John 14-17

Complete Jewish Bible

14 “Don’t let yourselves be disturbed. Trust in God and trust in me. ² In my Father’s house are many places to live. If there weren’t, I would have told you; because I am going there to prepare a place for you. ³ Since I am going and preparing a place for you, I will return to take you with me; so that where I am, you may be also. ⁴ Furthermore, you know where I’m going; and you know the way there.”

⁵ T’oma said to him, “Lord, we don’t know where you’re going; so how can we know the way?” ⁶ Yeshua said, “I AM the Way — and the Truth and the Life; no one comes to the Father except through me. ⁷ Because you have known me, you will also know my Father; from now on, you do know him — in fact, you have seen him.”

⁸ Philip said to him, “Lord, show us the Father, and it will be enough for us.” ⁹ Yeshua replied to him, “Have I been with you so long without your knowing me, Philip? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father; so how can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? ¹⁰ Don’t you believe that I am united with the Father, and the Father united with me? What I am telling you, I am not saying on my own initiative; the Father living in me is doing his own works. ¹¹ Trust me, that I am united with the Father, and the Father united with me. But if you can’t, then trust because of the works themselves. ¹² Yes, indeed! I tell you that whoever trusts in me will also do the works I do! Indeed, he will do greater ones, because I am going to the Father. ¹³ In fact, whatever you ask for in my name, I will do; so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. ¹⁴ If you ask me for something in my name, I will do it.

¹⁵ “If you love me, you will keep my commands; ¹⁶ and I will ask the Father, and he will give you another comforting Counselor like me, the Spirit of Truth, to be with you forever. ¹⁷ The world cannot receive him, because it neither sees nor knows him. You know him, because he is staying with you and will be united with you. ¹⁸ I will not leave you orphans — I am coming to you. ¹⁹ In just a little while, the world will no longer see me; but you will see me. Because I live, you too will live. ²⁰ When that day comes, you will know that I am united with my Father, and you with me, and I with you. ²¹ Whoever has my commands and keeps them is the one who loves me, and the one who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and reveal myself to him.”

²² Y’hudah (not the one from K’riot) said to him, “What has happened, Lord, that you are about to reveal yourself to us and not to the world?” ²³ Yeshua answered him, “If someone loves me, he will keep my word; and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him. ²⁴ Someone who doesn’t love me doesn’t keep my words — and the word you are hearing is not my own but that of the Father who sent me.

²⁵ “I have told you these things while I am still with you. ²⁶ But the Counselor, the Ruach HaKodesh, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything; that is, he will remind you of everything I have said to you.

²⁷ “What I am leaving with you is shalom — I am giving you my shalom. I don’t give the way the world gives. Don’t let yourselves be upset or frightened. ²⁸ You heard me tell you, ‘I am leaving, and I will come back to you.’ If you loved me, you would have been glad that I am going to the Father; because the Father is greater than I.

²⁹ “Also, I have said it to you now, before it happens; so that when it does happen, you will trust.

³⁰ “I won’t be talking with you much longer, because the ruler of this world is coming. He has no claim on me; ³¹ rather, this is happening so that the world may know that I love the Father, and that I do as the Father has commanded me.

“Get up! Let’s get going!

15 “I am the real vine, and my Father is the gardener. ² Every branch which is part of me but fails to bear fruit, he cuts off; and every branch that does bear fruit, he prunes, so that it may bear more fruit. ³ Right now, because of the word which I have spoken to you, you are pruned. ⁴ Stay united with me, as I will with you — for just as the branch can’t put forth fruit by itself apart from the vine, so you can’t bear fruit apart from me.

⁵ “I am the vine and you are the branches. Those who stay united with me, and I with them, are the ones who bear much fruit; because apart from me you can’t do a thing. ⁶ Unless a person remains united with me, he is thrown away like a branch and dries up. Such branches are gathered and thrown into the fire, where they are burned up.

⁷ “If you remain united with me, and my words with you, then ask whatever you want, and it will happen for you. ⁸ This is how my Father is glorified — in your bearing much fruit; this is how you will prove to be my talmidim.

⁹ “Just as my Father has loved me, I too have loved you; so stay in my love. ¹⁰ If you keep my commands, you will stay in my love — just as I have kept my Father’s commands and stay in his love. ¹¹ I have said this to you so that my joy may be in you, and your joy be complete.

¹² “This is my command: that you keep on loving each other just as I have loved you. ¹³ No one has greater love than a person who lays down his life for his friends. ¹⁴ You are my friends, if you do what I command you. ¹⁵ I no longer call you slaves, because a slave doesn’t know what his master is about; but I have called you friends, because everything I have heard from my Father I have made known to you. ¹⁶ You did not choose me, I chose you; and I have commissioned you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last; so that whatever you ask from the Father in my name he may give you. ¹⁷ This is what I command you: keep loving each other!

¹⁸ “If the world hates you, understand that it hated me first. ¹⁹ If you belonged to the world, the world would have loved its own. But because you do not belong to the world — on the contrary, I have picked you out of the world — therefore the world hates you. ²⁰ Remember what I told you, ‘A slave is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will persecute you too; if they kept my word, they will keep yours too. ²¹ But they will do all this to you on my account, because they don’t know the One who sent me.

²² “If I had not come and spoken to them, they wouldn’t be 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 in their presence works which no one else ever did, they would not be guilty of sin; but now, they have seen them and have hated both me and my Father. ²⁵ But this has happened in order to fulfill the words in their Torah which read, ‘They hated me for no reason at all.’^[a]

²⁶ “When the Counselor comes, whom I will send you from the Father — the Spirit of Truth, who keeps going out from the Father — he will testify on my behalf. ²⁷ And you testify too, because you have been with me from the outset.

16 “I have told you these things so that you won’t be caught by surprise. ² They will ban you from the synagogue; in fact, the time will come when anyone who kills you will think he is serving God! ³ They will do these things because they have understood neither the Father nor me. ⁴ But I have told you this, so that when the time comes for it to happen, you will remember that I told you. I didn’t tell you this at first, because I was with you. ⁵ But now I am going to the One who sent me.

“Not one of you is asking me, ‘Where are you going?’ ⁶ Instead, because I have said these things to you, you are overcome with grief. ⁷ But I tell you the truth, it is to your advantage that I go away; for if I don’t go away, the comforting Counselor will not come to you. However, if I do go, I will send him to you.

⁸ “When he comes, he will show that the world is wrong about sin, about righteousness and about judgment — ⁹ about sin, in that people don’t put their trust in me; ¹⁰ about righteousness, in that I am going to the Father and you will no longer see me; ¹¹ about judgment, in that the ruler of this world has been judged.

¹² “I still have many things to tell you, but you can’t bear them now. ¹³ However, when the Spirit of Truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own initiative but will say only what he hears. He will also announce to you the events of the future. ¹⁴ He will glorify me, because he will receive from what is mine and announce it to you. ¹⁵ Everything the Father has is mine; this is why I said that he receives from what is mine and will announce it to you.

¹⁶ “In a little while, you will see me no more; then, a little while later, you will see me.” ¹⁷ At this, some of the talmidim said to one another, “What is this that he’s telling us, ‘In a little while, you won’t see me; then, a little while later, you will see me’? and, ‘I am going to the Father’?” ¹⁸ They went on saying, “What is this ‘little while’? We don’t understand what he’s talking about.”

¹⁹ Yeshua knew that they wanted to ask him, so he said to them, “Are you asking each other what I meant by saying, ‘In a little while, you won’t see me; and then, a little while later, you will see me’? ²⁰ Yes, it’s true. I tell you that you will sob and mourn, and the world will rejoice; you will grieve, but your grief will turn to joy. ²¹ When a woman is giving birth, she is in pain; because her time has come. But when the baby is born, she forgets her suffering out of joy that a child has come into the world. ²² So you do indeed feel grief now, but I am going to see you again. Then your hearts will be full of joy, and no one will take your joy away from you.

²³ “When that day comes, you won’t ask anything of me! Yes, indeed! I tell you that whatever you ask from the Father, he will give you in my name. ²⁴ Till now you haven’t asked for anything in my name. Keep asking, and you will receive, so that your joy may be complete.

²⁵ “I have said these things to you with the help of illustrations; however, a time is coming when I will no longer speak indirectly but will talk about the Father in plain language. ²⁶ When that day comes, you will ask in my name. I am not telling you that I will pray to the Father on your behalf, ²⁷ for the Father himself loves you, because you have loved me and have believed that I came from God.

²⁸ “I came from the Father and have come into the world; again, I am leaving the world and returning to the Father.”

²⁹ The talmidim said to him, “Look, you’re talking plainly right now, you’re not speaking indirectly at all. ³⁰ Now we know that you know everything, and that you don’t need to have people put their questions into words. This makes us believe that you came from God.”

³¹ Yeshua answered, “Now you do believe. ³² But a time is coming — indeed it has come already — when you will be scattered, each one looking out for himself; and you will leave me all alone. Yet I am not alone; because the Father is with me.

³³ “I have said these things to you so that, united with me, you may have shalom. In the world, you have tsuris. But be brave! I have conquered the world!”

17 After Yeshua had said these things, he looked up toward heaven and said, “Father, the time has come. Glorify your Son, so that the Son may glorify you — ² just as you gave him authority over all mankind, so that he might give eternal life to all those whom you have given him. ³ And eternal life is this: to know you, the one true God, and him whom you sent, Yeshua the Messiah.

⁴ “I glorified you on earth by finishing the work you gave me to do. ⁵ Now, Father, glorify me alongside yourself. Give me the same glory I had with you before the world existed.

⁶ “I made your name known to the people you gave me out of the world. They were yours, you gave them to me, and they have kept your word. ⁷ Now they know that everything you have given me is from you, ⁸ because the words you gave me I have given to them, and they have received them. They have really come to know that I came from you, and they have come to trust that you sent me.

⁹ “I am praying for them. I am not praying for the world, but for those you have given to me, because they are yours. ¹⁰ Indeed, all I have is yours, and all you have is mine, and in them I have been glorified. ¹¹ Now I am no longer in the world. They are in the world, but I am coming to you. Holy Father, guard them by the power of your name, which you have given to me, so that they may be one, just as we are. ¹² When I was with them, I guarded them by the power of your name, which you have given to me; yes, I kept watch over them; and not one of them was destroyed (except the one meant for destruction, so that the Tanakh might be fulfilled). ¹³ But now, I am coming to you; and I say these things while I am still in the world so that they may have my joy made complete in themselves.

¹⁴ “I have given them your word, and the world hated them, because they do not belong to the world — just as I myself do not belong to the world. ¹⁵ I don’t ask you to take them out of the world, but to protect them from the Evil One. ¹⁶ They do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world. ¹⁷ Set them apart for holiness by means of the truth — your word is truth. ¹⁸ Just as you sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world. ¹⁹ On their behalf I am setting myself apart for holiness, so that they too may be set apart for holiness by means of the truth.

²⁰ “I pray not only for these, but also for those who will trust in me because of their word, ²¹ that they may all be one. Just as you, Father, are united with me and I with you, I pray that they may be united with us, so that the world may believe that you sent me. ²² The glory which you have given to me, I have given to them; so that they may be one, just as we are one — ²³ I united with them and you with me, so that they may be completely one, and the world thus realize that you sent me, and that you have loved them just as you have loved me.

²⁴ “Father, I want those you have given me to be with me where I am; so that they may see my glory, which you have given me because you loved me before the creation of the world. ²⁵ Righteous Father, the world has not known you, but I have known you, and these people have known that you sent me. ²⁶ I made your name known to them, and I will continue to make it known; so that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I myself may be united with them.”