Should the World Like Us or Hate Us?

00:00:04.000 | Good Friday to you. I know many of you listen to the podcast on your way to school or work,

00:00:09.000 | commuting by car or bus or bike or train or on foot.

00:00:13.000 | Blessings to you on your day ahead, or maybe you listen on your way home from work or school.

00:00:19.000 | Either way, today's question hits on that intersection where the people of God live out their faith in a faithless world.

00:00:27.000 | The question is a good one and it's from a listener named Andrew.

00:00:31.000 | "Dear Pastor John, hello to you. I am writing to ask you about a paradox I see in Scripture.

00:00:36.000 | Paul in 1 Timothy 3.7 says that an overseer, a church leader, must be well thought of by outsiders.

00:00:43.000 | But Jesus told his own disciples four times that they would be hated by everyone."

00:00:49.000 | It's Matthew 10.22, Matthew 24.9, Mark 13.13, Luke 21.17.

00:00:56.000 | "Because if they have called the master of the house Beelzebul, how much more will they malign those of his household?" Matthew 10.25.

00:01:04.000 | Assuming it's valid to extend Jesus' words to his disciples, to pastors today,

00:01:10.000 | how is it that an overseer must be at the same time expected to be well regarded by outsiders and yet also hated by everyone?

00:01:21.000 | There are many apparent contradictions in the Bible.

00:01:28.000 | And my experience over 60 years of loving the Bible, looking at the Bible, studying the Bible, praying the Bible,

00:01:38.000 | is that apparent contradictions resolve themselves if we are right in our heart and our mind is awake

00:01:52.000 | and we are patiently studying the context and availing ourselves of the best thinking about the Bible in the last 2,000 years.

00:02:03.000 | But the best thing about lingering over an apparent contradiction and penetrating to the root of the unity

00:02:13.000 | is that these seemingly conflicting texts almost always reveal something wonderful,

00:02:24.000 | something deeper, a better insight for having struggled with the apparent contradiction

00:02:32.000 | rather than having given up and called the Bible contradictory,

00:02:36.000 | which is why I think that faithful evangelical believers in inerrancy over the last centuries

00:02:45.000 | have had the deeper insight into the reality behind the Bible

00:02:50.000 | than liberal scholars who just give up and say, "Oh, but all a bunch of contradictions," and they don't even work on it.

00:02:57.000 | So here's the issue that concerns Andrew in his question.

00:03:02.000 | Jesus says to his disciples in Matthew 10, 22, "You will be hated by all for my name's sake,

00:03:12.000 | but the one who endures to the end will be saved."

00:03:14.000 | He says virtually the same thing in Matthew 24, 9, "You will be hated by all nations for my name's sake."

00:03:21.000 | Again, John 15, 18, "If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you."

00:03:31.000 | 1 John 3, 13, "Do not be surprised, brothers, that the world hates you."

00:03:37.000 | Those are sweeping statements.

00:03:39.000 | "All will hate you. All nations will hate you. The world will hate you."

00:03:44.000 | Then Andrew notices in 1 Timothy 3, 7, like a good Bible reader would,

00:03:51.000 | that one of the qualifications for elders in the church is he must be well thought of by outsiders, the world.

00:04:00.000 | So he asks, "How can elders be hated by all and be well thought of by at least some?"

00:04:10.000 | Now that's a good question.

00:04:13.000 | That's the kind of thing I spend my life doing is trying to get to the bottom of such apparent contradictions,

00:04:20.000 | texts that are in tension.

00:04:22.000 | The way to proceed in answering that question, as many others, is to make sure we understand what Jesus and Paul

00:04:34.000 | actually intended to communicate by those words.

00:04:37.000 | We don't just assume we know and then call it a contradiction.

00:04:42.000 | We ask, now in view of other things that Jesus and Paul said or that writers they approve of,

00:04:52.000 | the gospel writers said, what did they intend for us to understand?

00:04:58.000 | For example, we know Paul said in 2 Timothy 3, 12,

00:05:05.000 | "Indeed, all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted."

00:05:12.000 | So I infer from that that Paul does not mean in 1 Timothy 3, 7,

00:05:19.000 | that an elder candidate must be well thought of by everyone.

00:05:24.000 | He's going to be persecuted.

00:05:26.000 | His godliness is going to make some people angry at him, slander him, persecute him.

00:05:35.000 | So, what kind of approval did Paul have in mind that the elder candidate must get from unbelievers outside the church,

00:05:47.000 | even if not all of them?

00:05:50.000 | Here's an example of the way I think Paul was thinking.

00:05:54.000 | In 1 Thessalonians 4, 11, he says to Christians,

00:05:59.000 | "Aspire to live quietly and to mind your own affairs and to work with your hands,

00:06:06.000 | as we instructed you, so that you may walk properly before outsiders and be dependent on no one."

00:06:19.000 | Now, that's one example of the kind of reputation I think Paul wanted Christians to have with outsiders.

00:06:27.000 | Namely, Christians are good workers.

00:06:31.000 | They do not become a burden for other people.

00:06:35.000 | In his mind, most non-Christians would find that a praiseworthy trait.

00:06:41.000 | In Titus 2, 10, he speaks of Christians adorning the doctrine of God by their good deeds and faithful service in social settings, social roles.

00:06:53.000 | So, Paul did not mean to communicate by being well spoken of by outsiders

00:07:01.000 | that outsiders would approve of the Christian faith per se

00:07:06.000 | or even that they would necessarily like Christians or even that they would treat them kindly,

00:07:13.000 | but rather that there would be enough overlap between what Christians consider good behavior

00:07:21.000 | and what outsiders consider good behavior that in general,

00:07:27.000 | at least some outsiders would concede and testify that Christians are acting responsibly in society

00:07:37.000 | and contributing to the common good.

00:07:40.000 | That's generally what I think Paul was getting at when he said that the elder must not come into disrepute.

00:07:48.000 | He must be well thought of.

00:07:50.000 | Now, what about Jesus?

00:07:52.000 | What did he mean to communicate by saying, "You'll be hated by all"?

00:08:00.000 | Well, in Matthew 5, right after saying that his disciples will be persecuted for Jesus' sake,

00:08:09.000 | he said that his followers are the salt of the earth and the light of the world.

00:08:15.000 | And then he added that we should let our light so shine before men that they may see our good deeds and what?

00:08:22.000 | That the men may glorify our Father in heaven.

00:08:26.000 | Hmm.

00:08:27.000 | So, even though persecution happens, there is also the expectation that by our salty, bright,

00:08:37.000 | and in the context, joyful, verse 12, loving, verse 16, response through it all, people would be converted.

00:08:48.000 | In other words, not everyone is going on hating us.

00:08:52.000 | So, Jesus taught that.

00:08:54.000 | He taught that some people are not going to hate us.

00:08:57.000 | They're going to be converted and join us.

00:08:59.000 | And not only that, but Jesus, he said, "Go make disciples of all nations."

00:09:06.000 | So, when he said in Matthew 24, 9, that we would be hated by all nations,

00:09:15.000 | nations hated by all nations, the natural way to understand him is that we are going to meet with hate wherever we go among the nations.

00:09:28.000 | But that will not be the only response we get because he said, "Go make disciples."

00:09:34.000 | Hate from all nations, but also disciples made from all nations.

00:09:41.000 | Now, way back at his birth, remember old Simeon prophesied in Luke 2, 34,

00:09:50.000 | "Behold, this child is appointed for the fall and the rising of many in Israel."

00:10:00.000 | So, not just the fall of many, many will stumble over him and fall, but the rise of many.

00:10:07.000 | Not everyone will hate him.

00:10:10.000 | He had disciples, and there was a following.

00:10:13.000 | There were 120 in the upper room when he was done.

00:10:16.000 | So, how then shall we understand you will be hated by all?

00:10:23.000 | Well, consider the use of "all" in these other phrases from the Gospels.

00:10:30.000 | Mark 1, 5, "All Jerusalem were going out to him and were being baptized by John in the river Jordan, confessing their sins."

00:10:40.000 | Mark 1, 37, "They found Jesus and said to him, 'All are looking for you.'"

00:10:47.000 | Mark 5, 20, "The demoniac told how much Jesus had done for him, and all marveled."

00:10:56.000 | Mark 11, 32, "All held that John really was a prophet."

00:11:02.000 | Well, we know that's not the case in the sense of literal "all" because there were people who hated John's ministry.

00:11:09.000 | John 3, 26, "John is baptizing and all are going out to him."

00:11:16.000 | Okay.

00:11:17.000 | In all these uses and more, the word "all" does not mean every single individual in the group.

00:11:26.000 | It means that this is the general widespread response.

00:11:32.000 | And in the case of "hated by all" in Matthew 10, 22, we have the parallel text in Matthew 24, 9, "hated by all nations."

00:11:44.000 | So, we can conclude that hatred will be a widespread general response to Christian evangelism and that it will hold true wherever you go among the nations.

00:12:00.000 | So, putting it all together, I would say there is no contradiction between what Paul said about elders being well thought of by outsiders

00:12:11.000 | and Jesus saying that he would be hated by all.

00:12:14.000 | Being hated for Christ's sake is a normal, widespread, general experience among all peoples,

00:12:23.000 | but it's not so constant, it's not so uniform as to rule out that many unbelievers seeing the good lives of Christians

00:12:35.000 | and admitting that they are reputable contributors to society is in fact the case, which is what Paul had in mind.

00:12:46.000 | Thank you, Pastor John.

00:12:47.000 | "Appreciated by some, unappreciated by most," and one of those "hated by all" texts, Matthew 10, 22,

00:12:55.000 | came up in an episode that you may be interested in if you want more on this topic.

00:12:59.000 | "Should I care at all what people think of me?" That's ABJ 708.

00:13:03.000 | "Should I care at all what people think of me?" ABJ 708.

00:13:07.000 | It addresses the balance of not going out of our way to offend the world unnecessarily

00:13:13.000 | and being unafraid to offend the world when necessary.

00:13:17.000 | Check it out for more ABJ 708. Find ABJ 708 at askpastorjohn.com.

00:13:23.000 | Speaking of being unafraid to offend the world when necessary,

00:13:28.000 | we return Monday to look once again at gender confusion in the world.

00:13:33.000 | Actually, this time, gender confusion spilling out into the church.

00:13:38.000 | I think we should all be prepared to see, and we should all be prepared to respond to if and when necessary.

00:13:44.000 | That's on Monday, an important episode.

00:13:47.000 | I'm your host, Tony Reinke. Have a great weekend. We'll see you then.

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Should the World Like Us or Hate Us?

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