Read the New Testament in 24 Weeks

14 “Don’t let yourselves be disturbed. Trust in God and trust in me. ² In my Father’s house are many places to live. If there weren’t, I would have told you; because I am going there to prepare a place for you. ³ Since I am going and preparing a place for you, I will return to take you with me; so that where I am, you may be also. ⁴ Furthermore, you know where I’m going; and you know the way there.”

⁵ T’oma said to him, “Lord, we don’t know where you’re going; so how can we know the way?” ⁶ Yeshua said, “I AM the Way — and the Truth and the Life; no one comes to the Father except through me. ⁷ Because you have known me, you will also know my Father; from now on, you do know him — in fact, you have seen him.”

⁸ Philip said to him, “Lord, show us the Father, and it will be enough for us.” ⁹ Yeshua replied to him, “Have I been with you so long without your knowing me, Philip? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father; so how can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? ¹⁰ Don’t you believe that I am united with the Father, and the Father united with me? What I am telling you, I am not saying on my own initiative; the Father living in me is doing his own works. ¹¹ Trust me, that I am united with the Father, and the Father united with me. But if you can’t, then trust because of the works themselves. ¹² Yes, indeed! I tell you that whoever trusts in me will also do the works I do! Indeed, he will do greater ones, because I am going to the Father. ¹³ In fact, whatever you ask for in my name, I will do; so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. ¹⁴ If you ask me for something in my name, I will do it.

¹⁵ “If you love me, you will keep my commands; ¹⁶ and I will ask the Father, and he will give you another comforting Counselor like me, the Spirit of Truth, to be with you forever. ¹⁷ The world cannot receive him, because it neither sees nor knows him. You know him, because he is staying with you and will be united with you. ¹⁸ I will not leave you orphans — I am coming to you. ¹⁹ In just a little while, the world will no longer see me; but you will see me. Because I live, you too will live. ²⁰ When that day comes, you will know that I am united with my Father, and you with me, and I with you. ²¹ Whoever has my commands and keeps them is the one who loves me, and the one who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and reveal myself to him.”

²² Y’hudah (not the one from K’riot) said to him, “What has happened, Lord, that you are about to reveal yourself to us and not to the world?” ²³ Yeshua answered him, “If someone loves me, he will keep my word; and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him. ²⁴ Someone who doesn’t love me doesn’t keep my words — and the word you are hearing is not my own but that of the Father who sent me.

²⁵ “I have told you these things while I am still with you. ²⁶ But the Counselor, the Ruach HaKodesh, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything; that is, he will remind you of everything I have said to you.

²⁷ “What I am leaving with you is shalom — I am giving you my shalom. I don’t give the way the world gives. Don’t let yourselves be upset or frightened. ²⁸ You heard me tell you, ‘I am leaving, and I will come back to you.’ If you loved me, you would have been glad that I am going to the Father; because the Father is greater than I.

²⁹ “Also, I have said it to you now, before it happens; so that when it does happen, you will trust.

³⁰ “I won’t be talking with you much longer, because the ruler of this world is coming. He has no claim on me; ³¹ rather, this is happening so that the world may know that I love the Father, and that I do as the Father has commanded me.

“Get up! Let’s get going!

15 “I am the real vine, and my Father is the gardener. ² Every branch which is part of me but fails to bear fruit, he cuts off; and every branch that does bear fruit, he prunes, so that it may bear more fruit. ³ Right now, because of the word which I have spoken to you, you are pruned. ⁴ Stay united with me, as I will with you — for just as the branch can’t put forth fruit by itself apart from the vine, so you can’t bear fruit apart from me.

⁵ “I am the vine and you are the branches. Those who stay united with me, and I with them, are the ones who bear much fruit; because apart from me you can’t do a thing. ⁶ Unless a person remains united with me, he is thrown away like a branch and dries up. Such branches are gathered and thrown into the fire, where they are burned up.

⁷ “If you remain united with me, and my words with you, then ask whatever you want, and it will happen for you. ⁸ This is how my Father is glorified — in your bearing much fruit; this is how you will prove to be my talmidim.

⁹ “Just as my Father has loved me, I too have loved you; so stay in my love. ¹⁰ If you keep my commands, you will stay in my love — just as I have kept my Father’s commands and stay in his love. ¹¹ I have said this to you so that my joy may be in you, and your joy be complete.

¹² “This is my command: that you keep on loving each other just as I have loved you. ¹³ No one has greater love than a person who lays down his life for his friends. ¹⁴ You are my friends, if you do what I command you. ¹⁵ I no longer call you slaves, because a slave doesn’t know what his master is about; but I have called you friends, because everything I have heard from my Father I have made known to you. ¹⁶ You did not choose me, I chose you; and I have commissioned you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last; so that whatever you ask from the Father in my name he may give you. ¹⁷ This is what I command you: keep loving each other!

¹⁸ “If the world hates you, understand that it hated me first. ¹⁹ If you belonged to the world, the world would have loved its own. But because you do not belong to the world — on the contrary, I have picked you out of the world — therefore the world hates you. ²⁰ Remember what I told you, ‘A slave is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will persecute you too; if they kept my word, they will keep yours too. ²¹ But they will do all this to you on my account, because they don’t know the One who sent me.

²² “If I had not come and spoken to them, they wouldn’t be guilty of sin; but now, they have no excuse for their sin. ²³ Whoever hates me hates my Father also. ²⁴ If I had not done in their presence works which no one else ever did, they would not be guilty of sin; but now, they have seen them and have hated both me and my Father. ²⁵ But this has happened in order to fulfill the words in their Torah which read, ‘They hated me for no reason at all.’^[a]

²⁶ “When the Counselor comes, whom I will send you from the Father — the Spirit of Truth, who keeps going out from the Father — he will testify on my behalf. ²⁷ And you testify too, because you have been with me from the outset.