Tuesday, August 9, 2011

Bible Truth #178 - John 15:19

If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you.

Here Jesus is talking to his apostles and I’m sure you will agree He is by implication also talking to us - Christians of today.

As you can probably guess I want to point out that in this verse Christ says again that He chose us OUT of the world. He did not say that He chose us and because we accepted, He saved us. He did not say He chose us and because we acquiesced, He saved us. Nowhere in this verse or any other verse do you read that we had anything to do with being chosen.

I can’t say “before He chose us we hated Him” because we were chosen before the foundation of the world (Ephesians 1:4), we were chosen before we even existed. So we hated Him AFTER He chose us - from the time we were conceived until He saved us, we hated Him. But when God quickened our dead spirit through faith, the faith that God gives us (Romans 12:3; Ephesians 2:8), and simultaneously gave us belief (John 6:29; Philippians 1:29), and repentance (2 Timothy 2:25), we responded by not only believing and repenting, but we also loved Him and now have the ability to please Him because we no longer do everything in the flesh (Romans 8:8), our spirit is now alive.

God moved us from the flock of the world to the flock of the Good Shepherd, we didn’t move ourselves. And since we no longer belong to the world, the world hates us (John 15:19) as much as it hates the Light. (John 3:20)

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