John 15:18-19

The World’s Hatred

15:18 “If the world hates you, be aware ¹  that it hated me first. ²  15:19 If you belonged to the world, ³  the world would love you as its own. ⁴  However, because you do not belong to the world, ⁵  but I chose you out of the world, for this reason ⁶  the world hates you. ⁷ 

John 17:14

17:14 I have given them your word, ⁸  and the world has hated them, because they do not belong to the world, ⁹  just as I do not belong to the world. ¹⁰ 

John 17:16

17:16 They do not belong to the world ¹¹  just as I do not belong to the world. ¹² 

James 4:4

4:4 Adulterers, do you not know that friendship with the world means hostility toward God? ¹³  So whoever decides to be the world’s friend makes himself God’s enemy.

James 4:1

Passions and Pride

4:1 Where do the conflicts and where ¹⁴  do the quarrels among you come from? Is it not from this, ¹⁵  from your passions that battle inside you? ¹⁶ 

James 2:15-16

2:15 If a brother or sister ¹⁷  is poorly clothed and lacks daily food, 2:16 and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, keep warm and eat well,” but you do not give them what the body needs, ¹⁸  what good is it?

James 4:5-6

4:5 Or do you think the scripture means nothing when it says, ¹⁹  “The spirit that God ²⁰  caused ²¹  to live within us has an envious yearning”? ²²  4:6 But he gives greater grace. Therefore it says, “God opposes the proud, but he gives grace to the humble.” ²³ 

James 5:19-20

5:19 My brothers and sisters, ²⁴  if anyone among you wanders from the truth and someone turns him back, 5:20 he should know that the one who turns a sinner back from his wandering path ²⁵  will save that person’s ²⁶  soul from death and will cover a multitude of sins.

[15:18]  ¹ tn Grk “know.”

[15:18]  ² tn Grk “it hated me before you.”

[15:19]  ³ tn Grk “if you were of the world.”

[15:19]  ⁴ tn The words “you as” are not in the original but are supplied for clarity.

[15:19]  ⁵ tn Grk “because you are not of the world.”

[15:19]  ⁶ tn Or “world, therefore.”

[15:19]  ⁷ sn I chose you out of the world…the world hates you. Two themes are brought together here. In 8:23 Jesus had distinguished himself from the world in addressing his Jewish opponents: “You are from below, I am from above; you are of this world, I am not of this world.” In 15:16 Jesus told the disciples “You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you.” Now Jesus has united these two ideas as he informs the disciples that he has chosen them out of the world. While the disciples will still be “in” the world after Jesus has departed, they will not belong to it, and Jesus prays later in John 17:15-16 to the Father, “I do not ask you to take them out of the world, but to keep them from the evil one. They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.” The same theme also occurs in 1 John 4:5-6: “They are from the world; therefore they speak as from the world, and the world listens to them. We are from God; he who knows God listens to us; he who is not from God does not listen to us.” Thus the basic reason why the world hates the disciples (as it hated Jesus before them) is because they are not of the world. They are born from above, and are not of the world. For this reason the world hates them.

[17:14]  ⁸ tn Or “your message.”

[17:14]  ⁹ tn Grk “because they are not of the world.”

[17:14]  ¹⁰ tn Grk “just as I am not of the world.”

[17:16]  ¹¹ tn Grk “they are not of the world.” This is a repetition of the second half of v. 14. The only difference is in word order: Verse 14 has οὐκ εἰσὶν ἐκ τοῦ κόσμου (ouk eisin ek tou kosmou), while here the prepositional phrase is stated first: ἐκ τοῦ κόσμου οὐκ εἰσίν (ek tou kosmou ouk eisin). This gives additional emphasis to the idea of the prepositional phrase, i.e., origin, source, or affiliation.

[17:16]  ¹² tn Grk “just as I am not of the world.”

[4:4]  ¹³ tn Grk “is hostility toward God.”

[4:1]  ¹⁴ tn The word “where” is repeated in Greek for emphasis.

[4:1]  ¹⁵ tn Grk “from here.”

[4:1]  ¹⁶ tn Grk “in your members [i.e., parts of the body].”

[2:15]  ¹⁷ tn It is important to note that the words ἀδελφός (adelfos) and ἀδελφή (adelfh) both occur in the Greek text at this point, confirming that the author intended to refer to both men and women. See the note on “someone” in 2:2.

[2:16]  ¹⁸ tn Grk “what is necessary for the body.”

[4:5]  ¹⁹ tn Grk “vainly says.”

[4:5]  ²⁰ tn Grk “he”; the referent (God) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

[4:5]  ²¹ tc The Byzantine text and a few other mss (P 33 Ï) have the intransitive κατῴκησεν (katwkhsen) here, which turns τὸ πνεῦμα (to pneuma) into the subject of the verb: “The spirit which lives within us.” But the more reliable and older witnesses (Ì⁷⁴ א B Ψ 049 1241 1739 al) have the causative verb, κατῴκισεν (katwkisen), which implies a different subject and τὸ πνεῦμα as the object: “The spirit that he causes to live within us.” Both because of the absence of an explicit subject and the relative scarcity of the causative κατοικίζω (katoikizw, “cause to dwell”) compared to the intransitive κατοικέω (katoikew, “live, dwell”) in biblical Greek (κατοικίζω does not occur in the NT at all, and occurs one twelfth as frequently as κατοικέω in the LXX), it is easy to see why scribes would replace κατῴκισεν with κατῴκησεν. Thus, on internal and external grounds, κατῴκισεν is the preferred reading.

[4:5]  ²² tn Interpreters debate the referent of the word “spirit” in this verse: (1) The translation takes “spirit” to be the lustful capacity within people that produces a divided mind (1:8, 14) and inward conflicts regarding God (4:1-4). God has allowed it to be in man since the fall, and he provides his grace (v. 6) and the new birth through the gospel message (1:18-25) to counteract its evil effects. (2) On the other hand the word “spirit” may be taken positively as the Holy Spirit and the sense would be, “God yearns jealously for the Spirit he caused to live within us.” But the word for “envious” or “jealous” is generally negative in biblical usage and the context before and after seems to favor the negative interpretation.

[4:6]  ²³ sn A quotation from Prov 3:34.

[5:19]  ²⁴ tn Grk “brothers.” See note on the phrase “brothers and sisters” in 1:2.

[5:20]  ²⁵ tn Grk “from the error of his way” (using the same root as the verb “to wander, to err” in the first part of the verse).

[5:20]  ²⁶ tn Grk “his soul”; the referent (the sinner mentioned at the beginning of the verse) has been specified in the translation for clarity.