Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)

¹⁶ You did not choose me, but I chose you. I gave you a big work to do. That work is to go out and do good things and to make the good things that you do remain strong. If you do that, my Father will do anything you ask in my name.

¹⁷ `Here is the law I gave you. Love each other.'

¹⁸ `If the world hates you, remember that it hated me before it hated you.

¹⁹ If you belonged to this world, the world would love you. But you do not belong to the world. I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you.

²⁰ Remember what I told you. I said, "The servant is not better than his master." If the people in the world have troubled me, they will also trouble you. If they obey me, they will also obey you.

²¹ They will do all these things to you because you are true to me. They do not know the one who sent me.

²² `I came and spoke to them. If I had not done that, then what they did would not have been a wrong thing. But now they have no excuse for doing it.

²³ The person who hates me hates my Father also.

²⁴ No other person has ever done the work that I have done. If they had, then what they did would not be a wrong thing. But now they have seen me and hated me and my Father also.

²⁵ This has happened in order to make the words of their law book come true. It says, "They hated me for no reason."