πρῶτον

The research to which I previously alluded is still ongoing and will likely work its way into future posts, but I felt compelled to offer the following short meditation for late November/early December. I hope and pray that God's Word will bring encouragement to those who read it and that the full implication of what Christ undertook will resonate in their hearts as His disciples prepare to remember and celebrate His Incarnation.

εἰ ὁ κόσμος ὑμᾶς μισεῖ, γινώσκετε ὅτι ἐμε πρῶτον ὑμῶν μεμίσηκεν. — κατὰ Ἰωάννην 15:18

ei ho kosmos hymas misei, ginoskete hoti eme proton hymon memiseken. — kata Ioannen 15:18

If the world hates you, know that it has hated me first before you. — John 15:18, translation mine

Never one to mince words, Jesus informs His disciples what they can expect from the world for following Him. Although He has taught them at length about how to love, the world will respond largely with hatred to the gospel message. At the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said,

“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For He makes His sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and the unjust.”
(Matthew 5:43-45, ESV)

Jesus knows that people will mistreat each other, that this is the modus operandi of the world. He admonishes His disciples to distinguish themselves from the world with the love that comes from and has its model in Himself and in the Father.

Jesus' words in the gospel of John, however, should not give His disciples cause for despair but rather hope and thanksgiving. The precision in His wording assures His disciples that, wherever they go, He has gone before them and that whatever they endure He has endured for their sake first. It is with this understanding of Jesus as the forerunner and the example by which His followers must pattern their lives that the author of the Book of Hebrews writes:

Since then we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.
(Hebrews 4:4-16, ESV)

The word sympathize cognately translates the Greek συμπαθῆσαι (sympathesai), which literally means to suffer with. In their lack of strength, then, Christ not only suffered before His disciples with all the weakness of human flesh but also suffers alongside them, lending them the immeasurable strength which He receives from the Father through the Holy Spirit to endure. The phrase “help in time of need” is in Greek εὔκαιρον βοήθειαν (eukairon boëtheian), which when broken out literally reads “well-timed running to the battle cry.” Christ runs to support His disciples in their physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual battles when they cry aloud for help, even when in such straits that they do not know what to pray, for “the Spirit Himself intercedes for [them] with groanings too deep for words” (Romans 8:26b, ESV).

Christians should therefore rejoice in the great gift and support with which Christ has blessed them, employing Paul's attitude when he writes to the church at Philippi, “All things I have strength for in Him who empowers me” (Philippians 4:13, translation mine). Christ, the true vine, is His disciples' strength and foundation: the root which conquered sin and death through love and resurrection. Because Christ went first, beset with all the weaknesses common to man but unblemished by sin, the Christian may follow despite the world's hatred, confident in Christ's leading and His steadfast promise of eternal life.