Election and Embracing Suffering

If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you. 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.
John 15:18, 19 (emphasis added)

In addition to trusting and worshiping the covenant-keeping God, the beneficiaries have to embrace the darkness attendant to their election. In [the case of Old Testament Israel they had] to embrace the hardness of Pharaoh's heart just as the people of God later embraced the hardness of the Roman Empire and of the Holy Roman Empire, even to death, and as the Mennonites embraced the hardness of Stalin. Christ warns, "If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first. If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you" (John 15:18-19). The chosen have to embrace that truth in order to participate in God's salvific work.

--Bruce Waltke, An Old Testament Theology: An Exegetical, Canonical, and Thematic Approach, p. 359.