If we want people to like Christians, some of us say, we need to be more like Jesus, because how can someone not like Jesus?

I once saw a Christ-claiming organization say, “If people could see how amazing Jesus is, they would want Him.”

Along these lines, people often quote Gandhi: “I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.”

And some say the only people who hated Jesus were the religious Pharisees.

Now, of course we should be like Jesus, as much as possible. “He who says he abides in Him ought himself also to walk just as He walked,” 1 John 2:6 says.

But there is a way that Jesus said we would be like Him that knocks the legs out from under this whole line of thought: We would be hated like Him.

What Jesus said

Jesus Himself said why we would be hated. When He sent out the twelve in Matthew 10, He told them, “you will be hated by all for My name’s sake” (verse 22). He said that again in His end-times discourse in chapter 24: “you will be hated by all nations for My name’s sake” (verse 9).

In those verses, Jesus states both the reason why we will be hated — for His name’s sake, because of Him — and by whom: “All.” “All nations.” Not just the religious people. All kinds of people.

In the upper room in John 15, Jesus said all people will hate them because they hate Him:

18 “If the world hates you, you know that it hated Me before it hated you. 19 If you were of the world, the world would love its own. Yet 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 keep yours also. 21 But all these things they will do to you for My name’s sake, because they do not know Him who sent Me.”

He says it right there: The world hates Him. Not just the Pharisees. The world.

He’s including people who saw His works, who heard His teachings, who knew how amazing He was. And they still hated Him. They tried to throw Him off a cliff. They abandoned Him. They crucified Him.  

Also notice He repeats the reason the world will also hate His followers: “for My name’s sake.” Because of Him.

But in that passage, Jesus also expounds on why the world hates Him: “they do not know Him who sent Me.” They don’t know God. They’re not in relationship with Him. They’re not born-again believers.

Why we all hate Him 

This is key to understanding a fundamental truth about the condition of fallen man: Apart from Christ, we all hate God. No matter how much anyone claims the contrary, unregenerate man has no relationship with God but hostility.

There is no middle ground with Him; either we worship God or we hate Him. We’re either His children or His enemies.

Paul writes about this in Romans 8:7 — “the carnal mind is enmity against God; for it is not subject to the law of God, nor indeed can be.” James 4:4 also uses the word enmity: “friendship with the world is enmity with God.” The things of the Spirit of God are foolishness to the natural man, 1 Corinthians 2:14 says. This describes all unregenerate people; even those who have been saved were previously “enemies” of God (Romans 5:10).   

This includes those who would never think of themselves as hating God — those who are religious, go to church, and are decent people. Those who put His name on T-shirts, books, and political memes. As much as someone speaks positively of God, as much as they believe in a version of Jesus they’ve invented, if they’re not transformed by the new birth, they hate Him.

No, Gandhi did not like Christ; he hated Him.

Therefore, they hate His message. The call of the gospel repudiates what we believe about God and about ourselves, and it includes repenting of our lives as we’ve lived them and dying to ourselves, because we all, even the best of us, have earned nothing but condemnation. That’s a universally offensive message.

What this means for us 

This has at least two practical ramifications.

If the unsaved man hates God, nothing we do can change that. We can never make the true Jesus more liked by the world, without distorting His message and who He is. We can never make Him popular.

The only thing that can break through a corrupt heart, that can raise a dead soul to life, that can regenerate a man into a born-again new creation, is the Spirit-infused gospel itself. The living word of Christ, the message of the cross. God alone grants faith and repentance, and that’s the way He does it. Only the gospel can overcome the world’s hatred of Jesus, not how we live our lives.

Therefore, our only method for reaching the lost is preaching the gospel, and the effectiveness of our outreach is directly proportional to how faithful we are to the words of life in the Scriptures. Anything we take away neuters the gospel, and anything we add distracts from it.

The second ramification is that this truth prepares us to be hated, as Jesus prepared His disciples.

This is why John wrote, “Do not marvel, my brethren, if the world hates you” (1 John 3:13). This is why Paul wrote that Christians who live Godly in Christ Jesus will be persecuted (2 Timothy 3:12). Ponder that: Christians will be persecuted because they are living Godly. We will be hated for doing the very thing some say we should do so that we won’t be hated!

Don’t add to the hate 

Now of course, and I can’t say this emphatically enough, Jesus should be the only reason anyone hates us. It should never be because we’re jerks. As much as the world hates God already, they could also hate Him because of us: “the name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you” (Romans 2:24).

We’re called to love the enemies who hate us, to bless those who revile us. We’re called to adorn the gospel with our kindness, holiness and good works.

But those aren’t tactics; those are commands. We don’t do those things to get people to like us; we do them because it’s the fruit of the Holy Spirit within us.  

Even if the world hates us, they will have no choice but to at least respect us if we are not a reproach to Christ. Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians 6:3 to “give no offense in anything, that our ministry may not be blamed.”

So let’s not add reasons for people to hate us, on top of Christ Himself. And let’s not think it’s only certain people who will.