John 15

¹ “I am the true vine, and my Father is the farmer.

² Every branch in me that doesn’t bear fruit, he takes away. Every branch that bears fruit, he prunes, that it may bear more fruit.

³ You are already pruned clean because of the word which I have spoken to you.

⁴ Remain in me, and I in you. As the branch can’t bear fruit by itself unless it remains in the vine, so neither can you, unless you remain in me.

⁵ I am the vine. You are the branches. He who remains in me and I in him bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.

⁶ If a man doesn’t remain in me, he is thrown out as a branch and is withered; and they gather them, throw them into the fire, and they are burned.

⁷ If you remain in me, and my words remain in you, you will ask whatever you desire, and it will be done for you.

⁸ “In this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit; and so you will be my disciples.

⁹ Even as the Father has loved me, I also have loved you. Remain in my love.

¹⁰ If you keep my commandments, you will remain in my love, even as I have kept my Father’s commandments and remain in his love.

¹¹ I have spoken these things to you, that my joy may remain in you, and that your joy may be made full.

¹² “This is my commandment, that you love one another, even as I have loved you.

¹³ Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.

¹⁴ You are my friends if you do whatever I command you.

¹⁵ No longer do I call you servants, for the servant doesn’t know what his lord does. But I have called you friends, for everything that I heard from my Father, I have made known to you.

¹⁶ You didn’t choose me, but I chose you and appointed you, that you should go and bear fruit, and that your fruit should remain; that whatever you will ask of the Father in my name, he may give it to you.

¹⁷ “I command these things to you, that you may love one another.

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, since 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 lord.’¹ If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you. If they kept my word, they will also keep yours.

²¹ But they will do all these things to you for my name’s sake, because they don’t know him who sent me.

²² If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not have had sin; but now they have no excuse for their sin.

²³ He who hates me, hates my Father also.

²⁴ If I hadn’t done among them the works which no one else did, they wouldn’t have had sin. But now they have seen and also hated both me and my Father.

²⁵ But this happened so that the word may be fulfilled which was written in their law, ‘They hated me without a cause.’²

²⁶ “When the Counselor³ has come, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father, he will testify about me.

²⁷ You will also testify, because you have been with me from the beginning.