If ye were of the world, the world would love his own. — The force of the expression indicates the utter selfishness of the world’s love. It would love not them, but that in them which was its own. (Comp. Note on John 7:7.)
I have chosen you out of the world. — Comp. John 15:16, and Note on John 7:7. There He had told them that the world could not hate them. The very fact of its hatred would prove a moral change in them, by which they had ceased to belong to the world, and had become the children of God. Both thoughts are repeated in 1 John 3:13; 1 John 4:5.