The disciples and the world.
Our Lord turns to a new thought—the relation of his disciples to the world.
I. THE SCOPE OF ALL CHRIST'S TEACHING IS TO DEVELOP LOVE. "These things I command you, that ye may love one another."
1. This love is to be the characteristic of the new kingdom, and thus the strong attraction of the gospel.
2. Yet, essentially noble as it is, it will challenge the hostility of a world out of all sympathy with Christ.
II. THE CAUSE OF THE WORLD'S HATRED TO BELIEVERS. "If the world hate you, ye know that it hated me before it hated you."
1. It is a terrible indictment against the Jews that they should represent in their relations to Christ the overt hatred of" the world."
2. The hatred in question is a proof of the union between Christ and his disciples. He is the Head, they are the members of the persecuted body.
3. The thought of this union ought to strengthen the disciples in view of the world's hatred.
4. The principle of this hatred. "If ye were of the world, the world would love its own."
5. The world's hatred traced to its true source. "But all these things will they do unto you for my Name's sake, because they know not him that sent me."
III. THE RESPONSIBILITY OF THE WORLD FOR ITS HATRED. It had no excuse for its hostility.
1. There was the testimony of Christ's teaching, making the Father known, which would judge the world. "If I had not come and spoken to them, they had not had sin: but now they have no excuse for their sin."
2. There was the testimony of his miracles. "If I had not done among them the works which none other man did, they had not had sin: but now have they both seen and hated me and my Father."
IV. THE NEW POWER THAT IS TO SUSTAIN THE DISCIPLES IN THEIR CONFLICT WITH THE WORLD—THE HOLY GHOST.
1. The mission of the Comforter. "But when the Comforter is come, whom I will send unto you from the Father, the Spirit of truth, who proceedeth from the Father, he shall testify of me."
(a) He proceeds eternally from the Father. His witness, therefore, will be that of the Father himself.
(b) He will be sent by the Son. This implies the approaching departure of Christ to another world.
(c) He possesses, communicates, and applies the truth; for he is the Spirit of Truth.
(a) To the apostles, who will thenceforth understand the truth;
(b) to the world, in the dispersion of its darkness, in the new light thrown upon the Person and work of Christ, and in all the blessings of an understood gospel. "He witnesseth with our spirits that we are the children of God" (Romans 8:16).
2. The testimony of the apostles themselves. "And ye also shall bear witness, because ye have been with me from the beginning."
HOMILIES BY J.R. THOMSON