John 15:18 - Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible

In the latter part of this chapter our Lord cometh to comfort those who were his true disciples, against that third trouble, from the prospect they had of that hatred which the world would pour out and execute upon them, as soon as he should be withdrawn from them. Hatred is rooted and originated in the heart, and is properly a displeasure that the mind taketh at a person, which, fermenting and boiling in the mind, breeds an abhorrence of that person, anger, and malice, and a desire to do him mischief, and root him out; and then breaks out at the lips, by lying, slanders, calumnies, cursings, wishing of evil, &c.; and is executed by the hands, doing to such persons all the harm and mischief within the power of him that hateth: all this is to be understood under the general term hate. By the world here must be meant wicked men, in opposition to good men, who are often in Scripture called the world, because they are of the earth, earthly; they relish and savour nothing but worldly things, and pursue nothing but worldly designs. Against this our Saviour comforts them; first by telling them, that this part of the world hated him before it hated them, which must needs be so, because they hated them as his disciples, and for that very reason.