Hated Without a Cause

Hated Without a Cause.  For all our practice at hatred, humanity does not seem to be improving with hatred. (Today alone, for instance, news reports involving hatred are easy to spot: historic court cases, professional basketball skirmishes, totalitarian governments trying to convince others that they are not totalitarian, etc.). Clearly, practice does not make perfect! It is with a serious dose of humor that the Apostle Peter wrote the scattered churches due to persecution, “For it is better to suffer for doing good, if that should be God's will, than for doing evil” (1 Pet. 3:17). Paraphrase: since you already suffer, why would you give the world that hates without cause any cause for hating Christ or his church? Valid argument, Peter!

A general misconception persists about Jesus and the hatred he received, that he was hated for being too nice, welcoming, loving, and winsome. Niceness gets ignored, not murdered. David was hated, especially during his years running from King Saul, not because he was nice but because he was true, as in genuine and legitimate. Without recording the specific insults that his enemies hurled, David lifted his emotion to God in prayer: “[They] hate me without cause” (Psa. 35:19; 38:19; 69:4; 109:3). Soon enough during his monarchy, David would give plenty of dumb reasons to justify his enemies’ hatred, but when he was running from Saul, he was legally innocent. David’s genuineness galled Saul repeatedly to attempted murder. What David said about himself in poetry, Jesus applied to himself absolutely. “They have hated me without a cause” (John 15:25). Jesus was morally blameless and legally innocent. His enemies had no cause for their hatred, but they had irrational reasons: jealousy, fear, and demonic influence, just like Saul.

The Pharisees and Sadducees were excellent at hate. They hated bad behavior. They hated taxes. They hated change. They hated challenges to their authority and autonomy. But the Pharisees and Sadducees hated each other, too. To the Pharisees, the Sadducees were sell-outs to Rome. To the Sadducees, the Pharisees were the parking cuff on their ride to success. However, both groups hated Jesus even more than they hated each other.

So, what’s with the hate that the Pharisees and Sadducees had for Jesus? The scary, therefore unpopular, version is the only durable answer that explains the world’s uncaused hatred for Jesus: humanity hates Jesus because he is holy; he is light, we are not. “And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed” (John 3:19-20). For sure, the Pharisees and Sadducees were exposed as hypocrites and frauds by the hypocrite and fraud’s worst nightmare, the arrival of the Genuine One, “Jesus Christ, the faithful witness” (Rev. 1:5). The object of their uncaused hate was, in fact, the undeserved remedy to their hate.