This is My command to you: love one another. If you find that the world [order] despises you, remember that before it despised you, it first despised Me. If you were a product of the world order, then it would love you. But you are not a product of the world order because I have taken you out of it, and it despises you for that very reason.
Don’t forget what I have spoken to you: “a servant is not greater than the master.” If I was mistreated, you should expect nothing less. If they accepted what I have spoken, they will also hear you. Everything they do to you they will do on My account because they do not know the One who has sent Me.
If I had not spoken to them and done among them the works no on else has done, they would not be guilty of [this] sin [of despising me]; but now they have no excuse for ignoring My voice.[1] If someone despises Me, he also despises My Father. If I had not demonstrated things for them that have never been done, they would not be guilty of [this] sin.
But the reality is they have stared Me in the face, and they have despised Me and the Father nonetheless. Yet their law, which says, “They despised Me without any cause,”[2] has again been proven true.
Notice how this portion is for people who “stared Jesus in the face.” I believe this is specifically an indictment on the Sadducees and Pharisees, religious leaders who a) knew their Scripture and b) knew first-hand what Jesus was doing, and they rejected him. Their dismissal of him was not because of ignorance of his words or to lack of miraculous evidence revealing who he was; they willingly and blatantly refused to believe what was made clear to them.
I will send a great Helper to you from the Father, one known as the Spirit of truth. He comes from the Father and will point to the truth as it concerns Me. But you will also point others to the truth about My identity, because you have journeyed with Me since this all began….
16:1 “I have told you all these things so that you will not fall away. They will put you out of the synagogue[3], yet a time is coming when the one who kills you will think he is offering service to God. They will do these things because they have not known the Father or me.[4] But I have told you these things so that when their time comes, you will remember that I told you about them.
…But I tell you the truth, it is to your advantage that I am going away. For if I do not go away, the Advocate [Holy Spirit] will not come to you, but if I go, I will send him to you. When he comes, he will prove the world order wrong[5]concerning sin and righteousness and judgment…
—concerning sin, because they do not believe in me; concerning righteousness, because I am going to the Father and you will see me no longer; and concerning judgment, because the archon of this world has been condemned.
When the Holy Spirit arrives (most people assume this is a reference to Pentecost on the book of Acts), Jesus will be vindicated. The original word carries with it the idea of a defense attorney making an argument that will show a client’s innocence.
In all that our Lord says here, there seems to be an allusion to the office of an advocate in a cause, in a court of justice who, by producing witnesses, and pleading upon the proof, convicts the opposite party of sin, demonstrates the righteousness of his client, and shows the necessity of passing judgment upon the accuser. (Adam Clarke)
Concerning sin: This could be a reference to the general conviction of humanity that exposes our sin in order to lead us to repentance and salvation. I think it might be more specific than that in this immediate context because of that “face to face” comment. “They” – the Sadducees and Pharisees – did not believe in Jesus in spite of seeing him in person, hearing his teaching which they could not refute, and seeing his Messianic miracles. Meanwhile, they accused Jesus of blasphemy (a definite sin) because he claimed to be God. But he was correct. He did not sin as they supposed.
Concerning Righteousness: Righteousness is being in right relationship with God and others. Think of “rightness” as a synonym. It’s internal and external alignment with God and God’s plan demonstrated in life. Jesus rising from the dead showed that He and the Father were one, as he so often claimed. The pouring out of God’s Spirit for the reunification of humanity (all the separated people from the Tower of Babel in Genesis 11) reveals the plan of which Jesus was a part.
Concerning Judgment: the ‘archon’ of the world stood condemned. A couple weeks ago, we talked about a previous use of that word in this same speech in the gospel of John where it seemed to point toward the flesh and blood rulers of the world order (the Sanhedrin and Rome). This could be restating that, or it could be referring more broadly to Satan as a leader of the world order. Either way, they and their ‘world order’ stand condemned. As Jesus will say later in this same speech, “Be of good cheer. I have overcome this world order.”
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Re: The world loving and hating Jesus and followers of Jesus
I like the translation of “world order” over just “world.” The latter makes it sounds like everybody who is not a Christian is going to hate Christians. But that’s not true. As history shows, a whole lot of people who weren’t Christians have become Christians because they found Christ compelling, often because of the compelling nature of the Christians around them. “World Order” captures the idea of the cultural power structures the run earthly empires, not every individual.[6]
The World Order reacted differently to Jesus than the masses of the people did. The ones with power, prestige and comfort on the line reacted differently to Jesus than the poor and powerless.
Rome, the Sadducees/Herodians, Pharisees and Zealots responded differently than did the Essenes – the one group not seeking earthly power positions.
The outcasts in Jewish society – tax collectors, prostitutes, the physically sick, the Samaritans, the – they seemed to get along with Jesus really well.
·The overlooked and underappreciated – women, children, slaves, the poor – they find Jesus and his path of life really compelling (the early church filled up with them!).
People with a lot of earthly clout, those with a lot to lose by following the Messiah who taught love over coercion, servanthood over power flexing, humility over pride, generosity over materialism – well, they tended to push back against Jesus pretty hard. They have bought in to what Ephesians 2 calls “the course of this world.”
The world order values coercive power; Jesus values a servanthood that invites.
The world order thrives on identifying and hating enemies ; Jesus values loving even our enemies and doing good to those who hate us.
The world order tramples on people to get things; Jesus used things to care for people.
The world order insists that “greed is good”[7] and plays favorites with the rich; Jesus insisted that the love of money was a trap for our souls, and there should be no favorites in the Kingdom of God.
The world order admires the Alpha with arrogant pride; Jesus values humility and honest self-reflection.
The world order controls through fear and manipulation; Jesus compels with hope and invitation.
The world order values luxury and indulgence; Jesus values generosity and self-control.
The world order admires those who take what they want; Jesus values those who give to others who are in need, and who look out for others who are in want.
The world order exploits and belittles others to get to the top; Jesus said it would be the meek who inherit the kingdom of God.
The world order dismisses “the least of these”; Jesus placed a premium on their worth.
Jesus was here to save the world, but not the world order. He was there for the people in the Empire, not to prop up the Empire’s culture. He was there to upend the order of the world (in Rome and the Romanized Sadducees) and redeem both the sin of the people of the world and the sinful ideals embedded in the systems of the world.
How did He go about doing this? By changing individuals who then permeated their communities and their cities. It was not a top-down authoritarian coercion; it was a grass roots spread of the Kingdom of God sabotaging the Empire of Rome, one individual at a time, one changed heart at a time, one soul transformation at a time. If we go back to the previous list, that means the church was intended to be a community characterized by:
Displaying servanthood
Loving everyone, even our enemies.
Using the things we have to care for people.
Not playing favorites based on, well, anything.
Valuing humility, generosity and self-control
Offering hope
Looking out for those who are in want.
·Living with meekness (controlled strength) and kindness
Placing a premium on everyone’s – everyone’s! - worth
The Empire agenda is threatened by that kind of counter-cultural community; I don’t think our average neighbor hates that. Thousands of people were drawn to Jesus. The Jewish communities most vilified sinners were drawn to Jesus. When the early church formed this kind of community, it grew like crazy, but I will get to that in a moment.
I am pointing this out because I worry that we can start to think that being hated is a sign that we are following Jesus correctly. In this view, the more people around us dislike us, the more holy we are. If people outside the church actually like us, well, clearly compromise has crept into our witness.
But that just doesn’t match the ministry of Jesus or the early church. Jesus’ detractors called him a “friend of sinners” because the outcast sinners in their communities were drawn to Him. This trend continued when the Holy Spirit filled his followers. Within 70 years, there were around 25,000 in the church. By 300 AD, it was probably around 20 million.[8] Even in the midst of persecution by the Roman government, even Roman and Greek people filled the church. And why not? So many had grown weary of the exploitation, violence, and debasement the Roman World Order had imposed on them. A Jesus-based vision of community looked pretty compelling.
{Hot historical tip, painting with a very broad brush: church history shows us that when those entrenched in the halls of power – the world order - hate us and our neighbors find us compelling, we are probably representing Jesus well. When those entrenched in the halls of power – the world order – love us and our neighbors hate us, we are probably not representing Jesus well.}
I read a book called The Patient Ferment Of The Early Church. I would like to offer some of the great insights from this book about how the early church changed the world.
People who study shifts in religious adherence pay attention to the “push” and the “pull” that are at play in every conversion. What in the existing religious options so dissatisfied some people that it pushed their adherents to explore new options? And then what was it in Christianity that so attracted people, that it pulled them to explore something that might be very costly?
The early Christians proliferated… because faith embodied was attractive to people who were dissatisfied with their old cultural and religious habits, who felt pushed to explore new possibilities, and who then encountered Christians who embodied a new manner of life that pulled them toward what the Christians called “rebirth” into a new life.
Christians, said Cyprian (210 - 258), are to be visibly distinctive. They are to live their faith and communicate it in deeds [to] demonstrate the character of God to the world. “No occasion should be given to the pagans to censure us deservedly and justly… It profits nothing to show forth virtue in words and destroy truth in deeds.”
According to Clement (35-100), ‘When the Christians talked about loving your enemies, their neighbors had been interested. But when they found that the Christians didn’t do what they said, they dismissed Christianity as “a myth and a delusion.’ From Clement’s perspective, Christians had to embody the message if the churches were to grow.
Justin the Martyr (100-165) noted that his community doesn’t consider people true Christians if they simply quote Christ’s teachings but don’t live them. Jesus himself had insisted on this (Matthew 7:21). Further, Justin believes that the effectiveness of Christian witness depends on the integrity of the believers’ lifestyles.
As an example, Justin points to the area of business. “Many who were once on [Rome’s] side . . . have turned from the ways of violence and tyranny, overcome by observing the consistent lives of their [Christian] neighbors, or noting the strange patience of their injured acquaintances, or experiencing the way they did business with them.”
Christians behaved in ways that their pagan contemporaries found intriguing. In fact, some pagans found the Christians’ behavior unsettling enough to convert to Christianity.
Tertullian (155-220) admonished his readers: “If one tries to provoke you to a fight, there is at hand the admonition of the Lord: ‘If someone strike [you] . . . on the right cheek, turn to him the other also.’ [And if someone] burst out in cursing or wrangling, recall the saying: ‘When men reproach you, rejoice.’
Let wrong-doing grow weary from your patience. It attracts the heathen, recommends the slave to his master, the master to God. It adorns a woman, perfects a man. It is loved in a child, praised in a youth, esteemed in the aged. In both man and woman, at every age of life, it is exceedingly attractive.”
Tertullian indicates that…the Christian family was not defined by the vertical values of the wider society; it was horizontal in its solidarity, making all its members brother and sisters…The community’s worship was designed to empower all members and to give them a sense of their worth that expressed itself in courageous living and bold testimony.
But what the outsiders saw was not their worship. It was their [habits]. And they said, “Look! How they love one another.” They did not say, “Listen to the Christians’ message”; they did not say, “Read what they write.”
Hearing and reading were important, and some early Christians worked to communicate in these ways too. But we must not miss the reality: the pagans said look! Christianity’s truth was visible; it was embodied and enacted by its members. It was made tangible, sacramental.
The Christians were socially active: they had intensive, embodied forms of care for members and others. The believers, whose dress was often simple and unostentatious, did not immediately reveal their identity to passersby, but their identity could emerge as relationships developed. Sometimes this came as a surprise: “‘A good man,’ they say, ‘only that he is a Christian.’
Scholars have seen the church’s growth as coming about through something modest: “casual contact.” In all relationships, “affective bonds” were formed. The most reliable means of communicating the attractiveness of the faith to others and enticing them to investigate things further was the Christians’ character, bearing, and behavior.
Writing in the 180s, the Roman Celsus noted with distaste that Christians formed groups to which they attracted… “the most illiterate and bucolic yokels.” To him these were people of no account, who in a hierarchical world knew that they were the dregs of society and that they had no views worth expressing or being listened to.
But care for these very people, especially the poor, was another area in which the Christian communities had habits... Outsiders looked at this and were impressed. According to Henry Chadwick, “The practical application of charity was probably the most potent single cause of Christian success.”
In 305 during the Great Persecution, in Cirta in North Africa, imperial officials raided a house church and (conveniently for our purposes) compiled a list of its possessions. On this list the examiners found, along with chalices, candleholders, and other liturgical equipment, a stock of clothing.
The church had what was evidently a clothes store, to which members contributed clothing that other members could claim when they needed it. The clothing included “eighty-two women’s tunics . . . , sixteen men’s tunics, thirteen pairs of men’s shoes, forty-seven pairs of women’s shoes.”
The Didache[9] notes, “bless those who curse you, and pray for your enemies,” and goes on to present other ways that the Christian habits differs from “the way the heathen act.” “Do not hesitate to give and do not give with a bad grace. . . .
Do not turn your back on the needy, but share everything with your brother and call nothing your own. For if you have what is eternal in common, how much more should you have what is transient!” More surprisingly, they loved their enemies: “They comfort such as wrong them, and make friends of them; they labor to do good to their enemies.”
The Didache did not discuss how the life of the community impacted the world or attracted new members, possibly because such discussion seemed unnecessary; the habits of the community were attracting as many people to its life as the community’s catechetical formation could cope with.
Then, there is a sobering turn.
In the 240s in Caesarea in Palestine, as Origen prepared catechumens for baptism he struggled against the unfaithful behavior of the faithful. ‘The Christians’ public behavior belied their convictions: they “agitate the forum with lawsuits and weary [their] neighbors with altercations. They are completely disgusting in their actions and habit of life, wrapped up with vices and not wholly ‘putting away the old self with its actions.
[The people] come to church and bow their head to the priests, exhibit courtesy, honor the servants of God, even bring something for the decoration of the altar or church—yet they exhibit no inclination to also improve their habits, correct impulses, lay aside faults, cultivate purity, soften the violence of wrath, restrain avarice, curb greed.”
According to Clement, when the Christians talked about loving your enemies, their neighbors had been interested. But when they found that the Christians didn’t do what they said, they dismissed Christianity as “a myth and a delusion.” From Clement’s perspective, Christians had to embody the message if the churches were to grow.
By the early fifth century the problem had become so acute that some theologians updated the church’s theology of witness so that they no longer emphasized the Christians’ exemplary behavior.”
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There came a point in church history – after Constantine legalized Christianity and intertwined it with the Roman agenda – theologians in the Western church specifically changed the discussion about what it mean to be a faithful follower of Jesus by moving the focus of what it meant to be a good witness away from the witness of an integrated, holy life and moved it into the realm of thoughts and beliefs as the most important marker. In other words, for 350 years, orthodoxy (right belief) was being clarified, but orthopraxy (right action) was the exhibition of faith and the witness to the world – until Christian leaders began moving the orthopraxy markers so Hellenized Christians could more comfortably support Rome’s agenda and fit into Roman culture.
When we live like Jesus and his first followers, we will feel dangerous to those who control Empire culture. Peace, love, humility, servanthood, generosity, patience, kindness, self-control, repentance, forgiveness – this is not the fuel of Empires. Valuing every person as an image bearer of God worthy of dignity, justice and mercy – that’s not a value of Empires. We ought to expect as Christians to always live in an uneasy tension with the halls of power in our nations.
But our neighbors? It ought to be good news to all those beat up by the values of the Empire’s world order when Christians move into the neighborhood. “Finally! Someone who loves us!” And it is from these good deeds, Jesus said, that they will glorify our Father in heaven. (Matthew 5:16)
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[1] Jewish teachers recognized that knowing the truth increased one’s moral responsibility.
[2] Psalms 35:19; 69:4
[3] Without the protection of being recognized as part of the Jewish community, believers could lose their Roman worship exemption and be charged with disloyalty to the state. (Rev 2:13; 13:15).
[4] “Because they have not known the Father — John 15:25; John 15:25. Ignorance of the benevolence of GOD, and of the philanthropy of CHRIST, is the grand fountain whence all religious persecution and intolerance proceed.” Adam Clarke
[5] “Vindicate me, my God, and plead my cause against an unfaithful nation. Rescue me from those who are deceitful and wicked.” (Psalm 43:1)
[6] I don’t mean like a deep state New World Order. This is more like “the course of the world” in Ephesians 2.
[7] To quote Michael Douglas’s infamous line from Wall Street.
[8] I have seen very different statistics on this. Hopefully this represents the middle ground.
[9] An early church document compiled over years that reveals church teaching and practice.