“If the world hate you, ye know that it hated me before it hated you.” (John 15:18)
Two points, if you will, does anyone in this world hate you because of Jesus Christ, and why would the world hate us?
Unless you are witnessing for the Lord, for the glory of God, no one knows that you are a Christian, they may think that you are a nice and kind person, even tempered, loyal to a fault and respectful to all, but unless you open your mouth and start speaking words that profess a faith in Jesus Christ as Lord of your life, they will never know any more than that nice person.
I’m going to guess that if you took a survey from people here on earth, sadly even from some born-again believers, and asked them if any particular individual should be in hell, the majority would say, “No, they shouldn’t be, they were a good person.” Bring up the name of some well know serial killers, the Boston Strangler, Jack the Ripper, Hitler and the like and they would respond with a resounding “Yes,” but that little old lady down the street, the kindly old gentleman, the young college student who had such a promising future, well, to them that would be a different matter altogether.
I have met people in my life and read about even more who possessed, at least in definition, every single one of the fruits of the Spirit mentioned in Galatians 5:22-23, good, kind, caring loving people who saw Jesus Christ at best as a good man, but just as many of them said He was nothing more than a myth, part of the fairy tale of the Bible. Some of them even attended different religious organizations on a fairly regular basis.
“Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.” (John 14:6)
Good people who are now in hell, kind, loving people who will spend eternity in utter hopelessness. This my friends is why some of them hate us, we are quite adamant on this subject, unless you are born-again, unless you believe without a doubt Ephesians 2:8, “For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God:” then you will go to hell, and they hate us for telling them these truths.
Many of these individuals give enormous sums of money to what the world calls “worthy causes,” and not just to “save the whales” types of organizations, but to children’s hospitals, to large places whose sole function is to feed the poor, to those who are in great, dire need all across the planet, in the world’s eye they are good, honest people. In the eyes of the Lord, if they do not repent and call upon the name of Jesus Christ for the salvation of their souls, they will burn in the Lake of Fire for all eternity, for they are the wicked, and His wrath abides upon them even today. (John 3:36)
We are saved by grace, (Acts 15:11) we are rewarded for our works, (Psalm 62:12) no work, no effort on our own part, only those who have acknowledged Jesus Christ as Lord, and serve Him as Master of their lives will enter the kingdom of God. That above all other reasons is perhaps why they hate us so much, they want to believe they have something of value to offer to God, they want to believe they are good enough, they want to believe in those scales they have imagined, where their good deeds will outweigh their bad ones. They want to believe in anything and everything but the truth, that “no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.” (John 14:6)
