so and I’m a Baptist,” or “I’m so-and-so and I’m a Methodist.” It’s as though they were trying to make the point that their very religious convictions demanded that they oppose a lifestyle that expects abstinence before marriage.
The hate of the world, friends, is very real. It should not surprise us, nor should it discourage us, but it is certainly something with which we must deal. One of these days we’d better wake up to the fact that we are fighting for the very existence of Judeo-Christian ethics, as we have known them.
The hate of the world should always be “without reason.” (25). There’s a very important phrase at the end of verse 25. Jesus says the hatred of the world is “to fulfill what is written in their Law: ‘They hated me without reason.'” The phrase “without reason” means “without cause, groundless, unfair, without any justification.” Jesus never did anything to earn or justify the hatred of the world. He was not arrogant; He was not selfish; He was not mean; He was not hypocritical. His righteous living was enough to generate their hatred.
I came across an interesting story about Aristides of Athens. Aristides lived during Athens’ great golden era and was an outstanding man. He was called Aristides the Just. Yet he was banished from the city of Athens. Why? Well, afterward, when one of the citizens was asked why he had voted for Aristides’ banishment, he answered, “Because I am tired of hearing him always called the Just.” It reminds me too of something Plato wrote centuries before John’s Gospel. Though not a Christian he said prophetically that “if a truly righteous man ever appeared on earth, he would be scourged, imprisoned, and hanged!”
You see, when Jesus came, He revealed human sin for what it is, and people don’t like the exposure. Isn’t that what verse 22 says? “If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not be guilty of sin. Now, however, they have no excuse for their sin.” Then two verses later He says essentially the same thing about His works: “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.” Jesus was persecuted, not for any sin or shortcoming but because His righteous message and His righteous works removed the excuse people sought for their sin.
Now let me apply this principle to our lives. If Jesus never did anything to earn or justify the hatred of the world, neither should we. Frankly, we can stir up a lot of hatred through our stupidity and our ignorance. We must be sure that we are not giving the world unnecessary cause to hate us.
Well, we have seen that Christians have experienced the greatest love there is and the greatest hate there is. Thirdly, I want us to understand the critical truth that …
The greatest love is sufficient to overcome the greatest hate.
Three brief points are made in this regard from our passage.
We must remain in Christ’s love (by obedience). (9) “As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. If you obey my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have obeyed my Father’s commands and remain in his love.” Obedience is the proof of discipleship. It is absurd for anyone to claim Christ as Lord while he routinely violates Jesus’ teachings. But we see it all the time.
By the way, there are many people who excuse themselves from obedience by suggesting that God’s commands are extremely limiting and grievous, and they need to be reinterpreted to fit modern society. I think that’s why Jesus adds in verse 11: “I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete.” True human happiness and joy is found only in obeying God’s will.
We must love one another. (12, 17) Twice in our chapter (verses 12 and 17) Jesus commands us to “love each other.” The greatest love will not overcome the greatest hate if Christians refuse to love one another. Remember what chapter 13 said in this regard? “As I have loved you, so you must love one another. by this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” Some will not only know it; they will want to become disciples themselves.
We must testify of God’s love to a hateful world. (26-27) Look at verses 26 and 27: “When the Counselor comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who goes out from the Father, he will testify about me. And you also must testify, for you have been with me from the beginning.” Though this is written primarily to Jesus’ disciples to describe the work of the Holy Spirit in helping them write the NT, I believe there is an application here to us as well. As we remain in Christ’s love by obedience and as we demonstrate that love to one another, we must testify of that love to a dying, hurting world, not in our own power but in the power of the Holy Spirit, our counselor, our advocate, our lawyer. The content of our testimony should be Jesus—not history, not biography, not politics, not social commentary—but Jesus and His incredible love as revealed at Calvary. Real love is the one thing the world cannot duplicate and is the one argument the world cannot answer.
Conclusion: At nearly every service here at First Free I strive to make the Gospel clear. I urge people to respond to the love of Christ that sent Him to the Cross to die for us, a love described here in John 15 in these words: “Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.” But I would be dishonest were I not to admit that there is a cross that goes with that love—not only a cross for Jesus but also a cross for us. Discipleship is costly, sometimes very costly. Jesus is looking for a committed band of dedicated followers, not a haphazard group of spiritual freeloaders.
When Garibaldi laid siege to Rome in 1849, he appealed for recruits in these terms: “I offer neither pay, nor quarters, nor provisions; I offer hunger, thirst, forced marches, battles and death. Let him who loves his country in his heart, and not with his lips only, follow me.” [ii] And they did by the thousands.
I invite you today to respond to Christ’s incomparable love but also to accept the fact that if you do, the world will hate you.
DATE: May 30, 1993
Tags:
Love
Hate
Friends
Culture
[i] Don Federer, A Jewish Conservative Looks at Pagan America.
[ii] Garibaldi, https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/giuseppe_garibaldi_205832