Following the Lord means facing similar opposition.

What would bring a person to the point where they say ‘I hate you’? Why did they say this about Jesus who only did good and was gracious? In this passage we find Jesus telling his disciples not to be surprised at opposition because he had already predicted it. Here he says ‘If they persecuted me, they will persecute you also’.

In the West the church has been blended with the state and has entered a ‘marriage’ which has weakened the witness of God’s people. It was not always like that. Opposition invariably happens when the church is faithfully following Jesus. Western churches have also become divided in their commitment to Jesus Christ. Luke-warmness is the result of worldliness.

People outside the church, however, have no excuse for hating Jesus’ disciples because Jesus has come and spoken to them. Rejecting Jesus is the same as rejecting God. Their opposition fulfills God’s word which says ‘They hated me without reason.’ The irony is though that the chief instrument of Jesus sufferings, the cross, which his persecutors thought would destroy him, became the very means of his peoples’ salvation.