Bible verses about "fruitfulness" | Moffatt

¹⁶ You have not chosen me, it is I who have chosen you, appointing you to go and bear fruit — fruit that lasts, so that the Father may grant you whatever you ask in my name.

⁸ As you bear rich fruit and prove yourselves my disciples, my Father is glorified.

⁶ of this I am confident, that he who has begun the good work in you will go on completing it until the day of Jesus Christ.

⁵ for this very reason, do you contrive to make it your whole concern to furnish your faith with resolution, resolution with intelligence, ⁶ intelligence with self-control, self-control with stedfastness, stedfastness with piety, ⁷ piety with brotherliness, brotherliness with Christian love. ⁸ For as these qualities exist and increase with you, they render you active and fruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ; ⁹ whereas he who has not these by him is blind, shortsighted, oblivious that he has been cleansed from his erstwhile sins.

¹⁴ My brothers, what is the use of anyone declaring he has faith, if he has no deeds to show? Can his faith save him? ¹⁵ Suppose some brother or sister is ill-clad and short of daily food; ¹⁶ if any of you says to them, "Depart in peace! Get warm, get food," without supplying their bodily needs, what use is that? ¹⁷ So faith, unless it has deeds, is dead in itself. ¹⁸ Someone will object, 'And you claim to have faith!' Yes, and I claim to have deeds as well; you show me your faith without any deeds, and I will show you by my deeds what faith is! ¹⁹ You believe in one God? Well and good. So do the devils, and they shudder. ²⁰ But will you understand, you senseless fellow, that faith without deeds is dead? ²¹ When our father Abraham offered his son Isaac on the altar, was he not justified by what he did? ²² In his case, you see, faith co-operated with deeds, faith was completed by deeds, ²³ and the scripture was fulfilled: Abraham believed God, and this was counted to him as righteousness — he was called God's friend. ²⁴ You observe it is by what he does that a man is justified, not simply by what he believes. ²⁵ So too with Rahab the harlot. Was she not justified by what she did, when she entertained the scouts and got them away by a different road? ²⁶ For as the body without the breath of life is dead, so faith is dead without deeds.

²² But the harvest of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, good temper, kindliness, generosity, fidelity, ²³ gentleness, self-control: — there is no law against those who practise such things.

¹ [Chapters 15 & 16 are placed in the middle of verse 13:31] "I am the real Vine, and my Father is the vine-dresser; ² he cuts away any branch on me which is not bearing fruit, and cleans every branch which does bear fruit, to make it bear richer fruit. ³ You are already clean, by the word I have spoken to you. ⁴ Remain in me, as I remain in you: just as a branch cannot bear fruit by itself, without remaining on the vine, neither can you, unless you remain in me. ⁵ I am the vine, you are the branches. He who remains in me, as I in him, bears rich fruit (because apart from me you can do nothing). ⁶ If anyone does not remain in me he is thrown aside like a branch and he withers up; then the branches are gathered and thrown into the fire to be burned. ⁷ If you remain in me and my words remain in you, then ask whatever you like and you shall have it. ⁸ As you bear rich fruit and prove yourselves my disciples, my Father is glorified. ⁹ As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; remain within my love. ¹⁰ If you keep my commands you will remain within my love, just as I have kept my Father's commands and remain within his love. ¹¹ I have told you this, that my joy may be within you and your joy complete. ¹² This is my command: you are to love one another as I have loved you. ¹³ To lay life down for his friends, man has no greater love than that. ¹⁴ You are my friends — if you do what I command you; ¹⁵ I call you servants no longer, because a servant does not know what his master is doing: I call you friends, because I have imparted to you all that I have learned from my Father. ¹⁶ You have not chosen me, it is I who have chosen you, appointing you to go and bear fruit — fruit that lasts, so that the Father may grant you whatever you ask in my name. ¹⁷ This is what I command you, to love one another. ¹⁸ If the world hates you, remember it hated me first. ¹⁹ If you belonged to the world, the world would love what it owned; it is because you do not belong to the world, because I have chosen you from the world, that the world hates you. ²⁰ Remember what I told you, 'A servant is not greater than his master.' If they persecuted me, they will persecute you; if they hold to my word, they will hold to yours. ²¹ They will do all this to you on account of my name, because they know not him who sent me. ²² They would not be guilty, if I had not come and spoken to them; but, as it is, they have no excuse for their sin — ²³ he who hates me hates my Father also. ²⁴ They would not be guilty, if I had not done deeds among them such as no one has ever done; but, as it is, they have seen — and they have hated — both me and my Father. ²⁵ It is that the word written in their Law may be fulfilled: they hated me for no cause. ²⁶ When the Helper comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth which issues from the Father, he will bear witness to me; ²⁷ and you too are witnesses, for you have been with me from the very beginning.