Jewish traditions were considered the
rule of law by the spiritual authority of Israel in Jesus’ day. Jesus came to
fulfill the Law, not the rabbinical interpretations of the Law (Mt 5:17, 18).
Did Jesus, the Sabbath-Maker, violate His own Sabbath? No. Did Jesus ever claim
equality with God? Yes. The miracles He did were the proof He was Israel’s true
Messiah (Jn 5:36; 10:25; 14:11; 15:24); the miracles distinguished Him from all
the false messiahs that had come before Him and after Him to this very day. He
still is Israel’s true Messiah; they just don’t know it yet.
The Jewish ruling authority hated Jesus
and sought to kill Him over those two very things: violating the Sabbath by
performing miracles on the Sabbath. (Lk 6:9-11; Jn 9:14, 16) and making claims
of Deity or equality with God the Father (Jn 5:18; 10:30-33). Jesus quoted Psa
69:4 to His disciples that He was hated “without a cause” (Jn 15:25). The
hatred effect was unjustified, without purpose, undeserved because there was no
reason for the hatred then and now. Read this connection we have with Jesus concerning
the hatred of the world,
(Jn 15:18) If
the world hates you, you know that it hated Me before it hated you.
(Jn 15:19)
If you were of the world, the world would love its own. Yet because you are not
of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you.
(1 Jn 3:13,
emphasis mine) Do not marvel [wonder], my brethren, if the world hates you.
Every born-again believer shares in the
principle, “As goes the Master so goes the servant.” Our Master was not silent
in words or deeds. Jesus was in the will of God the Father at every turn (cf. Jn 4:34; 6:38; 8:29). It was in the will of God that undeserved hatred found an object in Jesus
by His words and deeds. It is one thing to have Jesus living within our hearts;
it is quite another thing to be obedient in knowing and doing the will of God for our
lives out of love (agape) for Him. Failure to obey is simply a love
problem (Jn 14:15).
We cannot claim to love God and say or do nothing for Him. Jesus didn’t do His
own thing on earth, and neither can we if we are to be like Christ and walk in
the light as He is in the light.
The will of
God for every believer is never continual silence and inaction but words and
deeds fleshed out according to Scripture in our lives day after day. It is those
words and deeds in the will of God that make us a target of hatred without
grounds. Listen to someone who knows a thing or two about being persecuted
unfairly for the faith (2 Cor 11:24-28),
“Yes, and all who desire to live godly in Christ
Jesus will suffer persecution” (2 Tim 3:12, emphasis mine).
The Apostle Paul
was telling Timothy to expect persecution and suffering at the hands of the God-haters.
Whatever flak we receive in performing the will of God is undeserved to be sure.
The world will see it as a reason to persecute; God does not share in the
opinion of those in darkness.
“Hypocrites” was the word leveled at the
Pharisees by Jesus (Mt 6:2, 5, 16). The Pharisees and Sadducees represented a
religion void of hope by rejecting Jesus as their Messiah and continually nullifying
the Word of God by their interpretations of the Law. Jesus offered freedom and
life (Jn 8:36; 10:10b); the Sanhedrin offered bondage and death. Both John the
Baptist, the forerunner of Christ, and Jesus referred to the spiritual
leadership of Israel as “a brood of vipers (Mt 3:7; 23:33).
Israel, as a nation, was profoundly destroyed
in 70 A.D. by the Roman general Titus. In May of 1948, Israel became a nation once again! This is truly a marker of end-time events. Today, they are still
looking for the Messiah to return. There were many so-called reasons for Israel
to reject their long-awaited Messiah (Jn 1:11), but this is my theological
explanation behind the unfounded hatred that lead to His crucifixion.
Jesus claimed to be “the light of the
world” (Jn 8:12; 9:5). John stated under inspiration,
“And this is the
condemnation, that the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light (anything God, Jesus in
particular), because their deeds were evil [wicked, attached to a pattern of
life, cf. Jn 7:7]” (Jn 3:19, emphasis and amplification mine).
In Jn 3:20, John
through the Spirit employed a different Greek word for “evil,” meaning “morally
worthless” (The Wycliffe Bible Commentary), and wicked (cf. Jn 5:29), “everyone practicing evil hates the light.”
It is ironic that we find in John's
Gospel his first usage of agapao (“loved”) in the famous John 3:16 passage, and
the very next occurrence of this word in John is found three verses down in v19
where the same verb is used of men that “loved [agapao] darkness [“loved darkness,” egapesan to skotos], rather than light” [amplification mine]. Now, this may or may not come as a shock to you because the verb agapao is not exclusively used of God or
believers under inspiration (2 Tim 3:16; 2 Pet 1:21)!
In John 3, we see Jesus telling
Nicodemus that men loved (agapao)
darkness rather than light (cf. Job 24:13; 1 Jn 1:5). Why? Because their deeds
were evil! They were attached to this lifestyle of wickedness. There are other references associating agapao
with evil men (cf. Lk 11:43; Jn 12:43; 2 Pet 2:15; cf. 1 Jn 2:15, as a man cannot serve two masters, neither can he love God and the world.).
The verb “hates the light” by those
practicing evil in Jn 3:20 is ongoing and points to a negative intensiveness
that cannot even tolerate the light but must rid itself of it as we saw in the
Mark 3:6 passage. Keep this in mind; they hated Jesus without a cause, and all
who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will be hated (2 Tim 3:12).
There is a difference between expressing
(agapao, Jn 3:19, “men loved darkness,”
emphasis mine) and not possessing agape (Jn
5:42b, “that you do not have the love [agape] of God in you”) as genuine
believers do (Rom 5:5). Apparently, unbelievers can express supreme love as in Jn
3:19, but in order for the lost to possess agape
love within the heart (Rom 5:5), salvation must first be experienced,
transforming their darkness (Eph 4:18) into light (Jn 8:12; Eph 5:8; Col 1:13;
1 Pet 2:9).
In the Gospel of John, the verb form (agapao)
is used for God, believers, and ungodly men, but the noun form (agape) is
used only for God and believers in the NT. Consider that the devil transforms
himself into an angel of light to deceive (2 Cor 11:14), but we know that he
has no light within himself.
The verb agapao is the strongest and highest kind of love. Extant secular
records of agape or agapao are scant, but the Holy Spirit during inspiration
selected these words out of koine Greek to be not only descriptive of Divine
love, but also to describe the intensity of unbelievers love of darkness. This
spiritual warfare of light and darkness is powerfully divisive and combative,
the clashing of two supreme loves, one for the light and one for the darkness,
good versus evil, two different spheres of life colliding, et al.
The meaning of agapao and agape is rich
and has many nuances to gleam from the context of its appearances in the NT (agapao, NKJV, 109 and agape, NKJV, 106). The one that
captures, at least in my mind, the best meaning of agape/agapao is sacrificial love, a love that would cause one to
offer up his or her very life for another. There is no greater love than this
(cf. 1 Jn 3:16; Jn 15:12),
“Greater
love [agape]
has no one than this, than to lay down one's life for his friends” (Jn 15:13).
There is an answer on how to address an
unfounded hatred by the world – overcoming evil with good. This was precisely
what Jesus did on the cross! What comes to mind to illustrate this agapao in a secular setting is a soldier
or non-soldier offering his or her life to save another. In my opinion, there is no higher expression of agape. In
John 3:19 the object of agapao,
however, is not saving others from physical harm but a love willing to sacrifice
for spiritual darkness. This doesn’t mean that the lost are always consistent in
expressing agapao for darkness,
depending on how far we go with the comparison, any more than followers of
Christ are consistently showing agapao
toward one another, but it does reveal the intensity of commitment to its
object, and that’s the point.
With the darkness, there is no love for
the moral and spiritual light of the world (Jn 3:21; 8:12). Since light and
darkness cannot mix, neither can a love for the darkness and a love for the
light dwell together; so many believers fail to grasp this fundamental truth
and attempt to straddle both worldviews: light and darkness. It is not only
impossible, but frankly, it is sin (Jn 8:12; Eph 5:8; 1 Jn 1:6; 1 Pet 2:11).
The unbelievers are attracted to the
absence of light (Jn 3:20); followers of Christ are drawn to the light (Jn 3:21).
The object of our love is really a black (darkness) and white (light) issue, not
gray, but therein is the enigma of sin, the
inexplicable choice for darkness over light, hatred over love, which is all
due to unbelief resulting in spiritual blindness (2 Cor 4:4).
It is in that very context of unbelief that hatred is manifested
towards believers (cf. Paul’s statement in 1 Tim 1:13). This hatred by the
world is a choice without a cause.
What a twist of irony that the movement of darkness has no valid reason to
resist the goodness of God that leads to chaos and unexplained behavior and
ultimately to self-destruction.
Rather than questioning why the hatred (No
sane believer likes being hated.), we might be better served to just take Jesus
at His word that it comes with the territory, “If they
persecuted Me, they will also persecute you.” There is no neutrality in spiritual warfare; even in our personal conceptions
of an idyllic or unpleasant setting on earth, the battle rages for the souls of
the lost and against the effectiveness of believers for Christ everywhere, even
where we live.
If we don’t
like the thought of being a target living for Christ (2 Tim 3:12), surely
darkness (a metaphor for the state of sinners) has a better plan of utter
futility, a choice without merit which is the enigmatic nature of sin that
leads to a negative eternity. This is all we know based upon Scripture; the
hatred vented toward God and His children is totally unmerited, and any cause for the hatred that is expressed by the darkness is absolutely irrational given the end
results of light and darkness (cf. Jn 3:19). Apparently, God has given us sufficient
disclosure as to the wonder and the why. <><
(Mt 5:10) Blessed
are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom
of heaven.
(Mt 5:11)
Blessed are you when they revile and persecute you, and say all kinds of evil
against you falsely for My sake.
(Mt 5:12) Rejoice
and be exceedingly glad, for great is your reward in heaven, for so they
persecuted the prophets who were before you.
(Mt 11:6)
And blessed is he who is not offended because of Me.
(Rom 12:21) Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome
evil with good [emphasis mine]. This is our response….
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