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Chapter 15

1“I am the true vine, and my Father is the cultivator. 2Any branch of mine that does not bear fruit he trims away, and he prunes every branch that bears fruit, to make it bear more. 3You are pruned already because of the teaching that I have given you. 4You must remain united to me and I will remain united to you. Just as no branch can bear fruit by itself unless it remains united to the vine, you cannot unless you remain united to me. 5I am the vine, you are the branches. Anyone who remains united to me, with me united to him, will be very fruitful, for you cannot do anything apart from me. 6Anyone who does not remain united to me is thrown away like a branch and withers up, and they gather them and throw them into the fire and burn them. 7If you remain united to me and my words remain in your hearts, ask for whatever you please and you shall have it. 8When you are very fruitful and show yourselves to be disciples of mine, my Father is honored. 9I have loved you just as the Father has loved me. You must retain my love. 10If you keep my commands you will retain my love, just as I have observed the Father’s commands and retain his love. 11I have told you all this so that you may have the happiness that I have had, and your happiness may be complete. 12The command that I give you is to love one another just as I have loved you. 13No one can show greater love than by giving up his life for his friends. 14You are my friends if you do what I command you to do. 15I do not call you slaves any longer, for a slave does not know what his master is doing, but now I call you friends, for I have made known to you everything that I have learned from my Father. 16It was not you who chose me, it is I that have chosen you, and appointed you to go and bear fruit—fruit that shall be lasting, so that the Father may grant you whatever you ask him for as my followers.

17“What I command you to do is to love one another. 18If the world hates you, remember that it hated me first. 19If you belonged to the world, the world would love what was its own. But it is because you do not belong to the world, but I have selected you from the world, that the world hates you. 20Remember what I said to you: No slave is greater than his master. If they have persecuted me they will persecute you too. If they have observed my teaching, they will observe yours too. 21But they will do all this to you on my account, because they do not understand him who sent me. 22If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not have been guilty of sin, but as it is, they have no excuse for their sin. 23Whoever hates me hates my Father also. 24If I had not done things before them that no one else ever did they would not be guilty of sin. But as it is, they have seen both me and my Father, and they have hated us both. 25But the saying of their Law, ‘They hated me without cause,’ must be fulfilled. 26When the Helper comes whom I will send to you from the Father—that Spirit of Truth that comes from the Father—he will bear testimony to me, 27and you must bear testimony too, because you have been with me from the first.

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