Today, I am reading and commenting on John 14-16.

I am struggling with writing today’s blog because there are so many interconnections between the different topics which John covers in today’s passage and I am having trouble pulling out the thread I want to write about.  I am going to start with where Jesus says that we need to remember that if the world hates us that it hated Him first.  He explains that by repeating that a servant is not greater than his master.  Since Jesus is our master, we are less than Him.  Therefore, if the world persecuted Him (and it did), it will persecute us.  Further, Jesus explains that if we belonged to the world it would love us, but since He has chosen and claimed us as His, the world hates us.  We, as followers of Christ, need to stop blaming ourselves for the world hating us.  I often hear Christians say, “Well, people hate Christians because we do ‘X’.”  Do not say that unless you consider yourself guilty of doing “X”, and “X” is something which God does not command us to do.

I am going to give an example of one of the things which people claim is a problem with Christians.  People often say that Christians turn them off to Christianity because they are too judgmental.  While there are those who claim* to be Christians who judgmental, most of the time Christians are condemned for being judgmental because they declare things to be true.  Jesus tells us earlier in this passage that He is the Truth, the Way, and the Life.  By doing so, He declares that there is Truth, and that the way to that Truth is through Him.  If we, or anyone else, denies truth they will not find the way to life.  If we love them, we must call them to truth, and to Truth.  Those who have rejected Truth will hate us for that and call us judgmental for insisting that there is truth.  But if we love them, we cannot stop pointing them to the truth because we will want them to live.

There is so much more to be written about this, but I am going to stop here.

*I say “claim” here because being judgmental** is an indicator that one is not in a right relationship with Christ.  I am unable to say one way or the other whether those persons are Christian, since only God truly knows what is in their heart.

**Judgmental is a subjective word.  Some people are called judgmental simply because they speak a truth which others do not wish to hear.  We are called to judge between Truth and falsehood, but none of us knows who has rejected Christ while claiming to follow Him and who is struggling to faithfully follow Him but fall to temptation.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

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