John 15:12-27

Common English Bible

¹² This is my commandment: love each other just as I have loved you. ¹³ No one has greater love than to give up one’s life for one’s friends. ¹⁴ You are my friends if you do what I command you. ¹⁵ I don’t call you servants any longer, because servants don’t know what their master is doing. Instead, I call you friends, because everything I heard from my Father I have made known to you. ¹⁶ You didn’t choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you could go and produce fruit and so that your fruit could last. As a result, whatever you ask the Father in my name, he will give you. ¹⁷ I give you these commandments so that you can love each other.

If the world hates you

¹⁸ “If the world hates you, know that it hated me first. ¹⁹ If you belonged to the world, the world would love you as its own. However, I have chosen you out of the world, and you don’t belong to the world. This is why the world hates you. ²⁰ Remember what I told you, ‘Servants aren’t greater than their master.’ If the world harassed me, it will harass you too. If it kept my word, it will also keep yours. ²¹ The world will do all these things to you on account of my name, because it doesn’t know the one who sent me.

²² “If I hadn’t come and spoken to the people of this world, they wouldn’t be sinners. But now they have no excuse for their sin. ²³ Whoever hates me also hates the Father. ²⁴ If I hadn’t done works among them that no one else had done, they wouldn’t be sinners. But now they have seen and hated both me and my Father. ²⁵ This fulfills the word written in their Law, They hated me without a reason.^[a]

²⁶ “When the Companion^[b] comes, whom I will send from the Father—the Spirit of Truth who proceeds from the Father—he will testify about me. ²⁷ You will testify too, because you have been with me from the beginning.