Do not be surprised if the world hates you

1 John 3:7-24 from the daily reading in the One Year Bible

Little children, make sure no one deceives you; the one who practices righteousness is righteous, just as He is righteous; ⁸ the one who practices sin is of the devil; for the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The Son of God appeared for this purpose, to destroy the works of the devil. ⁹ No one who has been born of God practices sin, because His seed remains in him; and he cannot sin continually, because he has been born of God. ¹⁰ By this the children of God and the children of the devil are obvious: anyone who does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor the one who does not love his brother and sister.

¹¹ For this is the message which you have heard from the beginning, that we are to love one another; ¹² not as Cain, who was of the evil one and murdered his brother. And for what reason did he murder him? Because his own deeds were evil, but his brother’s were righteous.

¹³ Do not be surprised, brothers and sisters, if the world hates you. ¹⁴ We know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brothers and sisters. The one who does not love remains in death. ¹⁵ Everyone who hates his brother or sister is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life remaining in him. ¹⁶ We know love by this, that He laid down His life for us; and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers and sisters. ¹⁷ But whoever has worldly goods and sees his brother or sister in need, and closes his heart against him, how does the love of God remain in him? ¹⁸ Little children, let’s not love with word or with tongue, but in deed and truth. ¹⁹ We will know by this that we are of the truth, and will set our heart at ease before Him, ²⁰ that if our heart condemns us, that God is greater than our heart, and He knows all things. ²¹ Beloved, if our heart does not condemn us, we have confidence before God; ²² and whatever we ask, we receive from Him, because we keep His commandments and do the things that are pleasing in His sight.

²³ This is His commandment, that we believe in the name of His Son Jesus Christ, and love one another, just as He commanded us. ²⁴ The one who keeps His commandments remains in Him, and He in him. We know by this that He remains in us, by the Spirit whom He has given us.

Today’s text says: Little children, make sure no one deceives you; the one who practices righteousness is righteous, just as He is righteous; The one who practices sin is of the devil; for the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The Son of God appeared for this purpose, to destroy the works of the devil. No one who has been born of God practices sin, because His seed remains in him; and he cannot sin continually, because he has been born of God. By this the children of God and the children of the devil are obvious: anyone who does not practice righteousness is not of God. Romans 3:23 says: All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. In Romans 7:18-25 Paul describes the struggle that we all have with sin and righteousness saying: I know that good does not dwell in me, that is, in my flesh; for the willing is present in me, but the doing of the good is not. For the good that I want, I do not do, but I practice the very evil that I do not want. But if I do the very thing I do not want, I am no longer the one doing it, but sin that dwells in me. I find then the principle that evil is present in me, the one who wants to do good. For I joyfully agree with the law of God in the inner person, but I see a different law in the parts of my body waging war against the law of my mind, and making me a prisoner of the law of sin, the law which is in my body’s parts. Wretched man that I am! Who will set me free from the body of this death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! 2 Corinthians 5:21 says: He made Him who knew no sin to be sin in our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him. It is only through Christ that we are delivered from sin and only in Him are we able to practice righteousness. As we saw previously to practice is defined as: repeated exercise in or performance of an activity or skill so as to acquire or maintain proficiency in it. We need to practice submission and obedience to Christ so that we can acquire and maintain His righteousness.

The text says: Do not be surprised, brothers and sisters, if the world hates you.  Yet, we are surprised that the more we practice righteousness, the more the world hates us. It is not really us that they hate though. It is His righteousness in us. In John 3:19-21 Jesus says: “Light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the Light; for their deeds were evil. For everyone who does evil hates the Light, and does not come to the Light, so that his deeds will not be exposed. But the one who practices the truth comes to the Light, so that his deeds will be revealed as having been performed in God.” It is the light of Christ shining in us and through us that those in darkness hate. In John 15:18-25 Jesus says: “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 you as 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. Remember the word that I said to you, ‘A slave is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted Me, they will persecute you as well; if they followed My word, they will follow yours also. But all these things they will do to you on account of My name, because they do not know the One who sent Me. If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not have sin; but now they have no excuse for their sin. The one who hates Me hates My Father also. If I had not done among them the works which no one else did, they would not have sin; but now they have both seen and hated Me and My Father as well. But this has happened so that the word that is written in their Law will be fulfilled: ‘They hated Me for no reason.’”  They hated Jesus for no reason. If we would be hated by the world, may the reason be that they see His righteousness in us.

How should we respond to the world’s hatred? Romans 12:21 says: Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. The text says: We know love by this, that He laid down His life for us; and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers and sisters… Little children, let’s not love with word or with tongue, but in deed and truth… This is His commandment, that we believe in the name of His Son Jesus Christ, and love one another, just as He commanded us. The one who keeps His commandments remains in Him, and He in him. We know by this that He remains in us, by the Spirit whom He has given us. Amen.