(Tap footnote to read it. Old Testament quotations are underlined. "Love" with a caret ("^love") is agapé.1"agapé" The Greek words ἀγάπη (agapé, noun), and ἀγαπάω (agapaó; verb) are typically translated "love". However, unlike our English word "love" – which primarily speaks of affection and feelings – agapé centers on choice and behavior. It’s the "love" based on will, choice, behavior, and action; not feelings. (Feelings-based love is the Greek word φιλέω (phileó), which properly means "brotherly love/affection".) Thus, you could hate someone passionately and still treat him with "agapé". Agapé "love" is best understood as the pursuit of what is most beneficial to someone or something, regardless of the cost to yourself or the type of response received from the person or thing. It can also indicate a preference for someone or something over other things. )
Vines and branches
- “I am the true vine and My Father is the vinegrower.
- “Every branch that’s in Me but not bearing fruit, He removes it. And every branch bearing fruit, He cleans it by pruning1“cleans… …by pruning” is one word in Greek, which means to clean something by purging it of anything unclean, and was thus applied to pruning. so it might bear more fruit.
- “You are already clean because of the word that I have spoken to you.
- “Remain in Me, and I in you. Just as the branch isn’t able to bear fruit from itself if it doesn’t remain in the vine, so neither can you unless you remain in Me.
- I am the vine, you are the branches. The man remaining in Me and I in him; this man bears much fruit because without Me you are able to do nothing.
- “If someone doesn’t remain in Me, he was cast out like a branch and was withered. And they collect them and cast them into the fire and they’re burned.2“they’re burned” is literally “it’s burned” (singular), referring to the branch (singular) in the first half of the verse.
- “If you remain in Me and My words remain in you, ask whatever you desire and it will happen for you.
- “My Father is glorified in this, that you might bear much fruit, and you will become My disciples.
Love one another
- “Just as the Father ^loved Me, I also ^loved you; remain in My ^love.
- “If you keep My commandments you will remain in My ^love, just as I have kept the commandments of My Father and I remain in His ^love.
- “I have told you these things so My joy might be in you, and your joy might be full.
- “This is My commandment, that you should ^love one another just as I ^loved you.
- “No one has greater ^love than this: that someone lays down his life for his friends.
- “You are My friends if you do what I command you.
- “I call you slaves no longer, because a slave doesn’t *know what his master is doing. But I *call you friends because I declared to you all things that I heard from My Father.
- “You didn’t choose Me, but I chose you and appointed you, so you might go and bear fruit and your fruit might remain, so that whatever you ask the Father in My name, He might give you.
- “These things I command you so you might ^love one another.
The world will hate you
- “If the world hates you, you know that it *hated Me before you.
- “If you were of the world, the world would love its own. But because you aren’t of the world, but I chose you from the world, the world hates you because of this.
- “Remember the word that I told you: A slave isn’t greater than his master. If they persecuted Me, they will also persecute you. If they kept My word, they will also keep yours.
- “But they will do all these things to you because of My name, because they haven’t known the One who sent Me.
- “If I hadn’t come and spoken to them, they wouldn’t have sin. But now they don’t have an excuse for their sin.
- “The man hating Me also hates My Father.
- “If I hadn’t done works among them that no other did, they wouldn’t have sin. But now they have both seen and hated both Me and My Father.
- “But this happened so the word *written in their law might be fulfilled: “They hated Me without cause.”3quotation/allusion to Psalm 69:4 and/or Psalm 35:19
- “When the Advocate whom I will send to you from the Father comes – the Spirit of truth who proceeds from the Father – He will testify about Me.
- “And you also testify, because you are with Me from the beginning.”
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