Are You Hated?

John 15:18-19 If the world hate you, ye know that it hated me before it hated you. (19) If ye were of the world, the world would love his own: but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you.

When I was growing up, I was a late bloomer. The beginning of my junior year in high school, I was still under 5 feet tall. That made me an easy target for every bully in school. I would have guys push me into wall as they went by, slammed my head into doors, pick me up and run my head under running water in the science class sinks ..... and that was a good week! I hated school because I dreaded to be rejected and hated.

It is a hard thing to contemplate that one of the goals as Christians is that we are to be hated. Jesus does not say that we are to be hated for hatred sake. But he does say, that if we are living as God requests, we will be so different from the world that we will be hated. And that should be our goal!

One good thing about this is that Jesus does not ask us to do something that he was not willing to do himself. Jesus says that they world should hate us because it hated him. Man was he hated. For years there were men dogging him, trying to trip him up, trying to catch him between an ideological rock and a hard place. And each time they tried, it increased their resolve to kill him. And of course they finally got their way. But Jesus was not the only one. Many of the New Testament Christians experienced similar outcomes. Stephen was stoned to death. Paul gives a list of the the things that happened to him and was finally executed for his ‘crimes’.

The real question then is: Are you hated? Is there enough difference between you and the world to be hated? Or are you so caught up in the world that no one can tell that you are a Christian?

Whether we like it or not, we must be peculiar to the point that we stand out from the world. If we are not, we are not doing it right!

Romans 12:1-2 I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. (2) And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.