Journey Through God's Word

¹“I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser.

² Every branch in me that does not bear fruit he takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes, that it may bear more fruit.

³Already you are clean because of the word that I have spoken to you.

⁴ Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me.

⁵I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.

⁶If anyone does not abide in me he is thrown away like a branch and withers; and the branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned.

⁷If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.

⁸ By this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples.

⁹ As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love.

¹⁰ If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father's commandments and abide in his love.

¹¹These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full.

¹² “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.

¹³ Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.

¹⁴You are my friends if you do what I command you.

¹⁵ No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you.

¹⁶You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you.

¹⁷These things I command you, so that you will love one another.

¹⁸ “If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you.

¹⁹ If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you.

²⁰Remember the word that I said to you: ‘A servant is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you. If they kept my word, they will also keep yours.

²¹But all these things they will do to you on account of my name, because they do not know him who sent me.

²²If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not have been guilty of sin, but now they have no excuse for their sin.

²³ Whoever hates me hates my Father also.

²⁴ If I had not done among them the works that no one else did, they would not be guilty of sin, but now they have seen and hated both me and my Father.

²⁵But the word that is written in their Law must be fulfilled: ‘They hated me without a cause.’

²⁶“But when the Helper comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father, he will bear witness about me.

²⁷And you also will bear witness, because you have been with me from the beginning.

¹What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound?

²By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it?

³Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?

⁴We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.

⁵For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.

⁶We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin.

⁷For one who has died has been set free from sin.

⁸Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him.

⁹We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him.

¹⁰For the death he died he died to sin, once for all, but the life he lives he lives to God.

¹¹So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.

¹²Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, to make you obey its passions.

¹³Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness.

¹⁴For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace.

¹⁵What then? Are we to sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means!

¹⁶Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness?

¹⁷But thanks be to God, that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed,

¹⁸and, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness.

¹⁹I am speaking in human terms, because of your natural limitations. For just as you once presented your members as slaves to impurity and to lawlessness leading to more lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness leading to sanctification.

²⁰For when you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness.

²¹But what fruit were you getting at that time from the things of which you are now ashamed? For the end of those things is death.

²²But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the fruit you get leads to sanctification and its end, eternal life.

²³For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

¹But I, brothers, could not address you as spiritual people, but as people of the flesh, as infants in Christ.

²I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for it. And even now you are not yet ready,

³for you are still of the flesh. For while there is jealousy and strife among you, are you not of the flesh and behaving only in a human way?

⁴For when one says, “I follow Paul,” and another, “I follow Apollos,” are you not being merely human?

⁵What then is Apollos? What is Paul? Servants through whom you believed, as the Lord assigned to each.

⁶I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth.

⁷So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth.

⁸He who plants and he who waters are one, and each will receive his wages according to his labor.

⁹For we are God's fellow workers. You are God's field, God's building.

¹⁰According to the grace of God given to me, like a skilled master builder I laid a foundation, and someone else is building upon it. Let each one take care how he builds upon it.

¹¹For no one can lay a foundation other than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ.

¹²Now if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw —

¹³each one's work will become manifest, for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed by fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done.

¹⁴If the work that anyone has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward.

¹⁵If anyone's work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire.

¹⁶Do you not know that you are God's temple and that God's Spirit dwells in you?

¹⁷If anyone destroys God's temple, God will destroy him. For God's temple is holy, and you are that temple.

¹⁸Let no one deceive himself. If anyone among you thinks that he is wise in this age, let him become a fool that he may become wise.

¹⁹For the wisdom of this world is folly with God. For it is written, “He catches the wise in their craftiness,”

²⁰and again, “The Lord knows the thoughts of the wise, that they are futile.”

²¹So let no one boast in men. For all things are yours,

²²whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or the present or the future — all are yours,

²³and you are Christ's, and Christ is God's.