John 15:12-27

The Voice

¹² My commandment to you is this: love others as I have loved you. ¹³ There is no greater way to love than to give your life for your friends. ¹⁴ You celebrate our friendship if you obey this command. ¹⁵ I don’t call you servants any longer; servants don’t know what the master is doing, but I have told you everything the Father has said to Me. I call you friends. ¹⁶ You did not choose Me. I chose you, and I orchestrated all of this so that you would be sent out and bear great and perpetual fruit. As you do this, anything you ask the Father in My name will be done. ¹⁷ This is My command to you: love one another.

¹⁸ If you find that the world despises you, remember that before it despised you, it first despised Me. ¹⁹ If you were a product of the world order, then it would love you. But you are not a product of the world because I have taken you out of it, and it despises you for that very reason. ²⁰ Don’t forget what I have spoken to you: “a servant is not greater than the master.” If I was mistreated, you should expect nothing less. If they accepted what I have spoken, they will also hear you. ²¹ Everything they do to you they will do on My account because they do not know the One who has sent Me. ²² If I had not spoken within their hearing, they would not be guilty of sin; but now they have no excuse for ignoring My voice.

²³ If someone despises Me, he also despises My Father. ²⁴ If I had not demonstrated things for them that have never been done, they would not be guilty of sin. But the reality is they have stared Me in the face, and they have despised Me and the Father nonetheless. ²⁵ Yet their law, which says, “They despised Me without any cause,”^[a] has again been proven true.

²⁶ I will send a great Helper to you from the Father, one known as the Spirit of truth. He comes from the Father and will point to the truth as it concerns Me. ²⁷ But you will also point others to the truth about My identity, because you have journeyed with Me since this all began.