Destined to Repeat It

15:20–21. Jesus reminded His disciples of a statement He had made earlier: No servant is greater than his master (cf. 13:16). Previously He was referring to their need to imitate His humble service. But the principle has other applications. Christians are to identify so closely with Jesus that they share in His sufferings (they will persecute you also). On the positive side, some people followed and obeyed Jesus’ teaching, so they also responded to the apostles’ message. The root cause of the world’s hatred against the disciples is their identification with Jesus. They hate Jesus because they are ignorant of God, the One who sent Him.

Blum, E. A. (1985). John. In J. F. Walvoord & R. B. Zuck (Eds.), The Bible Knowledge Commentary: An Exposition of the Scriptures (Vol. 2, pp. 326–327). Wheaton, IL: Victor Books.

The Pillar New Testament Commentary: The Gospel according to John 2. Opposition from the World (15:17–16:4a)

(2) If the thought of the last sentence in this verse is in contrastive parallelism to the preceding sentence, the protasis in the last sentence offers an alternative to the protasis of the preceding sentence. The argument then runs: ‘If they persecuted me (and many of them did), they will persecute you also; if they obeyed my teaching (and some of them did), they will obey yours also.’ This reading, more likely than the alternative, means that human beings belonging to the world divide around Jesus’ followers and their message exactly as they divided around Jesus and his message (cf. 12:44–50).