Why Should They Hate Us?

I. Of all people why would anybody hate Christians?

Now, I can appreciate the world hating the hypocrites. Those who pretend to be Christians. The bigots, the sexually immoral, the manipulators, the self-centered and the self-righteous. Even the world knows that these are pretenders.

That type of person is a Godless worldly individual masquerading as child of God. THAT’S THE TYPE OF PERSON THE WORLD SHOULD HATE!!

But Jesus told us that the world would be hating true Christians - not the pretenders. Not the hypocrites. "If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you.¡¨ John 15:18&19

Make no mistake, the world knows real Christians when they see them. Jesus said: "By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another."

Christians at their finest help the poor, feed the hungry, visit the lonely, minister to the downtrodden. When we do it right - people will know us for Christians because of one overriding characteristic = love.

II. BUT, if we are people who are to be known for our love, why would anybody hate us?

It doesn’t seem to make any sense. And with all due respect to our savior, even Jesus’ explanation here in John 15:20 doesn’t seem to answer this question. "’No servant is greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will persecute you also." I understand the principle, I just don’t understand why. What is it about belonging to Jesus that makes the world so upset with us?

I had to look deeper into Scripture to find an explanation of this mystery. But the explanation I found simply helped to illustrate the simple power of Jesus’ comments in the Gospel of John.

In 2 Corinthians 2:14-16 Paul wrote: "...thanks be to God, who always leads us in triumphal procession in Christ and through us spreads everywhere the fragrance of the knowledge of him.

For we are to God the aroma of Christ among those who are being saved and those who are perishing. To the one we are the smell of death; to the other, the fragrance of life.

What Paul is saying is that when we do it right - when we live out our Christianity the way we should - we smell like Jesus. There is an aroma of Christ about us that others will notice even when we aren’t consciously "being Christians." To those who are saved, we have a good aroma because we encourage them and remind them of God’s faithfulness. But to those who are not saved, we are an aroma of death. A reminder that they are under condemnation and a sentence of death.

ILLUS: I’ve been involved in many funerals during my ministry. And I’ve noticed an odor about funeral homes. They all share the same smell, and I’ve always associated that smell with funerals. Where does the odor come from? It comes from the flowers.

I used to live across the street from a funeral home and the director there liked our family quite a lot. A couple of times he offered to send left over flowers home with me.

There were a couple of reasons I didn’t like accepting his offer. The first was that it just didn’t seem real romantic to take funeral flowers home to my wife. The second reason was - they smelled like death to me. Even to this day, there are certain flowers I won’t have in my home, or my garden. Their aroma reminds me of death. And I don’t want that smell in my home. Many people like the smell of those flowers - but I do not.