John
Chapter 15
Overview
Jesus is speaking privately to his closest followers as danger draws near. Using a vineyard—a familiar sight in their world—he explains that their life and work depend on staying closely joined to him. He then turns from love and friendship to a harder truth: people who rejected him may also reject them. In this chapter, “the world” means human society when it resists Jesus and his message, not the earth or every person in it. The chapter moves like a vine through sunlight and shadow, ending with the promise of God’s Spirit and the followers’ own testimony.
1Jesus said, “I am the true vine, and my Father is the farmer.
2He removes every branch in me that bears no fruit. He trims and cleans every branch that does bear fruit so that it will bear even more.
3You are already clean because of the message I have spoken to you.
4Remain in me, and I will remain in you. A branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it remains on the vine. In the same way, you cannot bear fruit unless you remain in me.
5I am the vine, and you are the branches. Whoever remains in me, while I remain in that person, bears much fruit. Apart from me, you can do nothing.
6Anyone who does not remain in me is thrown out like a branch and dries up. People gather such branches, throw them into the fire, and burn them.
7If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask for whatever you want, and it will be done for you.
8My Father is honored when you bear much fruit and become my disciples.
9Just as the Father has loved me, I have loved you. Remain in my love.
10If you obey my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have obeyed my Father’s commands and remain in his love.
11I have told you these things so that my joy may be in you and your joy may be complete.
12This is my command: Love one another just as I have loved you.
13No one has greater love than a person who gives up their life for their friends.
14You are my friends if you do what I command you.
15I no longer call you slaves, because a slave does not know what the master is doing. Instead, I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything I heard from my Father.
16You did not choose me; I chose you. I appointed you to go and bear fruit—fruit that will last—so that the Father will give you whatever you ask him on my authority.
17I give you these commands so that you will love one another.
18If the world hates you, remember that it hated me before it hated you.
19If you belonged to the world, the world would love you as its own. But you do not belong to the world, because I chose you out of it. That is why the world hates you.
20Remember what I told you: ‘A slave is not greater than the master.’ If people persecuted me, they will also persecute you. If they obeyed my message, they will also obey yours.
21They will do all these things to you because you belong to me, for they do not know the one who sent me.
22If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not be guilty of this sin. But now they have no excuse for their sin.
23Whoever hates me also hates my Father.
24If I had not done among them works that no one else had done, they would not be guilty of this sin. But now they have seen those works, yet they have hated both me and my Father.
25This happened so that the words written in their sacred Law would be fulfilled: ‘They hated me for no reason.’
26When the Helper comes—the Spirit of truth whom I will send to you from the Father, and who comes from the Father—he will testify about me.
27You also testify about me, because you have been with me from the beginning.