John 15

Williams^{(i) 1} "I am the real vine, and my Father is the cultivator. ² He cuts away any branch on me that stops bearing fruit, and He repeatedly prunes every branch that continues to bear fruit, to make it bear more. ³ You are already pruned because of the teaching that I have given you. ⁴ You must remain in union with me and I will remain in union with you. Just as no branch by itself can bear fruit unless it remains united to the vine, so you cannot unless you remain in union with me. ⁵ I am the vine, you are the branches. Whoever remains in union with me and I in union with him will bear abundant fruit, because you cannot do anything cut off from union with me. ⁶ If anyone does not remain in union with me, he is thrown away as a mere branch and is dried up; then it is picked up and thrown into the fire and burned up. ⁷ If you remain in union with me and my words remain in you, you may ask whatever you please and you shall have it. ⁸ By your continuously bearing abundant fruit and in this way proving yourselves to be real disciples of mine, my Father is glorified. ⁹ I have loved you just as the Father has loved me. You must remain in my love. ¹⁰ If you continue to keep my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father's commands and remain in His love. ¹¹ "I have told you these things, that the joy which I have had may remain in you and that your joy may be complete. ¹² This is my command to you, to keep on loving one another as I have loved you. ¹³ No one can show greater love than this, the giving of his life for his friends. ¹⁴ You are my friends, if you keep on doing what I command you to do. ¹⁵ I no longer call you slaves, because the slave does not know what his master is doing; I now call you friends, because I have told you everything that I have learned from my Father. ¹⁶ You have not chosen me; I have chosen you, and appointed you to go and bear fruit, that your fruit may remain too, so that the Father may grant you, as bearers of my name, whatever you ask Him for. ¹⁷ "What I command you to do is, to keep on loving one another. ¹⁸ If the world continues to hate you, remember that it has first hated me. ¹⁹ If you belonged to the world, the world would love what is its own. But it is because you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, that the world hates you. ²⁰ Remember what I once told you: No slave is greater than his master. If they have persecuted me, they will persecute you too. If they have observed my teaching, they will observe yours too. ²¹ They will do all this to you on account of me, because they do not know Him who has sent me. ²² "If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not be guilty of sin. But now the fact is, they have no excuse for their sin. ²³ Whoever continues to hate me continues to hate my Father too. ²⁴ If I had not done things among them that no one else has ever done, they would not be guilty of sin. But now the fact is, they have seen and even hated both my Father and me. ²⁵ But this is so that the saying written in their law may be fulfilled, 'They hated me without a cause.' ²⁶ "When the Helper comes whom I will send from the Father to you, the Spirit of truth that comes from the Father, He will testify to me. ²⁷ And you too are to bear testimony to me, because you have been with me from the start."