17 "These things I command you, so that you will love one another.
18 “If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you. 19 If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. 20 Remember the word that I said to you: ‘A servant is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you. If they kept my word, they will also keep yours. 21 But all these things they will do to you on account of my name, because they do not know him who sent me.22 If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not have been guilty of sin, but now they have no excuse for their sin. 23 Whoever hates me hates my Father also. 24 If I had not done among them the works that no one else did, they would not be guilty of sin, but now they have seen and hated both me and my Father. 25 But the word that is written in their Law must be fulfilled: ‘They hated me without a cause.’
26 “But when the Helper comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father, he will bear witness about me.27 And you also will bear witness, because you have been with me from the beginning."
John 15:17-27
A marked change in emphasis is very evident in these verses, and the note of persecution becomes prominent. This extends right into the next chapter. There is a twofold connection with what has gone before. On the one hand, there is the association between fruit-bearing and suffering. Fruit-bearing always involves suffering; and, significantly, in this connection, the power of effective prayer will be an essential for the Disciples of Christ, for in their witness they will be confronted by a hostile world. On the other hand - and even more important - the outward suffering as spoken of in 18-25 stands in exact parallel to the inward disciplines of obedience, dying to sin, and the cutting of the pruning knife leading to fruit-bearing, which the first part of the chapter deals with. Taken together, these two factors reveal a very important pattern, for they speak of the inward and outward aspects of the believer's sanctification. 'The pattern of dying with Christ has to be worked out in our Christian life both inwardly and outwardly. There is an inward process of mortification - a dying to self - of which Jesus in His perfect surrender to God's will and His complete self-control is the perfect example. But Christ not only mortified His self-will, He laid down His life on the Cross and bore excruciating physical and outward suffering in body and estate and reputation. There is therefore also for the Christian an outward process of mortification to be undergone in union with Jesus Christ. Our dying with Christ is therefore always twofold. Calvin emphasises this in different ways. He speaks of a 'twofold mortification', one aspect of which relates to 'those things which are around us', the other aspect of which is inward - the mortification of the understanding and will. He speaks also of a twofold likeness of the death of Christ and of the necessity of our being conformed to Him outwardly in reproaches and troubles, as well as inwardly in the dying of the old man and the renewal of spiritual life' (R.S. Wallace). These two things are necessary accompaniments of the Christian life. If there is no inner discipline, no inner pruning by the Word, or no outward reaction from the world, we may well ask ourselves whether we are Christians at all in the New Testament sense of the term.