John 17:14 I have given them your word; and the world has hated them, because they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world. It was one distinguished by — I. SPIRITUAL PRIVILEGE. "I hath given them Thy Word." 1. These terms are comprehensive of the revelation of Divine grace and truth as a whole, which Christ Jesus taught as they were able to bear it. Who at this time, in the whole world, knew the Word of God as did these Galilean fishermen? 2. To receive the Word of God — (1) As a personal possession; (2) as a sacred deposit in trust for the whole world; and — (3) from Him who was the Revealer of God and the Redeemer of men was the highest privilege. 3. And since with every privilege responsibility is involved, these disciples were invested with a trust which required them to be kept with Divine power. All disciples now, in a sense, share in this privilege and responsibility. II. MORAL SEPARATION. 1. They were not of the world — (1) In their character, for the world is ever presented as having a character opposed to God. Self, not God, is its foundation; it seeks the present rather than the future, walks by sight rather than by faith, glories in the human rather than in the Divine, holds by the carnal rather than the spiritual. In this respect the disciples were no longer of the world. (2) In their condition. The world, as such, was lying in wickedness and under condemnation. The children of disobedience are declared to be the children of wrath, and the friendship of the world is enmity with God. 2. This separation exposed them to social persecution — "The world hath hated them," &c. The only world of which they knew anything by experience as yet was their own country, and it hated them. And if this was their experience up to now how signally in a wider sphere did it come to be so afterwards (1 Corinthians 4:13). The Saviour's spotless purity rebuked the looseness of the age, His benevolence its selfishness, His piety its worldliness. Therefore it hated Him, and the disciples shared in the hostility which was heaped upon the Master. 3. Christ was the model of this separation. "Even as I am not of the world." Jesus had not come out of the world as His disciples had done, for He was never of it, as they were. He was not of the world, although He came to the world, lived in the world, mixed with the men of the world, and in the scenes of the world, He was holy, harmless, undefiled, and separate from sinners, and His disciples accepted His principles, and gradually became assimilated to His character. To be like Christ, and to be "unspotted from the world "is the only true and abiding glory of human character. What does the world care for saints? It has not a good opinion of them, nor a good word for them; its spirit is entirely opposed to them, and it is not slow to call them fools. (J. Spence, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: I have given them thy word; and the world hath hated them, because they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world. |
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