Yohanes 14:18

14:18 “I will not abandon ¹  you as orphans, ²  I will come to you. ³ 

Yohanes 15:18-19

The World’s Hatred

15:18 “If the world hates you, be aware ⁴  that it hated me first. ⁵  15:19 If you belonged to the world, ⁶  the world would love you as its own. ⁷  However, because you do not belong to the world, ⁸  but I chose you out of the world, for this reason ⁹  the world hates you. ¹⁰ 

[14:18]  ¹ tn Or “leave.”

[14:18]  ² tn The entire phrase “abandon you as orphans” could be understood as an idiom meaning, “leave you helpless.”

[14:18]  ³ sn I will come to you. Jesus had spoken in 14:3 of going away and coming again to his disciples. There the reference was both to the parousia (the second coming of Christ) and to the postresurrection appearances of Jesus to the disciples. Here the postresurrection appearances are primarily in view, since Jesus speaks of the disciples “seeing” him after the world can “see” him no longer in the following verse. But many commentators have taken v. 18 as a reference to the coming of the Spirit, since this has been the topic of the preceding verses. Still, vv. 19-20 appear to contain references to Jesus’ appearances to the disciples after his resurrection. It may well be that another Johannine double meaning is found here, so that Jesus ‘returns’ to his disciples in one sense in his appearances to them after his resurrection, but in another sense he ‘returns’ in the person of the Holy Spirit to indwell them.

[15:18]  ⁴ tn Grk “know.”

[15:18]  ⁵ tn Grk “it hated me before you.”

[15:19]  ⁶ tn Grk “if you were of the world.”

[15:19]  ⁷ tn The words “you as” are not in the original but are supplied for clarity.

[15:19]  ⁸ tn Grk “because you are not of the world.”

[15:19]  ⁹ tn Or “world, therefore.”

[15:19]  ¹⁰ sn I chose you out of the world…the world hates you. Two themes are brought together here. In 8:23 Jesus had distinguished himself from the world in addressing his Jewish opponents: “You are from below, I am from above; you are of this world, I am not of this world.” In 15:16 Jesus told the disciples “You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you.” Now Jesus has united these two ideas as he informs the disciples that he has chosen them out of the world. While the disciples will still be “in” the world after Jesus has departed, they will not belong to it, and Jesus prays later in John 17:15-16 to the Father, “I do not ask you to take them out of the world, but to keep them from the evil one. They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.” The same theme also occurs in 1 John 4:5-6: “They are from the world; therefore they speak as from the world, and the world listens to them. We are from God; he who knows God listens to us; he who is not from God does not listen to us.” Thus the basic reason why the world hates the disciples (as it hated Jesus before them) is because they are not of the world. They are born from above, and are not of the world. For this reason the world hates them.