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
The words in 25 'without a cause' are so true: How little justification anyone has for rebelling against the God Who has given them life and blessed them in all things day by day. All rebellion against God is fundamentally irrational and inexcusable - but if there is irrationality in it, there is the element of the demonic.
In face of this intractable intransigent opposition and hatred, believers might well think their task of bearing witness to be a hopeless one and doomed to failure from the start (often it is just that, from the human point of view; and how many sore and broken hearts there are in the work of God through his ministers 'up against it' with implacable opposition to their ministry and message, missionaries 'up against it', deadly situations of barrenness and worldliness, where the state of the church has become such a hindrance to faith in God). But over against this human hopelessness, there is the reality of the Holy Spirit. And He shall testify. Over against human despair in believers, broken-hearted with the implacable nature of the opposition, there is this wonderful word of Jesus: 'When the Comforter is come, He shall testify of Me'. This is what changes everything, the glorious fact of His powerful and prevailing testimony. And not only so: because He shall testify we also shall testify (the word in the Greek is the same in each case), the implication being that His testifying will be the enabling in ours. The Comforter and you! What a team, what an alliance! Because of this, there cannot ultimately be despair. We must keep believing in the darkest and most hopeless situation, the unseen yet all-prevailing Spirit of God is bearing witness in and through us.