John 9:41

9:41 Jesus replied, ¹  “If you were blind, you would not be guilty of sin, ²  but now because you claim that you can see, ³  your guilt ⁴  remains.” ⁵ 

John 14:3

14:3 And if I go and make ready ⁶  a place for you, I will come again and take you ⁷  to be with me, ⁸  so that where I am you may be too.

John 15:19

15:19 If you belonged to the world, ⁹  the world would love you as its own. ¹⁰  However, because you do not belong to the world, ¹¹  but I chose you out of the world, for this reason ¹²  the world hates you. ¹³ 

[9:41]  ¹ tn Grk “Jesus said to them.”

[9:41]  ² tn Grk “you would not have sin.”

[9:41]  ³ tn Grk “now because you say, ‘We see…’”

[9:41]  ⁴ tn Or “your sin.”

[9:41]  ⁵ sn Because you claim that you can see, your guilt remains. The blind man received sight physically, and this led him to see spiritually as well. But the Pharisees, who claimed to possess spiritual sight, were spiritually blinded. The reader might recall Jesus’ words to Nicodemus in 3:10, “Are you the teacher of Israel and don’t understand these things?” In other words, to receive Jesus was to receive the light of the world, to reject him was to reject the light, close one’s eyes, and become blind. This is the serious sin of which Jesus had warned before (8:21-24). The blindness of such people was incurable since they had rejected the only cure that exists (cf. 12:39-41).

[14:3]  ⁶ tn Or “prepare.”

[14:3]  ⁷ tn Or “bring you.”

[14:3]  ⁸ tn Grk “to myself.”

[15:19]  ¹¹ tn Grk “if you were of the world.”

[15:19]  ¹² tn The words “you as” are not in the original but are supplied for clarity.

[15:19]  ¹³ tn Grk “because you are not of the world.”

[15:19]  ¹⁴ tn Or “world, therefore.”

[15:19]  ¹⁵ 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.