John 15:8-16:4

Easy-to-Read Version

⁸ Show that you are my followers by producing much fruit. This will bring honor^[a] to my Father.

⁹ “I have loved you as the Father has loved me. Now continue in my love. ¹⁰ I have obeyed my Father’s commands, and he continues to love me. In the same way, if you obey my commands, I will continue to love you. ¹¹ I have told you these things so that you can have the true happiness that I have. I want you to be completely happy. ¹² This is what I command you: Love each other as I have loved you. ¹³ The greatest love people can show is to die for their friends. ¹⁴ You are my friends if you do what I tell you to do. ¹⁵ I no longer call you servants, because servants don’t know what their master is doing. But now I call you friends, because I have told you everything that my Father told me.

¹⁶ “You did not choose me. I chose you. And I gave you this work: to go and produce fruit—fruit that will last. Then the Father will give you anything you ask for in my name. ¹⁷ This is my command: Love each other.

Jesus Warns His Followers

¹⁸ “If the world hates you, remember that they hated me first. ¹⁹ If you belonged to the world, the world would love you as it loves its own people. But I have chosen you to be different from those in the world. So you don’t belong to the world, and that is why the world hates you.

²⁰ “Remember the lesson I told you: Servants are not greater than their master. If people treated me badly, they will treat you badly too. And if they obeyed my teaching, they will obey yours too. ²¹ They will do to you whatever they did to me, because you belong to me. They don’t know the one who sent me. ²² If I had not come and spoken to the people of the world, they would not be guilty of sin. But now I have spoken to them. So they have no excuse for their sin.

²³ “Whoever hates me also hates my Father. ²⁴ I did things among the people of the world that no one else has ever done. If I had not done those things, they would not be guilty of sin. But they have seen what I did, and still they hate me and my Father. ²⁵ But this happened to make clear the full meaning of what is written in their law: ‘They hated me for no reason.’^[b]

²⁶ “I will send you the Helper^[c] from the Father. The Helper is the Spirit of truth^[d] who comes from the Father. When he comes, he will tell about me. ²⁷ And you will tell people about me too, because you have been with me from the beginning.

16 “I have told you all this so that you won’t lose your faith when you face troubles. ² People will tell you to leave their synagogues and never come back. In fact, the time will come when they will think that killing you would be doing service for God. ³ They will do this because they have not known the Father, and they have not known me. ⁴ I have told you all this now to prepare you. So when the time comes for these things to happen, you will remember that I warned you.

The Work of the Holy Spirit

“I did not tell you these things at the beginning, because I was with you then.