“If the world hates you, you know that it has hated Me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, because of this the world hates you.” ~John 15:18-19
Ever wonder why life is so hard sometimes? The message of “prosperity gospel” make logical sense sometimes, until you actually open the Bible. Worldly Christianity likes to tell us that if we love God, give our money, have enough faith, then God will bless us. If bad happens, it must be because we don’t trust enough.
That’s bogus and this verse tells us why.
The world hates Christians and it hated Jesus first.
That part doesn’t make logical sense, but we know it’s true. How can something hate its creator? When sin entered the world back in Genesis 3, the world flipped upside down. Jesus came to flip it back upright.
In the last few months God has been gently teaching me about this. As an academic, it’s easy to study things in a theoretical sense and keep my nose in the books without ever seeing it play out in real life. This is one that God is opening my eyes to more and more.
It takes a lot of hatred for something to hate the one who made it. Hate is a strong word. It’s not just a general dislike or an “I prefer something else.” Hatred is intentional, directional, and active.
When sin entered the world in Genesis 3, theologians like to talk to about how we gained a “sin nature” within ourselves. Another way to say it is that we are “fallen beings.” But just how fallen are we? I’ve always philosophized this and left it as “we have an inclination toward sin that wasn’t there before.”
But what if there’s more? If it’s just an inclination toward sin, that makes our relationship to God not a whole lot different than a rebellious teenager, not a hatred tyrant.
What if every cell of our being is now fallen? We know that creation was forever changed – Adam was given the punishment of *hard* work where his work as a gardener was previously easy. God changed the vegetation and the ground to make us have to work for our food (and even those of us not in farming still have to work hard at our jobs in order to earn money to buy the food that the farmers work hard to produce).
What if every bit of us is now turned away from God? It makes it possible for things like disabilities, disease, and death. And it means that those things are NOT a result of sin but rather the simple fact that we were born after Adam.
In our fallen state, we make God’s job harder. But I think He likes that. John 9 talks about a man who was born blind. The pharisees ask who sinned, the man or his parents. Jesus tells them that no one sinned, but that he was born that way so God can show His glory.
God wants to show off through you. Our struggles are not a result of sin, or anything else, but simply the fact that we’re human. But God wants to show off through those struggles.
The world hates its Savior simply because it is so fallen that it does not know it’s missing. Ephesians 2 tells us that Christ saves us. Without Him initiating, we blindly follow the “prince of the world.”
Only God can save us. He wants to show off who He is through our struggles. And what a blessing it is that it’s His job, not ours.