Sounds like you share in this paranoïa of mine.. Thank you, AllDayFaith.
More precisely, i wondered why Jesus spoke of "love" ? Can possibly this feeling of the world be made of the same products and by-products as any christian love? Difficult to Believe! Yet it's written! Is it really The same feeling of today's Gospel, about which he commands us to have for one another ?
The issue is love versus LOVE. If that makes sense.
It's not actually the same kind of love.
We need to look at the original Greek to really understand this since there are multiple words for love that were used in the New Testament and each had a slightly different meaning. also, it's important to look at what is meant by "world" here. Is it just everyone who isn't a Christian or is it something else?
So the word for "would love" here is
ephilei which comes from the root
phileo.
Phileo love is used to refer to the affection of close friends or even strong enough to give someone a kiss. The word used for "world" in this verse is
kosmon which comes from
kosmos and ultimately
komizo. Unfortunately, that word could mean anything from a specific group of people to humanity at large, so we can only make our best guess at what the word is referring to based on the context.
Looking at the context, we see that just before, Jesus uses His vine and branches imagery which speaks of those who are cut off from the vine. I would take those to be the "world" Jesus is referring to later on.
This verse has interesting parallels with John 3:16 "For God so
loved the
world He gave His only son; that whoever believes in Him will not perish but have eternal life." In John 3:16, the word used for "loved" is
ēgapēsen which ultimately comes from
agape. This kind of love means "to wish well to", "to long for", "to take pleasure in". The word for "world" is the same in both verses.
Looking at the context of John 15:19, we see that it also immediately follows Jesus telling His disciples to love each other as He loved them The word used is
agape once again just like the word used for God's love for the world in John 3:16. When Jesus refers to the world's love, though, Jesus switches to using
phileo instead, making a clear distinction between the two kinds of love.
In conclusion, I think we can safely deduce that the world has an emotional
phileo love and affection for those like itself. But the world doesn't have that affection for us because we do not belong to the same moral system.
However, the love that comes from God is different in an important way. It's
agape love which is something more profound than mere emotions. God had agape for a sinful messed up world and the disciples were told to have agape for each other. It is a kind love you have for those you may not even like necessarily. It comes from the realization that every person is made in the image of God - and for Christians, a brother ir sister in Christ. For it to truly be
agape and not just tolerance, the Spirit must be involved.
Just like God's
agape love for the world, we can have
agape love for the world, too, as we "wish well to" them, "take pleasure in" them and "long for" them to draw them out of the world's moral system and into something far better.
So there you go. My somewhat scatterbrained exegesis.