John 15: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

Jesus, still talking with his disciples on the last night before his death, compares himself to a vine and his followers to branches: they can bear fruit only by staying joined to him, and his Father tends the vine. He tells them to remain in his love, commands them to love one another as he has loved them, and says he now calls them friends rather than servants, because he has told them what he heard from his Father. He then warns that the world will hate and persecute them as it hated him and his Father, and says the guilt of those who reject him follows from his having come, spoken, and done works among them. He promises to send the Spirit of truth from the Father, who will testify about him, as the disciples also will.

Claim by Claim

1. 15:1
   • Jesus says he is the true vine.
   • Jesus says his Father is the vinedresser.
2. 15:2
   • Jesus says the Father takes away every branch in him that does not bear fruit.
   • Jesus says the Father prunes every branch that does bear fruit.
   • Jesus says the pruning is so that the branch may bear more fruit.
3. 15:3
   • Jesus tells the disciples they are already clean.
   • Jesus says they are clean because of the word he has spoken to them.
4. 15:4
   • Jesus commands them to remain in him.
   • Jesus says he will remain in them.
   • Jesus says a branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it remains in the vine.
   • Jesus says they likewise cannot bear fruit unless they remain in him.
5. 15:5
   • Jesus says he is the vine.
   • Jesus says they are the branches.
   • Jesus says the one who remains in him, and in whom he remains, bears much fruit.
   • Jesus says that apart from him they can do nothing.
6. 15:6
   • Jesus says that if anyone does not remain in him, he is thrown outside like a branch.
   • Jesus says such a one withers.
   • Jesus says such branches are gathered.
   • Jesus says such branches are thrown into the fire.
   • Jesus says such branches are burned.
7. 15:7
   • Jesus says that if they remain in him and his words remain in them, they may ask whatever they wish.
   • Jesus says that in that case what they ask will be done for them.
8. 15:8
   • Jesus says his Father is glorified in this, that they bear much fruit.
   • Jesus says that by this they will be his disciples.
9. 15:9
   • Jesus says the Father has loved him.
   • Jesus says he has loved them in the same way the Father loved him.
   • Jesus commands them to remain in his love.
10. 15:10
    • Jesus says that if they keep his commandments they will remain in his love.
    • Jesus says he has kept his Father's commandments.
    • Jesus says he remains in his Father's love.
11. 15:11
    • Jesus says he has spoken these things to them.
    • Jesus says his purpose is that his joy may be in them.
    • Jesus says his purpose is that their joy may be full.
12. 15:12
    • Jesus says this is his commandment: that they love one another.
    • Jesus says they are to love one another as he has loved them.
13. 15:13
    • Jesus says no one has greater love than this: that a person lay down his life for his friends.
14. 15:14
    • Jesus says they are his friends if they do what he commands them.
15. 15:15
    • Jesus says he no longer calls them servants.
    • Jesus says a servant does not know what his master is doing.
    • Jesus says he has called them friends.
    • Jesus says he has made known to them all the things he heard from his Father.
16. 15:16
    • Jesus says they did not choose him.
    • Jesus says he chose them.
    • Jesus says he appointed them.
    • Jesus says he appointed them so that they should go and bear fruit.
    • Jesus says he appointed them so that their fruit should remain.
    • Jesus says the purpose is that whatever they ask the Father in his name, the Father may give it to them.
17. 15:17
    • Jesus says he commands them these things.
    • Jesus says the purpose of his command is that they love one another.
18. 15:18
    • Jesus says that if the world hates them, they know it hated him before it hated them.
19. 15:19
    • Jesus says that if they were of the world, the world would love its own.
    • Jesus says they are not of the world.
    • Jesus says he chose them out of the world.
    • Jesus says that for this reason the world hates them.
20. 15:20
    • Jesus tells them to remember the word he said to them.
    • Jesus says the servant is not greater than his master.
    • Jesus says that if they persecuted him, they will also persecute the disciples.
    • Jesus says that if they kept his word, they will keep the disciples' word also.
21. 15:21
    • Jesus says they will do all these things to the disciples because of his name.
    • Jesus says they act so because they do not know the one who sent him.
22. 15:22
    • Jesus says that if he had not come and spoken to them, they would not have sin.
    • Jesus says that now they have no excuse for their sin.
23. 15:23
    • Jesus says the one who hates him hates his Father also.
24. 15:24
    • Jesus says that if he had not done among them the works that no one else did, they would not have sin.
    • Jesus says that now they have both seen and hated both him and his Father.
25. 15:25
    • Jesus says this happens so that the word written in their law may be fulfilled.
    • Jesus quotes the written word: they hated me without a cause.
26. 15:26
    • Jesus speaks of the coming of the Comforter.
    • Jesus says he will send the Comforter to them from the Father.
    • Jesus identifies the Comforter as the Spirit of truth.
    • Jesus says the Spirit of truth proceeds from the Father.
    • Jesus says the Comforter will testify about him.
27. 15:27
    • Jesus says they also will bear witness.
    • Jesus says they will bear witness because they have been with him from the beginning.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

15:1

The vine was a standing image for the people of Israel in the Hebrew scriptures (Isaiah 5, Psalm 80, Jeremiah 2), usually in passages complaining that the vine yielded nothing worth having. "True" here means real or genuine, the actual thing the older image pointed at. "Husbandman" is 1611 English for a farmer; the Greek word means specifically the man who works a vineyard, whether he owns it or tends it for someone else. Jesus is still speaking privately to his disciples on the night before his death, the conversation that began in chapter 13.

15:2

"Purgeth" has shifted badly since 1611. It then meant simply to clean, and applied to a vine it means to prune: cutting back last season's wood so the plant's strength goes into fruit rather than foliage. The Greek verb behind "taketh away" is also open. It can mean remove or carry off, and it can mean lift up, and some readers take it as a vinedresser raising trailing branches off the ground rather than cutting them out. The wording does not settle which.

15:3

"Clean" is the adjective built on the same Greek root as the verb rendered "purgeth" in verse 2, so the sentence is still inside the pruning picture: pruned and therefore clean. "Word" means the whole message he has spoken to them, not a single word.

15:4

"Abide" in 1611 means to stay, to remain, to go on living in a place. It does not carry the modern senses found in "abide by a rule" or "cannot abide him." It is the governing verb of this whole passage and returns again and again through the chapter.

15:5

"Without me" in 1611 English means apart from me, cut off from me, in the way a severed branch is without the vine. It does not mean merely lacking something.

15:6

Vine wood is useless as timber, too soft and twisted for building or tools and not worth keeping, so prunings were simply gathered and burned. The hearers would be picturing routine vineyard housekeeping at the end of a season.

15:7

"Ye shall ask what ye will" is not a prediction about the future. In the Greek "ask" is a command: ask for whatever you want. "What ye will" means whatever you wish, "will" here being the verb to want.

15:8

"Glorified" translates a verb meaning to be given weight, honor and public reputation. "So shall ye be my disciples" is genuinely ambiguous in the Greek and can mean either "and so you will become my disciples" or "and so you will show yourselves to be my disciples." A disciple was a learner attached to a particular teacher, living alongside him and taking his way of life as well as his instruction.

15:9

"Continue ye in my love" uses the same Greek verb translated "abide" through the rest of the chapter. It is the same instruction as verse 4, not a different one; the KJV has simply varied its English.

15:10

"Keep" in 1611 means to observe, guard and hold to, that is, to obey. "Commandments" are instructions given with authority, not advice.

15:11

"Full" here means filled to the brim, complete, with nothing still missing. The Greek verb is the one used of filling a container.

15:13

"Lay down his life" is an idiom for dying deliberately and by choice, the Greek suggesting a man setting something down of his own accord rather than having it taken. "No man" means no person at all; 1611 English used "man" for a human being of either sex.

15:14

Friendship in this world was not mainly about liking someone. A friend was someone bound to you by loyalty and mutual obligation, part of your circle, expected to act for you and to stand by you. That is why a sentence about friendship can have a condition about obeying commands attached to it without sounding strange.

15:15

"Servants" translates a Greek word meaning slaves, people owned by a household rather than hired and free to leave, and "lord" here means simply the master who owns them. The contrast is between someone kept in the dark about his owner's business and a friend let in on it. "Heard of my Father" uses "of" in its older sense of from.

15:16

In the world these men knew, a student normally sought out and attached himself to a teacher, so "ye have not chosen me" reverses the expected arrangement. "Ordained" in 1611 means appointed or put in place for a purpose and carries none of the later church sense of ordaining clergy. Asking "in my name" means asking as his representatives and on his authority; a person's name stood for the person himself and for the standing he had.

15:18

"The world" in John's Gospel usually means human society as it runs itself, the whole settled arrangement of people and their loyalties, rather than the planet or the natural order.

15:19

"The world would love his own" uses "his" where modern English says "its." In 1611 the possessive "its" was still new and unsettled, and "his" did duty for neuter things as well. The sense is that the world loves whatever belongs to it.

15:20

"Kept my saying" means obeyed my message; "keep" again in the older sense of observe and hold to. The line "the servant is not greater than his lord" is a proverb Jesus had already used in this same evening's conversation, when he washed their feet (John 13:16).

15:21

"For my name's sake" means on account of me, because of your attachment to me. The name stands for the person, so to suffer for the name is to suffer for belonging to him.

15:22

"They had not had sin" is older English for "they would not have had sin"; the KJV uses a plain past perfect where modern English needs "would have." "Have sin" is a Greek idiom meaning to carry guilt, to be answerable, rather than to commit any one act. "Cloak" means a covering thrown over something to hide it, hence a pretext or excuse; the Greek word means exactly that, an excuse to hide behind.

15:24

"Works" means the deeds he performed among them, the things John's Gospel elsewhere calls signs. The construction "they had not had sin" is the same older past perfect as in verse 22, meaning "they would not have had sin."

15:25

"Their law" here covers the whole body of Hebrew scripture, not just the books of Moses; the quoted line comes from the Psalms (35:19, or 69:4). Calling it "their law" points at the fact that the words stand in their own book.

15:26

"Comforter" translates the Greek parakletos, which literally means someone called to stand beside you. In a legal setting it meant an advocate who speaks up for you; in 1611 "comfort" carried more of the sense of strengthening than of soothing. No single English word covers it, which is why translations vary between Comforter, Helper, Advocate and Counselor. "Testify" is courtroom language for giving evidence as a witness. "Which proceedeth" uses "which" of a person, normal in 1611 where modern English says "who."

15:27

"Bear witness" is the same courtroom word translated "testify" in verse 26, so the two verses together picture a trial in which both the Spirit and these men give evidence. "From the beginning" means from the start of Jesus' public work, when these particular men first joined him, not the beginning of the world.