Chapter 15

I am the true vine, and it is my Father who tends it.

The branch that yields no fruit in me, he cuts away; the branch that does yield fruit, he trims clean, so that it may yield more fruit.

You, through the message I have preached to you, are clean already;

you have only to live on in me, and I will live on in you. The branch that does not live on in the vine can yield no fruit of itself; no more can you, if you do not live on in me.

I am the vine, you are its branches; if a man lives on in me, and I in him, then he will yield abundant fruit; separated from me, you have no power to do anything.

If a man does not live on in me, he can only be like the branch that is cast off and withers away; such a branch is picked up and thrown into the fire, to burn there.

As long as you live on in me, and my words live on in you, you will be able to make what request you will, and have it granted.

My Father’s name has been glorified, if you yield abundant fruit, and prove yourselves my disciples.

I have bestowed my love upon you, just as my Father has bestowed his love upon me; live on, then, in my love.

You will live on in my love, if you keep my commandments, just as it is by keeping my Father’s commandments that I live on in his love.

All this I have told you, so that my joy may be yours, and the measure of your joy may be filled up.

This is my commandment, that you should love one another, as I have loved you.

This is the greatest love a man can shew, that he should lay down his life for his friends;

and you, if you do all that I command you, are my friends.

I do not speak of you any more as my servants; a servant is one who does not understand what his master is about, whereas I have made known to you all that my Father has told me; and so I have called you my friends.

It was not you that chose me, it was I that chose you. The task I have appointed you is to go out and bear fruit, fruit which will endure; so that every request you make of the Father in my name may be granted you.

These are the directions I give you, that you should love one another.

If the world hates you, be sure that it hated me before it learned to hate you.

If you belonged to the world, the world would know you for its own and love you; it is because you do not belong to the world, because I have singled you out from the midst of the world, that the world hates you.

Do not forget what I said to you, No servant can be greater than his master. They will persecute you just as they have persecuted me; they will pay the same attention to your words as to mine.

And they will treat you thus because you bear my name; they have no knowledge of him who sent me.

If I had not come and given them my message, they would not have been in fault; as it is, their fault can find no excuse.

To hate me is to hate my Father too.

If I had not done what no one else ever did in their midst they would not have been in fault; as it is, they have hated, with open eyes, both me and my Father.

And all this, in fulfilment of the saying which is written in their law, They hated me without cause.

Well, when the truth-giving Spirit, who proceeds from the Father, has come to befriend you, he whom I will send to you from the Father’s side, he will bear witness of what I was;

and you too are to be my witnesses, you who from the first have been in my company.