Seventh Sunday of Easter (1905)

John 15:26-16:4 Are you a Christian? Have you received the Lord Christ in living faith? Then you are a witness to Christ. This drives your faith into you.1 This is your Christian calling.2 Through your witness, that must happen through word and through your way of life, the world should become familiar with Christ, be won for Christ. 3 The Holy Spirit will testify before the world through Christians.4 But when the Lord reminds His disciples in our Gospel today about their call to witness, He also recalls in their memories immediately afterwards what He had said of the behavior of the world against them, His disciples and witnesses. His intention is to save them from stumbling. He says5: "I have said all these things to you to keep you from falling away." 1. Great is the hostility of the world against the witness of Christ. a. V. 1a. refers back to what the Lord Christ had said of the hostility of the world against God, against Christ and His disciples. The world, which is also expected to be the false church, hates God, hates Christ.6 It does not know and have the true God, because it, although from self-delusion, does not know the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ and therefore Christ Himself.7 As long as Christ was now with His disciples, He especially had to experience the opposition and the hostility of the world.8 As He now goes up to heaven, the world will vent its hate of Christ to them, His disciples.9 b. This hostility is very great. We see this from the manner that it is manifested.10 The world will exclude them as heretics and enemies of God and put the Church under the ban from their fellowship, yes, even torture and kill them, often under the impression that they are doing God a service. (Proof from the history of the Church.) Indeed we don't have to suffer such bloody oppression and persecution in our land and in our time, God has by grace so far bound the hands of world. However, their attitude is and remains the same and makes pleasure through lies, mockery, and ridicule in speaking and writing and even all sorts of works of malice. Everyone who can be an earnest one with the testimony of the
Psalm 116:10. 1 Peter 2:9. 3 Isaiah 40:9; Luke 24:47; 1 Peter 3:1. 4 John 15:26-27. 5 John 16:1. 6 John 15:18, 20, 23; Psalm 2:1-3; Acts 4:25-27. 7 John 16:3, 3:19, 5:23. 8 John 15:20, 16:4b. 9 John 15:19-20; 16:2a. 10 John 16:2.
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Truth will and must learn something from it. Enemies of Christians are often from his own household.11 But the hostility of the world is even great compared with the witnesses of Christ, so also 2. the danger is even great that they stumble at this hostility. a. Christians still have flesh and blood in themselves. But flesh and blood is either shy of crosses12 or secure and carefree13, confident of its own power14, although it is not all done with our power.15 It indeed does great woe to flesh and blood when it should suffer for the sake of righteousness. All sorts of concerns come to him: Yes, should this still really be true, what I now believe, from which I witness, because still so many, even excellent people want to know nothing about it, but instead have only scorn and hostility? When they fail, then they often offer the world money and goods, honor and reputation, and a quiet life.16 b. Therefore the danger that makes Christians stumble, namely young Christians, to the hate and hostility of the world, to deny and apostatize Christ, is indeed great. Great and glorious people indeed have disowned Christ from fear and timidity and have fallen from faith: Peter during the Passion of the Lord, Demas; examples from Church history. They have allowed themselves to be deluded by their flesh and blood, have forgotten the Word of the Lord.17 But those who deny Christ and does not raise himself up again from his fall, applies to them.18 When we think of the great hatred of the world and the dangers which it brings for our flesh, we probably would have been discouraged and disheartened in advance. However, although we should beware of security, we still have no cause to surrender to discouragement, because 3. greater than the enmity of the world and the danger of denying Christ, is the power of his Word. a. The Lord Christ prophecies the hate and hostility of the world to His disciples, not that they should fear, but that they do not stumble, that they, when such should happen to them, should remember that He, their Lord and Master, has prophesied it to them.19 He says this to them that, when it happens, His disciples are not to be surprised, as if a strange thing befell them.20 Christians must enter into the kingdom of God through much tribulation.21
Matthew 10:20, 31. Matthew 16:22. 13 Matthew 26:41; Jeremiah 17:9. 14 Matthew 26:33; Romans 11:20. 15 2 Corinthians 3:5 (LSB 656:2). 16 John 15:19a. 17 Matthew 16:26. 18 Matthew 10:33; Mark 8:38. 19 John 16:4. 20 1 Peter 4:12. 21 Acts 14:22; 2 Timothy 3:12.
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b. The power of the Word of Christ and especially even this prophecy of the Lord is greater than the hostility of the world, etc. The disciples of Christ recognize from this, that the Lord Christ knows very well the hate of the world and the dangers which it brings for the witnesses of Christ. They know that they endure the hostility of the world not against the will of their Savior, that these sufferings must serve them for the best.22 He Himself will protect His own and be with them.23 For this purpose He sends to them the Comforter, the Holy Spirit.24 The witness of the Christian is not in vain.25 The world must finally be put to shame26, while the true witnesses of Christ anticipate the crown of life. Whoever now in such sufferings clings to the Word of the Lord, to His prophecy that such sufferings must come upon a disciple of Christ, to His promise that there will be no lack of comfort, help, and assistance, who obtains power that he overcomes all stumbling and in faith overcomes everything, even the hostility of the world.27 Examples: disciples on Pentecost, etc. Invitation to think about Christ's word, when we have to endure the hatred and enmity of the world. His Word, and especially even the Word of verse 16 will give us strength to scorn hate, mockery and ridicule of the world and to remain with Christ to the end.28

Romans 8:28; KELG 393:3. Matthew 28:20. 24 John 15:26. 25 Isaiah 55:11. 26 Psalm 6:11; Matthew 24:30; 2 Thessalonians 2:8. 27 Philippians 4:13; Romans 8:37. 28 KELG 267:8.
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