If ye were of the world, the world would love his own: but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you.
If ye were of the world, the world would love his own: but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, [ exelexameen (G1586 )], therefore the world hateth you. Here Jesus holds Himself forth as the Hated and Persecuted One; and this, not only as going before all His people in that respect, but as being the great Embodied Manifestation of that holiness which the world hates, and the Fountain of that hated state and character to all that believe in Him. From the treatment, therefore, which He met with they were not only to lay their account with the same, but be encouraged to submit to it, and cheered in the endurance of it, by the company they had and the cause in which it lighted upon them. Of course, this implies that if their separation from the world was to bring on them the world's enmity and opposition, then that enmity and opposition would be just so great as their separation from the world was, and no greater. Observe again that Christ here ascribes all that severance of His people from the world, which brings upon them its enmity and opposition, to His own 'choice of them out of it.' This cannot refer to the mere external separation of the Eleven to the apostleship, because Judas was so separated. Besides, this was spoken after Judas had voluntarily separated himself from the rest. It can refer only to such an inward operation upon them as made them entirely different in character and spirit from the world, and so objects of the world's hatred.