16:1
Sometimes we are reluctant to tell people the full truth lest it scare them away or stop them coming to Christ in the first place. This was not Jesus’ practice, see Luke 9:58. Here He is telling the disciples the full truth so that they will not fall away. Jesus never promised an easy life, He promised life.
16:2
Jesus then gets more specific. They would put them out of the synagogues, and would do so thinking that they were doing a service for God. In the early days the primary source for persecution of the church came from the Jews. Later it would come from the Romans. To understand parts of the New Testament we need to appreciate what the source of the persecution was. We should also note that this never resulted in the early church hating the Jews. Even Paul, who suffered much from them, longed for the salvation of the Jews. It is tragic that in later years the church was involved in persecution of the Jews.
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