Bible Study series: John 15:11-25. Strong contrast in these verses. Be friends with Christ, and the world will hate you. Some Christians are persecuted and even executed around the globe because of their friendship with the resurrected Jesus.
Friendly greetings and a warm welcome to this Bible study! I write to learn, so let’s learn together how to apply these truths to our lives.
I also translate to learn. The translations are mine, unless otherwise noted. If you would like to see many others, please click here:
For the Greek text, click here:
At that link, I provide a lot more commentary.
In this post, links are provided for further study.
Let’s begin.
Scripture: John 15:11-25
11 I have spoken these things to you so that my joy may be in you and your joy may be complete. 12 This is my commandment: that you love one another just as I have loved you. 13 No one has greater love than this: that someone would lay down his life for his friends. 14 You are my friends if you do what I command you. 15 No longer do I call you slaves, because a slave does not know what his master is doing. But I have called you friends because everything I have heard from my Father I have made known to you. 16 You have not chosen me, but I have chosen you and I have appointed you so that you should go produce fruit, and your fruit would remain, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name he would give to you. 17 I command you these things: that you would love one another.
18 If the world hates you, know that it hated me before you. 19 If you were of the world, the world would love its own, but because you are not of the world, but instead I have chosen you out of the world, and because of this the world hates you. 20 Remember the statement which I said to you, ‘The servant is not greater than his master.’ If they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you. If they have kept my message, and they will keep yours too. 21 However, they will do all these things to you because of my name, because they do not know the one who sent me. 22 If I had not come and spoken to them, they would have no sin. Yet now they have no excuse for their sin. 23 The one hating me also hates my Father. 24 If I had not done the works among them which no one else has done, they would not have sin. But now they have seen and have hated both me and my Father. 25 However, in order for the message in their law may be fulfilled, it is written, ‘They hated me without a cause.’ [Ps. 35:19; 69:4] (John 15:11-25)
Comments:
11:
Jesus says here in vv. 10 and 11 that he gives us his love and joy. In John 14:27 he said that he bequeaths us his peace. The goal of Jesus’s words is to chase away the concern and anxiety about Jesus’s imminent departure.
12-14:
The Lord had said we have his love (v. 8). Now we transmit the love to each other. As Jesus has loved the disciples, they should love each other. But how deep does this love go? It goes all the way to laying down their lives for their friends. If we set Rom. 5:8-10, which says God loved his enemies and Christ died for them, against this passage here in John we miss the point of both passages. Jesus speaks in an intimate setting is about to lay down his life for his friends, his disciples, while Paul was talking about the call of salvation to the whole world, even when the world was God’s enemies.
We are his friends if we do what he commands us to do. Once again, love must demonstrate obedience. This fact takes love out of a gooey feeling, an overworked emotional response. Love does. Love acts.
15:
In a household, a slave does not share in the intimate goings on of the family. He stands outside and waits for orders. He serves the family. A fifty-year-old slave even has fewer privileges than a five-year-old son, ultimately. The master does not have to explain why he says, “Do this!” Or “Lay down your life!” Now Jesus invites the disciples into the Father-Son relationship, so they are no longer called slaves. He revealed everything there is to know about joy, peace and love and his impending death. But they do not know everything yet (16:12), but he has lifted their aim and expanded their horizon.
16-17:
In John 2 and 3 Jesus called the disciples, and he called rest of the twelve, whose earlier stories were not recorded. He chose them; they did not choose him. We should be careful about over-applying these verses to the entire doctrine of salvation. Jesus simply chose his disciples, and they decided to follow them. “It was common practice for a disciple to choose the rabbi under whom he wished to study. Not so in the case of Jesus’s disciples … In spiritual matters the initiative is always God’s. Our activity is a response to his prior action. The election spoken here was not to eternal life but to fruit bearing. They were chosen and appointed ‘to go and bear fruit.’” (Mounce, comment on v. 16).
I like how Jesus says to go and produce fruit. Fruit is produced in the going. A disciple who hibernates has shall inferior fruit, not tested by stormy weather.
He appointed them to produce fruit, which will happen at Pentecost., when the disciples were filled with the Spirit, and then they evangelized and spread out, eventually, to their known world. When the disciples remain in Christ, their fruit will remain. Remember the fruit is both good character and good works.
In v. 7, Jesus promised answers to prayer if the disciples remain in him and his words were to remain in them. Here we have the same promise from another angle. When their fruit remains, then the Father will see good character in his Son’s disciples and gladly answer prayers that flow out of this ripe and nutritious fruit. The deeper and better the character and good works, the more likely the disciples will see their prayers answered. These disciples will be mature, so the Father can trust them with his answered prayer.
The commandment is to love one another. A subset of the commandment to love is to obey commandments (plural), so grace teachers should not misinterpret this one command and claim that all the commandments are actually reduced to this one commandment to love. Remember the Great Commission:
19 Therefore, as you go, make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 teaching them to observe everything that I commanded you. (Matt. 28:19-20)
The disciples are to teach people everything he commanded them, as seen for example in the Sermon on the Mount.
Yet, if the one commandment to love is followed, then the other commandments will be easier. Love summarizes the entire law. So Jesus wraps us this section with the renewal of the command to love one another.
“name”: Believing in his name means to believe in him, his person, his character, and his being—who he is, the Lord, the Son of God and the Messiah. The noun name stands in for the person—a living, real person. Remember that believing in his name is more than just intellectual assent or agreement with a doctrine. Belief has to go from the head to the heart (1:6-8), or so says the entirety of the Gospel of John. Pray confidently in the name of Jesus.
18-21:
These verses remind me of a clause in 13:1: “And having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.” That context was humble service. Here the statement comes in the context of persecution. Jesus humbly washed his disciples’ feet in John 13, and he has been hounded by the Jerusalem establishment. Jesus changes from his deep love for his disciples, and the commandment that they should love one another to the world’s hatred of them.
But why the hatred? First, the name of Jesus provoked opposition that crossed over into hatred among the Jerusalem establishment and many ordinary Jews. A name stands in for the person and his work.
We are his ambassadors who stand in for his name (2 Cor. 5:20). The good news is that he did not leave you without power and authority. He gave you the power and authority of his Son Jesus. Now you represent him in his name—his person, power and authority. Therefore under his authority we have his full authority to preach the gospel and set people free from bondages and satanic spirits and heal them of diseases.
Let’s get back to the question: Why the hatred? The followers of Jesus have been chosen out of the world, so they behave differently. They do not participate in all the worldly paganism and temple processions and religious festivals honoring this or that Greek deity in the Greco-Roman world. And they even no longer participate in Judaism. The break from the synagogue was widening by the time John wrote. Paul had a special call to go into the synagogue and preach Jesus (many references in Acts), because the message about the Messiah was still new. But after the destruction of the temple when John wrote, the Jewish synagogue had become better informed. Now hostility emerge. And let’s not sugarcoat what happened to Paul either. Jewish opposition became intense. Jesus had predicted that synagogue rulers would drag the converts to the Jesus Movement into court and flog and even worse, kill them.
As a matter of fact, the entire pericope here (pronounced puh-RIH-koh-pea) or unit or section of Scripture reminds me of this passage in Matt. 10:17-23:
17 Be on your guard against people, for they shall betray you to their councils, and in their synagogues they shall flog you. 18 You shall be brought before governors and kings because of my name, for a testimony to them and the Gentiles. 19 When they betray you, do not be anxious how and what you might speak, for it shall be given you at that moment what should you should speak, 20 for you are not the ones speaking; instead the Spirit of your Father is the one speaking in you.
21 Brother shall betray brother to death and a father a son, and children shall rise in rebellion against parents and put them to death. 22 Moreover, you shall be hated by everyone because of my name, but the one who endures to the end—this one shall be saved. 23 When they persecute you in this town, flee to another. (Matt. 10:17-23)
So here in Matthew’s Gospel, this hatred resulted in active persecution (v. 21). The original statement was spoken in 13:16: “I tell you the firm truth: A servant is not greater than his master, nor is the one who is sent greater than the one who sent him.” So they have first persecuted Jesus, and since he is greater than his disciples, the opposition will persecute them too. Jesus and the Father are one (10:30). Therefore, if the opposition hates and persecutes Jesus, they hate the Father—and persecute the Father through his perfectly united Son. It is a persecution through the one whom the Father has sent. Call it an intermediary persecution of the Father.
These verses in Matthew’s Gospel are relevant:
24 A disciple is not above the teacher, nor is the servant above his master. 25 It is sufficient for the disciple to be like his teacher and the servant like his master. If they have called the master of the household Beelzebul, even more so his household members!” (Matt. 10:24-25)
Calling Jesus such a bad name is a form of persecution.
But Jesus also has a positive message. If they have kept his word or message, they will keep the apostles’ message. Jesus is commissioning the disciples here. But they must be sure to preach his message. Let’s remember that thousands of Jerusalem and Judean Jews did convert after the ascension (Acts 2:41; 4:4; 6:7 [large number of priests]; 21:20).
22-25:
In v. 25, the Law stands in for the whole Hebrew Bible (Old Testament).
Now we come to an interesting part of Scripture. What does it mean that the opponents of Jesus do not “have sin”? This does not mean that they have been sinless, but it is best to interpret it to mean they would not have incurred sin, if he had not come and speak. But since he did speak to them his message, and they said no, they have incurred sin. In other words, their opposition to him was sin itself, and they stand guilty of sin and are without excuse.
“The true source and authority for the evaluation and condemnation of sin was not the law of Moses, but the law of Christ” (Klink, comment on v. 22).
As we just noted in the previous pericope, the Father and Jesus are one (10:30), so whoever hates Jesus hates his Father also. Extra-devout Jews and Muslims who are counter-missionaries (oppose gospel outreach to them) believe they are doing God a great service by persecuting Christians, but they really oppose God and his Son, who was the fullest and clearest revelation of the Father. Therefore, without Jesus, Jews and Muslim are deprived of the fullest and clearest knowledge of who God truly is. They act of out zealous ignorance which can sometimes turn deadly.
“So tightly is Jesus bound up with his Father, both in his person (1:1, 18; 8:58; 20:28) and in his words and deeds (5:19-30), that every attitude directed toward him is no less directed toward God.. This is profound Christology, attested not only by the flow of the argument but also by the almost incidental ‘my Father’ (as opposed to ‘the Father’), accounts for the persecution which Jesus’ followers will face (v. 21)” (Carson, comments on vv. 22-24).
Jesus also did mighty works among the people of his generation, which no else did—not even Elijah did the same things, and his works were mighty, in his generation. Therefore, the Jewish opposition to Jesus was motivated out of irrational hatred. Parallel verse: “Even though he did so many signs in front of them, they did not believe in him” (12:37). Then John 12 goes on to quote Is. 53:1 and 6:10, which say that their eyes were blind even though they thought they could see clearly spiritual things. He spoke indirectly by illustrations, and they did not have as much insight to understand as they believed that they had.
Therefore, there is still a principle that when people have a greater knowledge of God and his light and still walk away, they incur a stronger, severer judgment. People who enjoy the brightest light have the potential to have the greater knowledge of God and stay in the light, enjoy greater privileges.
This passage or pericope reminds me of the passage in Matthew 11:20-24, when Jesus pronounces curses on some important towns he lived in.
20 Then he began to denounce the towns in which most of his miracles were done, because they did not repent. 21 Woe to Chorazin, woe to you Bethsaida! Because if the miracles done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, long ago they would have repented in sackcloth and ashes! 22 However, I tell you it will be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon on the day of judgment than for you! 23 And you Capernaum: Will you be exalted to the heavens? You will go down to Hades! [Is. 14:13, 15] Because if the miracles done in you had been done in Sodom, it would remain to this day! 24 However, I tell you that it shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom on the day judgment than for you!” (Matt. 11:20-24)
There will degrees of punishments and rewards on the last day.
Are There Degrees of Punishment, Rewards after Final Judgment?
GrowApp for John 15:11-25
1. How much joy do you have? Very little? Can you be joyful that you were saved? Read Gal. 5:22-23.
2. Do you see a connection between mature fruit and answered prayer in your life?
3. How are you at loving each other in your church?
4. Have you ever been hated for accepting the gospel of Christ? How did you respond?
RELATED
14. Similarities among John’s Gospel and the Synoptic Gospels
12. Eyewitness Testimony in John’s Gospel
4. Church Fathers and John’s Gospel
3. Archaeology and John’s Gospel
SOURCES
For the bibliography, click on this link and scroll down to the very bottom:
Dr. Jim's Essential Bible Teaching 