Love In The Face Of Hate

John 15:12-17 (NASB)
¹²  "This is My commandment, that you love one another, just as I have loved you.
¹³  "Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends.
¹⁴  "You are My friends if you do what I command you.
¹⁵  "No longer do I call you slaves, for the slave does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all things that I have heard from My Father I have made known to you.
¹⁶  "You did not choose Me but I chose you, and appointed you that you would go and bear fruit, and that your fruit would remain, so that whatever you ask of the Father in My name He may give to you.
¹⁷  "This I command you, that you love one another. 

1. Helping Sacrificial Love

2. Honoring Friendship & Common Cause

John 15:18-27 (NASB)
¹⁸  "If the world hates you, you know that it has hated Me before it hated you.
¹⁹  "If you were of the world, the world would love its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, because of this the world hates you.
²⁰  "Remember the word that I said to you, 'A slave is not greater than his master.' If they persecuted Me, they will also persecute you; if they kept My word, they will keep yours also.
²¹  "But all these things they will do to you for My name's sake, because they do not know the One who sent Me.
²²  "If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not have sin, but now they have no excuse for their sin.
²³  "He who hates Me hates My Father also.
²⁴  "If I had not done among them the works which no one else did, they would not have sin; but now they have both seen and hated Me and My Father as well.
²⁵  "But they have done this to fulfill the word that is written in their Law, 'THEY HATED ME WITHOUT A CAUSE.'
²⁶  "When the Helper comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, that is the Spirit of truth who proceeds from the Father, He will testify about Me,
²⁷  and you will testify also, because you have been with Me from the beginning.

3. Having Hope For A Hateful World

John 16:1-4 (NASB)
¹  "These things I have spoken to you so that you may be kept from stumbling.
²  "They will make you outcasts from the synagogue, but an hour is coming for everyone who kills you to think that he is offering service to God.
³  "These things they will do because they have not known the Father or Me.
⁴  "But these things I have spoken to you, so that when their hour comes, you may remember that I told you of them. These things I did not say to you at the beginning, because I was with you.