Journey Through God's Word

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

²He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful.

³You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you.

⁴Remain in me, as I also remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me.

⁵“I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.

⁶If you do not remain in me, you are like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned.

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

⁸This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples.

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

¹⁰If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commands and remain in his love.

¹¹I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete.

¹²My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you.

¹³Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.

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

¹⁵I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you.

¹⁶You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit—fruit that will last—and so that whatever you ask in my name the Father will give you.

¹⁷This is my command: Love each other.

¹⁸“If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first.

¹⁹If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you.

²⁰Remember what I told you: ‘A servant is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will persecute you also. If they obeyed my teaching, they will obey yours also.

²¹They will treat you this way because of my name, for they do not know the one who sent me.

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

²³Whoever hates me hates my Father as well.

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

²⁵But this is to fulfill what is written in their Law: ‘They hated me without reason.’

²⁶“When the Advocate comes, whom I will send to you from the Father—the Spirit of truth who goes out from the Father—he will testify about me.

²⁷And you also must testify, for you have been with me from the beginning.

¹What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase?

²By no means! We are those who have died to sin; how can we live in it any longer?

³Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?

⁴We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.

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

⁶For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body ruled by sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin—

⁷because anyone who has died has been set free from sin.

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

⁹For we know that since Christ was raised from the dead, he cannot die again; death no longer has mastery over him.

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

¹¹In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus.

¹²Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires.

¹³Do not offer any part of yourself to sin as an instrument of wickedness, but rather offer yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life; and offer every part of yourself to him as an instrument of righteousness.

¹⁴For sin shall no longer be your master, because you are not under the law, but under grace.

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

¹⁶Don’t you know that when you offer yourselves to someone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one you obey—whether you are slaves to sin, which leads to death, or to obedience, which leads to righteousness?

¹⁷But thanks be to God that, though you used to be slaves to sin, you have come to obey from your heart the pattern of teaching that has now claimed your allegiance.

¹⁸You have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness.

¹⁹I am using an example from everyday life because of your human limitations. Just as you used to offer yourselves as slaves to impurity and to ever-increasing wickedness, so now offer yourselves as slaves to righteousness leading to holiness.

²⁰When you were slaves to sin, you were free from the control of righteousness.

²¹What benefit did you reap at that time from the things you are now ashamed of? Those things result in death!

²²But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the benefit you reap leads to holiness, and the result is eternal life.

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

¹Brothers and sisters, I could not address you as people who live by the Spirit but as people who are still worldly—mere infants in Christ.

²I gave you milk, not solid food, for you were not yet ready for it. Indeed, you are still not ready.

³You are still worldly. For since there is jealousy and quarreling among you, are you not worldly? Are you not acting like mere humans?

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

⁵What, after all, is Apollos? And what is Paul? Only servants, through whom you came to believe—as the Lord has assigned to each his task.

⁶I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God has been making it grow.

⁷So neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God, who makes things grow.

⁸The one who plants and the one who waters have one purpose, and they will each be rewarded according to their own labor.

⁹For we are co-workers in God’s service; you are God’s field, God’s building.

¹⁰By the grace God has given me, I laid a foundation as a wise builder, and someone else is building on it. But each one should build with care.

¹¹For no one can lay any foundation other than the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ.

¹²If anyone builds on this foundation using gold, silver, costly stones, wood, hay or straw,

¹³their work will be shown for what it is, because the Day will bring it to light. It will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test the quality of each person’s work.

¹⁴If what has been built survives, the builder will receive a reward.

¹⁵If it is burned up, the builder will suffer loss but yet will be saved—even though only as one escaping through the flames.

¹⁶Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in your midst?

¹⁷If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy that person; for God’s temple is sacred, and you together are that temple.

¹⁸Do not deceive yourselves. If any of you think you are wise by the standards of this age, you should become “fools” so that you may become wise.

¹⁹For the wisdom of this world is foolishness in God’s sight. As it is written: “He catches the wise in their craftiness”;

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

²¹So then, no more boasting about human leaders! 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 of Christ, and Christ is of God.