John 15 - The New International Commentary
1 “I am the true Vine” (v. 1), like “I am the Bread of life” (6:35, 48), “I am the Light of the world” (8:12; 9:5), “I am the Door” (10:7, 9), and “I am the good Shepherd” (10:11, 14), is the first of two parallel “I am” pronouncements. First Jesus says, “I am the true Vine, and my Father is the Vinekeeper” (v. 1), and five verses later, “I am the Vine, you are the branches” (v. 6). He is “the Vine” both in relation to his Father and in relation to his disciples, corresponding to the claim that “I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you” (14:20). The notion of the Father as “Vinekeeper” is not surprising, given the parables in the Gospel tradition about vineyards (see Mt 20:1–16; 21:28–32; Lk 13:6–9; Mk 12:1–12//Mt 21:33–46//Lk 20:9–19), going back to biblical imagery about Israel as God’s vineyard (for example, Ps 80:8–18; Isa 5:1–7; Ezek 15:1–8; 17:5–8; 19:10–14).
More surprising is Jesus’ self-identification as “the Vine,”* for his only possible self-reference in the synoptic parables is as the vineyard owner’s “beloved son” and “heir” (Mk 12:6–7), not as “the vine” or vineyard itself.* Still, his earlier self-identification as a “grain of wheat” that “bears a great crop” by becoming a full-grown plant “lifted up from the earth” (see 12:24, 32) has already opened the door to a similarly bold deployment of vineyard imagery here. Jesus is the “true”* Vine in the same sense in which he is “the true bread from heaven” (6:32), or “the good Shepherd” (10:11, 14). The point is not to differentiate him from other “vines” (Israel, for example), but simply to claim him as the very embodiment of what every vine should be—above all, the source of life to its branches.* Later, it is sufficient to call himself simply “the Vine” (v. 5). Yet as always, the “I am” does not represent a claim to independence or self-sufficiency. Even “the Vine” depends on the love and care of “the Vinekeeper.” Just as “my Father” is the one who “gives you the true bread from heaven” (6:32), and just as “the good Shepherd” concludes by acknowledging that “I and the Father are one” (10:30), so here “my Father is the Vinekeeper,” on whom everything that follows depends.
D. Indwelling and the Love Command (15:1–17)
“I am the true Vine, and my Father is the Vinekeeper. Every branch in me that does not bear fruit he takes it away, and every branch bearing fruit he trims it clean, to bear more fruit. Already you are clean, because of the word which I have spoken to you. Make your dwelling in me, and I in you. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit on its own unless it dwells in the vine, so you cannot unless you dwell in me. I am the Vine, you are the branches. The person who dwells in me and I in him, he bears much fruit, so that apart from me you cannot do anything. Unless someone dwells in me, he is thrown out like the branch, and withered, and they gather them and throw them into the fire, and they are burned up. If you make your dwelling in me, and my words come to dwell in you, ask whatever you want, and it will be done for you. In this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit and become my disciples. Just as the Father loved me, so I loved you. Make your dwelling in my love. If you keep my commands, you will dwell in my love, just as I have kept the commands of my Father and dwell in his love.
“These things I have spoken to you so that my joy might be in you, and that your joy might be fulfilled. This is my command, that you love each other just as I loved you. No greater love has anyone than this, that he lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends, if you are doing the things I command you. I no longer say that you are slaves, because the slave does not know what his lord is doing. But I have said that you are friends, because everything I heard from my Father I made known to you. You did not choose me, but I chose you, and appointed you that you might go and bear fruit, and that your fruit might last—that whatever you ask of the Father in my name he might give you. These things I command you, that you love each other.”
Almost without stopping for breath Jesus continues, “I am the true Vine, and my Father is the Vinekeeper” (15:1), without the slightest narrative introduction, such as “So again Jesus spoke to them, saying” (as in 8:12), or “So again he said to them” (as in 8:21), or “But Jesus cried out and said” (as in 12:44). The closest analogy is with John’s farewell speech, where, after seeming to conclude with “He must grow, but I must diminish” (3:30), John instead plunged ahead with “The One coming from above is above all” (v. 31), and further testimony to Jesus (vv. 31–36). The question confronting the reader here is, What are these words of Jesus meant to follow? Are we to presuppose all that has been said in the preceding chapter, as the canon would dictate, or are we back to square one, building on the narrative of the footwashing and the exit of Judas, as modern theories of the Gospel’s composition have suggested? Surely the notices that “Every branch in me that does not bear fruit he takes it away” (v. 2) and “Unless someone dwells in me, he is thrown outside like the branch” (v. 6) come appropriately after the apostasy of Judas.* Yet just as surely, Jesus’ abrupt self-identification as “the true Vine” cannot be read as following immediately upon 13:30, for in that case it would have been introduced with “Jesus said,” or something to that effect. It could, however, be read as following 13:35, expanding on the themes of 13:31–35, and in particular the “new command” of mutual love (vv. 34–35). This is plausible because Jesus does get around fairly soon to reiterating that the disciples must love each other as he has loved them (see 15:12–17). Yet that is not the starting point. The starting point is rather the theme of indwelling, introduced only in the intervening discourse, specifically in answer to Philip’s question (14:10–11, 20) and the question of Judas (v. 23). Jesus now speaks as if the relationship to be revealed “in that day” that “I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you” (14:20) has already gone into effect, as indeed it has, the Gospel writer believes, for the readers of the Gospel. For this reason, the traditional “canonical” reading of the text as it stands is preferable. Jesus uses the metaphor of the Vine to explain further what the “indwelling” of which he has just spoken will mean concretely in the disciples’ experience.
The Vine metaphor, however, has its limitations, for it does not explain the love Jesus has for the disciples or the love they must have for one another. While Jesus has spoken of loving him as one would love God and keeping his commands in connection with indwelling (see 14:15, 21), he has not yet revisited the “new command” of love given earlier, with its accent on love’s mutuality (13:34–35). The true measure of dwelling in the Vine (vv. 1–8), he now reminds them, is dwelling in his love and “keeping his commands” (vv. 9–10), just as before (14:15, 21), but the one “command” now highlighted above all others is the “new” command grounded in Jesus’ initiative: “love each other just as I loved you” (see vv. 12, 17). On this basis, Jesus envisions the disciples “bearing fruit” (vv. 2, 3, 4, 5, 8, 16), fruit left undefined, but apparently understood as a “crop,” or harvest, of eternal life, both for themselves and others (see 4:36; 12:24–25), the equivalent, perhaps, of Jesus’ own “works.” Bearing “fruit” is what makes them his “disciples” (v. 8), that is, not just his “slaves” but his “friends,” who “know what he is doing” and for whom he “lays down his life” (vv. 13–15).
2 Still focusing on the Father as Vinekeeper, Jesus makes the Father the subject of the next sentence: “Every branch in me that does not bear fruit he takes it away, and every branch bearing fruit he trims it clean so that it bears more fruit” (v. 2). Several of the preceding “I am” pronouncements in the Gospel have been followed by an invitation or promise of some kind (see 6:35; 8:12; 10:9; 11:25–26; also 14:6, where the invitation was stated negatively). This one, by contrast, focuses on those who have already responded to Jesus’ invitation, urging them to maintain their commitment so as to “bear fruit.” The accent on “fruit,” or “a crop,” is simply part of the metaphor of the “vine,” and is consequently left (for the moment) unexplained, but the reader can at least infer that the absence of “fruit” implies the absence of life, that is, of a life-giving relationship to the vine. As he did in introducing the metaphors of “the Door” and “the good Shepherd” (10:1),* Jesus begins here with the negative: “Every branch in me that does not bear fruit* he takes it away” (italics added), before coming to the positive: “and every branch bearing fruit he trims it clean, to bear more fruit.”
Two things are noticeable here. First, Jesus speaks of “Every branch in me,” even though he has not yet explicitly identified the “branches” of the vine as the disciples (see v. 5), or urged them to “Make your dwelling in me” (v. 4). Second, he plays on the rhyme of the two verbs, “takes away” and “trims clean,”* to describe the Father’s work as Vinekeeper. The grim work of “taking away” the dead and fruitless branches he will spell out shortly (v. 6). Judas Iscariot is still fresh in memory as the classic example. “Trimming clean” is what applies to the rest of the disciples, and, as we will see, Jesus’ goal for them is “more fruit,” or “much fruit” (see vv. 5, 8).
3 Jesus immediately adds that the Father’s work of “trimming clean” is now complete: “Already you are clean, because of the word which I have spoken to you” (v. 3). The emphatic “you” makes it clear that the disciples themselves are the branches in the vine. “Clean”* involves a certain play on words. Jesus introduced the verb “trims clean”* as a agricultural term, in keeping with the metaphor of the vine,* while the adjective “clean” comes rather from the world of ritual or moral purity (as if from the verb “to cleanse” or “purify”).* The reminder, “Already you are clean,” recalls the footwashing, yet even back then, as we have seen, Jesus pronounced the disciples (except for Judas) already “clean” (see 13:10–11). Confirming what he said then, he now makes it clear that they are clean not because of the footwashing itself, nor because of baptism, but “because of the word* which I have spoken to you.” Jesus’ “word,” or spoken “words,”* are the means by which the Father has “given” or “drawn” the disciples to Jesus (see 6:37, 44, 65), trimming them “clean” to be his messengers. The implication is that now they are ready to bear “more fruit.”
4 How are they to do this? “Make your dwelling in me, and I in you,” Jesus tells them. “Just as the branch cannot bear fruit on its own unless it dwells in the vine, so you cannot unless you dwell in me” (v. 4). “Make your dwelling in me, and I in you”* (v. 4a) is an extraordinary command. Extraordinary for two reasons. First, the verb “to dwell,” or “stay,” or “remain” somewhere,* ordinarily implies a continuing relationship, one in which a person is already involved, and this is supported by the present context (“Already you are clean”). In the imperative it should mean “stay where you are,” or “maintain the relationship which now exists” (that is, do nothing; don’t change a thing); therefore, one would expect the present imperative.* But the imperative here is aorist,* suggesting an act of the will, a conscious decision to “dwell,” or make a home, in one’s present relationship to Jesus. Hence the translation, “Make your dwelling in me,” evoking the promise in the preceding chapter that Jesus and the Father will come and “make a dwelling”* with those who love him (14:23).* But how exactly does one go about “making one’s dwelling” not just “with” or “right beside” Jesus, but “in” him? What does such a command mean concretely? What steps must a person take? At this point, the answer is far from clear.
The second extraordinary thing is the corollary, “and I in you.”* Is this the equivalent of a conditional sentence, an elliptical promise of a reward, as if to say, “If you dwell in me, I will dwell in you”? Or is it part and parcel of the imperative itself, as if to say, “Making your dwelling in Jesus is equivalent to Jesus’ making his dwelling in you”? Probably the latter, provided that this mutual indwelling is not viewed as something the disciple simply wills into being.* Mutual indwelling is God’s doing, not theirs, the work of the Father through the Son. Once more, 14:20 provides the key: “In that day, you will come to know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you.” Nothing said here, in fact, makes much sense apart from that immediate background, thus confirming the text’s canonical order. The command, “Make your dwelling in me, and I in you,” simply means to accept and embrace that relationship, probably not at that very moment in narrative time, between the meal and the garden, but “in that day” (14:20), the day of resurrection when Jesus “comes” (14:18) and, with the Father, makes his “dwelling” with those who love him (14:23). Consequently it is intended as much (or more) for the readers of the Gospel as for the eleven disciples still trying to cope with Jesus’ impending departure.
Jesus next ties the command back to the metaphor of the vine: “Just as the branch cannot bear fruit on its own unless it dwells in the vine, so you cannot unless you dwell in me” (v. 4b, italics added).* Several previous “unless” clauses, by now familiar to the reader of the Gospel, had to do with salvation or eternal life (see 3:3, 5, 27; 6:44, 53, 65), and one was drawn, like this one, from the world of agriculture: “Unless the grain of wheat dies by falling to the earth, it remains alone by itself; but if it dies, it bears a great crop” (12:24). The similarities are striking. Both statements are truisms: a seed amounts to nothing “unless” it is planted, and a branch amounts to nothing “unless” it is part of the vine. A “grain of wheat,” planted, eventually “bears a great crop,” and a branch on a vine “bears fruit”—the vocabulary is the same. The English translations differ only in that one expects a “crop” from wheat and “fruit” from a grapevine! In the very next verse, matching the earlier terminology exactly, Jesus will speak of “bearing much fruit”* (v. 5). In both instances, the agricultural facts serve as metaphors for the disciples’ experience: like the “grain of wheat,” they too must “die” in order to live (12:25), and like the branches they must continually “dwell” in Jesus, and he in them.* The one superficial difference is in the use of the verb “dwell”: unlike the fruitless branches, the useless seed that is not planted does “remain” or “dwell” somewhere, but “alone by itself” (12:24), in the end no different from fruitless branches cut off from the vine.
5 Jesus now repeats the “I am” (see v. 1), stating explicitly what he has been assuming from the start: “I am the Vine, you are the branches” (v. 5a), the emphatic “you” pointedly echoing the direct address of verses 3 and 4. This pronouncement serves as a heading to a sequence that follows (vv. 5–8), setting before the disciples two stark alternatives. These can be usefully set forth in a chiastic (a-b-b-a) pattern (not because the writer intended it but simply as a help to the reader):
a. The person who dwells in me, and I in him, he bears much fruit,
b. so that* apart from me you cannot do anything (v. 5).
b′. Unless someone dwells in me, he is thrown outside like the branch, and withered, and they gather them and throw them into the fire, and they are burned up (v. 6).
a′. If you make your dwelling in me, and my words dwell in you, ask whatever you want and it will be done for you. In this is my Father glorified, that you bear much fruit and become my disciples (vv. 7–8).
The point of the sequence is simple. When branches “dwell” or remain in the vine (a and a′), they bear fruit (even “much fruit”); when they do not (b and b′), they die, and the same is true of Jesus’ disciples in relation to him. In the first half of the sequence (or chiasm, if we may call it that), Jesus states the alternatives briefly (a and b), in the second half, he repeats them at greater length and in reverse order (b′ and a′). Throughout the sequence, he interweaves generalizations about a “person” (any person, or “someone”) with words directed explicitly to the disciples (that is, to “you”). First he issues a generalized promise that “The person who dwells in me, and I in him, he bears much fruit,” and then a very plainly worded warning to the disciples, “so that apart from me you cannot do anything” (v. 5b). If they were confused over what it meant to “dwell” in him and he in them, or to “bear fruit,” there is no room for confusion here. For the moment at least, the metaphor and the mystery disappear, and there is no mistaking what he means. It is a matter of total dependence upon him. Later, we will see a dramatic illustration of this pronouncement, as the disciples after the resurrection fished all night and “caught nothing” (21:3) until the risen Jesus told them where to cast their net.*
6 The rest of the sequence, or chiasm (vv. 6–7), looks first at what happens, “Unless someone dwells in me” (v. 6), and then at what happens, “If you make your dwelling in me, and my words dwell in you” (v. 7, italics added).* The first clause introduces a cautionary tale: “Unless someone dwells in me, he is thrown out like the branch, and withered, and they gather them and throw them into the fire, and they are burned up” (v. 6). The subject of the tale is an indefinite “someone,”* but the warning is a very real one, whether directed to the disciples on the scene or (more likely) to the readers of the Gospel. “Thrown out” evokes memories of “the ruler of this world” being “driven out” (12:31), or of the Jewish authorities “driving out” the former blind man from the synagogue (9:34), or of that which Jesus explicitly promised not to do to “the person who comes to me” (6:37).* Here it spells out in what way the Father “takes away” every fruitless “branch” (v. 2). The phrase “like the branch,” in fact, revisits that statement quite explicitly, replacing the metaphor with a simile. Jesus then adds that the anonymous “someone” is “withered,” again like a branch,* and goes on to explain (in unnerving detail) what happens to “withered” branches: “and they gather them and throw them into the fire, and they are burned up.” He is obviously speaking of literal branches, not people, yet his point is unmistakable: those who do not “dwell” or remain in him so as to “bear fruit” are in mortal danger.* The verb “dwells” is present, not aorist (as in v. 4, “Make your dwelling in me”), implying that those to whom he refers are in some sense already “in” the vine (see v. 2, “Every branch in me”). For this reason, the verse has played a significant role in theological debates over the question of apostasy, or whether individuals can lose their salvation.
Clearly, Judas is still very much in mind, and the question is whether or not Jesus is raising the possibility of other Judases among the disciples or among the readers of the Gospel. In the case of Judas, the Gospel writer went out of his way to make it clear that “from the beginning” Jesus knew who would “hand him over” (6:64), and Jesus himself identified Judas as one of the “chosen” group, yet in the same breath as “the devil” (6:70). He also hinted at others (not “chosen”) who in the course of the disciples’ mission would “lift up the heel” in treachery against them (13:18), and reminded the disciples pointedly that “From now on I tell you before it happens” (13:19). But on the other hand, he stated clearly that his own “sheep” will “never ever be lost, and no one will seize them out of my hand” (10:28). And in the present context nothing is said about the fruitless branches being “cut off,” only of being “taken away” (v. 2), or “thrown out” (v. 6). That they do not “bear fruit” (v. 2), and do not “dwell” or remain in the vine (v. 6), signal that they are already dead, not put to death by the Vinekeeper. Whether they were once alive and truly united to the Vine is left unexplored, but the very term “life eternal,” so characteristic of this Gospel, renders it doubtful.* They are evidently viewed as having separated themselves from the believing community, and it is quite possible that the Gospel writer’s view is the same as that expressed in 1 John: “Children, it is the last hour, and just as you have heard that antichrist is coming, so now many antichrists have come. They went out from us, but they were not of us, for if they were of us, they would have remained [or “dwelt”]* with us, but [they did it] in order to make it known that they were not of us” (1 Jn 2:18–19).
7 Jesus now completes the sequence on a positive note: “If you make your dwelling in me, and my words come to dwell in you, ask whatever you want, and it will be done for you” (v. 7). With this, he begins to clarify one or two points that have so far been obscure. First, he offers a definition, or at least an illustration, of what “I in you” (v. 4) or “I in him” (v. 5), which by itself sounds very mystical, means concretely. One thing it can mean is that Jesus’ spoken “words”* take root, or “come to dwell,” in the disciples’ minds and hearts so as to govern their attitudes and actions. Long before, in a futile attempt to win over some “Jews who had believed him” (8:30), he had said, “If you dwell on* my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free” (8:31–32). They took offense, and nothing came of it (8:33), and now he holds out much the same hope to those who have all along been designated his “disciples” already.* Second, Jesus provides a specific illustration of what “bearing fruit” might mean. Just as he introduced answered prayer a chapter earlier as an example of “greater” works the disciples would do after his departure (see 14:12–14), so he tells them here, “ask whatever you want, and it will be done for you.”* The phrase “whatever you want”* could imply a more sweeping promise than before,* but the promise is in effect only on the stated condition that “you make your dwelling in me, and my words come to dwell in you.” If answered prayer is not itself the “fruit” of which Jesus speaks, it is at least the means—perhaps the only means—by which the expectation of “much fruit” is to be fulfilled.
8 Jesus confirms this by immediately adding, “In this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit and become my disciples” (v. 8).* “In this” looks simultaneously forward and back, in effect linking the promise of answered prayer (v. 7) to the bearing of “much fruit,” which in turn means that the disciples “become my disciples”* (v. 8b). This kind of statement made sense in 8:31, where Jesus told the “believing” Jewish authorities, “If you dwell on my word, you are truly* my disciples,” because the genuineness of their commitment (as “the Jews”!) was inevitably suspect. Here it seems to make less sense because we have grown accustomed to a definite group of “disciples,” so designated, and even “chosen” out of a larger group (see 6:66–70) as in some way “genuine” disciples, a gift from the Father “greater than all” (see 10:29). It comes as something of a shock that at this late date they have yet to “become my disciples” (without even an adverb such as “truly” to cushion the blow!).* No ground for complacency here, yet no trace of a rebuke either. One is reminded of Ignatius of Antioch, facing the prospect of martyrdom in Rome: “Then I will truly be a disciple of Jesus Christ” (To the Romans 4.2;
9 Jesus continues to adapt the Vine metaphor to his audience, to make it less abstract or mystical, more practical and concrete. To do so, he explains mutual indwelling as mutual love (vv. 9–17, especially vv. 12 and 17). Nothing in the Vine metaphor per se would have required this. The relation of branches to a vine is a life-giving relationship, not a love relationship. Branches do not “love” the vine, much less each other! Jesus therefore looks elsewhere, at least for the moment, drawing on the “new command” of mutual love (13:34–35). “Just as the Father loved me,” he begins, “so I loved you. Make your dwelling in my love” (v. 9). Only the imperative “Make your dwelling” links the pronouncement to the metaphor of the Vine (see v. 4, “Make your dwelling in me”). Otherwise the metaphor is dropped until verse 16, where he finally speaks again of “bearing fruit.”
Jesus does not immediately repeat the “new command” verbatim (“that you love each other, just as I loved you,” 13:34), but instead starts further back, with the Father’s love for him (see 3:35; 5:20; 10:17; 17:24): “Just as the Father loved me, so I loved you” (v. 9a). The Father’s love for the Son is the basis of the Son’s love for the disciples, which in turn is the basis of their love for each other. But instead of coming immediately to the “new command” of mutual love (see vv. 12, 17), Jesus simply tells them, “Make your dwelling* in my love” (v. 9b), that is, make my love for you your very identity. Who are you? Those whom Jesus loved. If the consistent designation of a certain disciple as “one whom Jesus loved” (see 13:23) is, as many believe, a self-designation of the author (or implied author) of the Gospel, then this is how he identifies himself (even to the exclusion of his actual name!). If the Son is “the beloved Son” (in the other Gospels), or “the One and Only” (in this Gospel), by virtue of being loved and chosen by the Father, so the disciples will find their identity as “his own” (13:1) or as “friends” of the Son (see vv. 14–15) by virtue of the Son’s (and consequently the Father’s) love for them (see 16:27; 17:23, 26).
10 The disciples display their identity as those whom Jesus loves by keeping his commands (as in 14:15 and 21), and this too is rooted in his own relationship to the Father. “If you keep my commands,” Jesus continues, “you will dwell in my love, just as I have kept the commands of my Father and dwell in his love” (v. 10). Jesus’ obedience to the Father (4:34; 5:30; 6:38; 8:29), and more explicitly the Father’s “command,”* has been evident all along (see 10:18, 12:49–50, 14:31).* Here he makes it the model for the disciples’ obedience to his “commands,” above all (as we will quickly see) the one command to “love each other” (v. 12). This will define their identity (see 13:35, “By this they all will come to know that you are my disciples, if you have love for each other”). The only difference between Jesus’ teaching here and in the preceding chapter is that there “keeping the commands” was the measure of the disciples’ love for Jesus (14:15, 21) and of Jesus’ love for the Father (14:31), whereas here it is the measure of the Father’s love for Jesus and Jesus’ love for the disciples (see v. 9).
11 Jesus pauses momentarily, again using the expression “These things I have spoken to you” (as in 14:25) to state the implications of what he has just said. His intent is “that my joy* might be in you, and that your joy might be fulfilled” (v. 11). He wants the disciples, in being the object of his love, to experience joy as well. Up to now, he has mentioned “joy” only to notice its absence (“If you loved me, you would rejoice,” 14:28), but now he envisions his own “joy” dwelling “in” them, just as he himself (vv. 4, 5), or his “words” (v. 7) will dwell “in” them. We have heard little of Jesus’ own joy, but it is clearly presupposed here (and later in 17:13), evidently on the basis of his relationship to the Father and the completion of the Father’s work.* As for the disciples’ joy being “fulfilled,”* we have glimpsed that in the person of John (in a very real sense Jesus’ first disciple), who spoke of “the friend of the bridegroom who … rejoices with joy at the bridegroom’s voice,” and who made that joy his own by adding, “So this, my joy, is fulfilled” (3:29). But the joy of these disciples, as of the readers of the Gospel, is a shared joy. It is shared with Jesus, for it is his joy to begin with, and by implication with each other, but its ultimate “fulfillment” is yet to come. “Grief” will come first (16:6, 20), but grief will give way to joy when they see Jesus again (16:20–22; compare 20:20). Joy’s “fulfillment” is never quite an accomplished fact as it was in the end for John (3:29), but always an object of hope and of prayer, whether their own prayers (16:24) or the prayer of Jesus (17:13).*
12 Finally, having laid the groundwork, Jesus repeats verbatim the “new command” (without calling it “new”): “This is my command, that you love each other just as I loved you” (v. 12, as in 13:34). By this they “make their dwelling” in Jesus’ love (see v. 9), acting out their new identity in their relationship to one another. Oddly, Jesus does not spell out what this means in practice. He does not, for example, repeat the command to “wash each other’s feet” (13:14), nor does he provide any concrete illustration of love for one another, as is done, for example, in 1 John: “But whoever has the world’s livelihood and sees his brother having need and closes off his heart from him, how does the love of God dwell in him?” (1 Jn 3:17). In the verses to follow, Jesus will focus on his own love for the disciples more than on theirs for one another (vv. 13–16), returning to the explicit command to “love each other” only at the end, still without explanation (v. 17), so as to frame the whole paragraph (vv. 12–17).
13 Speaking of his own love for them, Jesus continues, “No greater love has anyone than this, that he lay down his life for his friends” (v. 13).* The expression “lay down his life,” or “soul,” recalls what Jesus as the “good Shepherd” does for his sheep (10:11, 15). When the sheep metaphor is dropped, Jesus’ “sheep” become “his friends,” those whom he loves and cares about. The author of 1 John seems to know these passages (or something very like them), extending the principle to cover the disciples’ responsibilities as well: “In this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers” (1 Jn 3:16).
As is often noted by commentators, love for one’s “friends” (even to the point of death) was a virtue widely commended in the Graeco-Roman world,* but some readers of the New Testament might object that love for one’s enemies is an even “greater” love (see Mt 5:43–47//Lk 6:32–35; Rom 5:6–8). It is important to remember that Jesus is not here comparing love for one’s “friends” to any other kind of love—whether for parents or spouse or children, or “neighbors” (however defined), or for one’s enemies—but simply making the point that there is no “greater” expression of love than giving one’s life for someone.* Those for whom Jesus’ gives his life are his “friends” for that very reason, whoever or whatever they may have been before that. His love for them—and consequently his death on their behalf—transforms them into “friends.”*
14 Jesus now announces the transformation: “You are my friends,* if you are doing the things I command you.” This sounds like a conditional sentence, but if it were truly conditional we would have expected, “If you do the things I command you, you will be my friends,” making friendship dependent on performance.* Instead, Jesus says, “You are my friends,” right up front, as if without qualification, just as he said without qualification, “Already you are clean” (v. 2). The condition attached, “if you are doing* the things I command you,” has a force akin to that of a first-class condition (“assuming you are doing”), or even a participle (“in doing what I command you”).* That they are Jesus’ “friends” is a given, just as it is by now a given that he has “loved” them (see vv. 9, 12; 13:1, 34).* It is unclear to what extent “friends” became a widespread self-designation among early Christians. Jesus calls his disciples “my friends” only once outside of John’s Gospel, and that quite casually (Lk 12:4), yet 3 John concludes with a notice that “The friends* greet you. Greet the friends by name” (3 Jn 15), using the phrase much as other writers use “the saints,” “the brothers.”
15 Jesus next goes on to explain more of what the designation implies: “I no longer say that you are slaves,* because the slave does not know what his lord is doing. But I have said that you are friends, because everything I heard from my Father I made known to you” (v. 15). Jesus has never called his disciples “slaves” explicitly, although he acknowledged his own status as their “Lord” (13:13), and pointedly reminded them that “a slave is not greater than his lord, nor is a messenger greater than the person who sent him” (13:16).* Nor has he literally dropped the term, for within five verses he will use it again (v. 20, “A slave is not greater than his lord”). His point is rather that he does not view his disciples as his “slaves” in the proper sense of the word, but as his “friends.” The distinction is not exactly what we might have guessed. It is different, for example, from 8:35, where the slave’s limitation (in contrast to the son) is that he “does not remain in the household forever,” but can be sold. It is not so much a question of freedom as of knowledge. A slave “does not know what his lord is doing,” Jesus says, while his “friends,” by contrast, presumably do know because “everything I heard from my Father I made known to you.”*
With these words, Jesus revisits three earlier pronouncements, two addressed to “the Jews” in Jerusalem, and one to the disciples themselves just after the footwashing. In the first instance, he said, “For the Father loves the Son and shows him everything that he himself is doing” (5:20). The principle is the same as here: love in the sense of friendship involves “full disclosure.” The Father and the Son are “friends”* with no secrets between them. And knowledge implies imitation: what the Father “is doing” the Son does as well (5:19). In the second instance, Jesus addressed “the Jews who had believed him” at the Tent festival: “If you dwell on my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free” (8:31–32). While nothing was said there about friendship (rather, he said, “you are truly my disciples,” as in 15:8), Jesus did make the point—as he does here—that freedom comes through knowledge. There knowledge of “the truth” was refused, on the ground that “We are Abraham’s seed, and have never been in slavery to anyone” (8:33), but here, by contrast, Jesus credits his disciples with knowledge of what he is doing, “because everything I heard from the Father I made known to you.” The prospect that “if the Son sets you free, you will really be free” (8:36) belongs to them, not “the Jews,” and what “sets them free” is nothing other than “the truth” made known to them by the Son, truth that they must “do” as well as “believe.” In the third instance, Jesus told Peter when he washed his feet, “What I am doing you do not understand now, but afterward you will understand” (13:7). Yet when the footwashing was over, he asked the disciples, “Do you understand what I have done for you?” (13:12), and after explaining what he had done, he told them, “Now that you know these things, blessed are you if you do them” (13:17). Again, knowing requires doing. The disciples for their part gave no signal that they did in fact understand, nor do their questions in the ensuing discourse (13:36–14:31) show any great measure of understanding, but Jesus now gives them the benefit of the doubt. His assurance to them is carefully worded, however. He does not claim explicitly that they, in contrast to a slave, do know “what he is doing,”* but only that “everything I heard from my Father I made known to you.”* The implication is that they ought to know if they do not.
16 “You did not choose me, but I chose you,”* Jesus goes on (v. 16a), in keeping with the priority of his love for them over their love for one another (see vv. 9, 12; also 13:1, 14, 34). Love, as we have seen, is understood as choice, or preference. The disciples are Jesus’ “friends” because he has chosen them as his friends. What he says here is said just as emphatically in 1 John: “In this is love, not that we have loved God, but that he loved us” (1 Jn 4:10), and “We love, because he first loved us” (1 Jn 4:19, italics added). He has twice spoken of his love as choice or election: “Did I not choose you as the Twelve? And one of you is ‘the devil’ ” (6:70), and “I am not speaking about all of you. I know which ones I chose” (13:18). Now that Judas is gone, he can say without qualification, “I chose you.”* His choice of these disciples is not so much divine “election” in the classic theological sense of the term as simply the selection of “Twelve” (now eleven) out of all who followed him, to accompany him in his ministry and carry on his work after his departure.
This he now makes explicit: “and appointed you that you might go and bear fruit, and that your fruit might last—that whatever you ask the Father in my name he might give you” (v. 16b). So far he has only hinted at a mission of some kind (see 13:16 and 20), without telling the disciples explicitly that it is their mission, or that he is actually “sending” them into the world as the Father sent him (see 13:20). Without using the actual word “send” (as he will in due course; see 17:18; 20:21), he reveals that his purpose for the disciples he has chosen is that they “go” and “bear fruit,”* and that their fruit “last,”* that is, “dwell” in the Vine, just as they dwell in the Vine. “Go and bear fruit” are closely linked, almost to the point that “go”* functions as a helping verb (as in “I’m going fishing,” 21:3).* The accent is not on “going away” as Jesus will “go away” (13:33; 14:28), but on “bearing fruit” in the sense of making disciples or winning new converts (see 17:20, “those who believe in me through their word”).* Then Jesus adds, in words that sound curiously anticlimactic, “that whatever you ask of the Father in my name he might give you.” This should not be read as an additional goal beyond “bearing fruit,” as if answered prayer depends on success in evangelism. Rather, the reverse is true. The two purpose clauses are both saying the same thing, reminding the disciples that whatever success they may have in “bearing fruit” in the course of their mission to the world is gained through answered prayer, and only through answered prayer.* At times we were reminded that this was true even of Jesus himself (see 9:31; 11:22, 41–42), and he has made it clear in the present discourse that prayer was indeed the key both to the disciples’ “greater works” (14:13–14) and to the bearing of “much fruit” (vv. 7–8).*
17 These things I command you,” Jesus adds, “that you love each other” (v. 17), reiterating what he has already said twice (v. 12 and 13:34), but still not spelling out what it means in actual practice, beyond washing one another’s feet (13:14). All we can infer beyond that is that they must remain “friends” to one another (see 3 Jn 15), willing to lay down their lives for each other, in imitation of what Jesus has done for them (see 1 Jn 3:16). This, as we will see, they may well be called upon to do.
18–19 The dualism of John’s Gospel could imply that the corollary of loving “each other” (rather than the “neighbor,” or the “enemy”) might be “hating” everyone else—that is, “the world.” This was in fact the case in some branches of sectarian Judaism, notably the Community Rule at Qumran (“… that they may love all the sons of light, each according to his lot in God’s design, and hate all the sons of darkness, each according to his guilt in God’s vengeance”).* At the very least, the Gospel’s characteristic understanding of love as choice or preference could lead us to expect a “hatred” of the world analogous to the “hatred” of parents, wife, children, and siblings of which Jesus speaks in Luke’s Gospel (Lk 14:26). But such is not the case. The closest Jesus comes to urging hatred of the world is his promise that “the person who hates his life in this world will keep it to life eternal” (12:25).*
What we find instead is the expectation of being hated by the world. “If the world hates* you,” Jesus tells his disciples, “you know that it has hated me before you” (v. 18).* The pronouncement invites comparison with something he said to his unbelieving brothers just before the Tent festival: “The world cannot hate you, but it hates me because I testify about it that its works are evil” (7:7). His disciples, in contrast to his brothers, will be hated, and just as Jesus’ love for them is prior to their love for one another (see v. 12), so the world’s hatred of him is prior to its hatred of them. Jesus continues, as if revisiting in his mind that earlier scene with his brothers, “If you were from the world, the world would love its own,* but because you are not from the world, but I chose you out of the world, for this reason the world hates you” (v. 19). The reminder that “I chose you”* echoes verbatim the preceding “You did not choose me but I chose you” (16), making clear that their relationship to the world has been severed on Jesus’ initiative, not their own.* He, and he alone, is the reason the world hates them. If he had not chosen them, they would be no different from Jesus’ unbelieving brothers, whom the world “cannot hate” (7:7). That the world can also “love” may come as something of a surprise after all the talk of Jesus’ “love” for those whom he made his “friends,” and it may be tempting, especially to modern interpreters, to contrast the world’s narrow-minded love for “its own” with Jesus’ universal love for everyone, not least his enemies. This is a valid point when all four Gospels are taken into consideration, but not in the Gospel of John, where Jesus too loves not his “neighbors” (much less his “enemies”), but precisely “his own* who were in the world” (13:1). Jesus and “the world” have this much in common—that they each love their “own,” and the two loves are mutually exclusive. On this point, John’s Gospel is at one with the very different Epistle of James: “Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? So whoever wants to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God” (Jas 4:4). The principle here is the same, but the conclusion drawn is the opposite: those who become Jesus’ “friends” will quickly discover that “the world” is their enemy.*
E. The World and the Advocate (15:18–16:16)
“If the world hates you, you know that it has hated me before you. If you were from the world, the world would love its own, but because you are not from the world, but I chose you out of the world, for this reason the world hates you. Remember the word that I said to you, ‘A slave is not greater than his lord.’ If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you. If they kept my word, they will also keep yours. No, all these things they will do to you for my name’s sake, because they do not know the One who sent me. If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not have sin, but now they have no excuse for their sin. The person who hates me hates my Father too. If I had not done the works among them that no one else did, they would not have sin, but now they have both seen and hated both me and my Father. But the word that is written in their law must be fulfilled, that ‘They hated me without cause.’ When the Advocate comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth that goes forth from the Father, he will testify about me, and you too must testify because you are with me from the beginning.
“These things I have spoken to you so that you will not be made to stumble. They will put you out of synagogue. And yes, an hour is coming when everyone who kills you might think he is offering worship to God. And they will do these things because they did not know the Father or me. But these things I have spoken to you so that when their hour comes you might remember them, that I told you. And these things I did not tell you from the beginning, because I was with you. But now I am going to the One who sent me, and none of you asks me, ‘Where are you going?’ But because I have spoken these things to you, grief has filled your heart. I, however, am telling you the truth: it is to your advantage that I am going away, for unless I go away, the Advocate will not come to you. But if I go, I will send him to you. And he, when he comes, will convict the world of sin, and of justice, and of judgment. Of sin because they do not believe in me, and of justice because I am going to the Father and you no longer see me, and of judgment because the ruler of this world has been judged. I have still much more to say to you, but you are unable to bear it now. But when that one comes, the Spirit of truth, he will lead you in all the truth. For he will not speak on his own, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will announce to you the things to come. That one will glorify me, because he will take from what is mine and announce it to you. All things that the Father has are mine; that is why I said that he takes from what is mine and will announce it to you. A short time, and you no longer see me, and again a short time, and you will see me.”
Jesus’ lengthy monologue (14:23–16:16) continues, and finally draws to a close. The command that the disciples “love each other” (15:17) gives way to a solemn warning that “the world,” by contrast, will “hate” them just as it hated Jesus, and that the world’s hatred will come to expression in active persecution as they go about fulfilling their mission to the world (15:18–25). Against this background, Jesus promises once again (as in 14:16–17, 26) that the “Advocate,” or “Spirit of truth,” will come and testify to the world about him even as they themselves bear testimony to what he has said and done (vv. 26–27). All this will happen, he warns them, in the setting of excommunication from the synagogue and even martyrdom, but they must not be discouraged, knowing that he has warned them of what is coming well in advance (16:1–4).
Jesus then returns to the immediate issue of his departure from the world (16:5–7), explaining more fully the nature of the Advocate’s ministry. The Advocate will prove “the world” wrong, he promises (vv. 8–11), and teach the disciples all that they need to know in his absence (vv. 12–15). Finally he brings the discourse to an end with a riddle, designed to elicit from them (at last) a response: “A short time, and you no longer see me, and again a short time, and you will see me” (v. 16).
20 From being Jesus’ “friends,” the disciples are temporarily demoted (for illustrative purposes only) back to being “slaves.” “Remember the word that I said to you,” Jesus continues, citing 13:16: “A slave* is not greater than his lord.” There the pronouncement was linked to footwashing: if he, the “Lord” (13:13), washed the disciples’ feet, they should not be too proud to wash each other’s feet (see 13:14–15). Here he applies it quite differently: “If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you.* If they kept my word, they will also keep yours” (v. 20).* He seems to be drawing as much on what is not explicitly quoted from 13:16 (“nor is a messenger greater than the person who sent him”) as from what is quoted, for the “persecution” in question surely comes as a result of being “sent” as Jesus’ “messengers” (see v. 16, “that you might go and bear fruit”). As such, the disciples can expect no better treatment from the world than what Jesus himself received.
“If they persecuted me,* they will also persecute you” is a first-class conditional sentence, built on the assumption that Jesus has been consistently “persecuted,” or “pursued” by “the world,” more specifically by the Jewish authorities. The beginning of that persecution was explicitly noted, shortly after he healed the sick man at the pool: “And for this the Jews began pursuing [that is, “persecuting”] Jesus, because he did such things on the Sabbath” (5:16). More broadly, we have known from the start that “the world did not know him” (1:10), “hated” him, in fact (7:7), and that “Even after he had done so many signs before them, they would not believe in him” (12:37). More surprising is the next sentence: “If they kept my word, they will also keep yours.” This too is a first-class conditional sentence which, if read in the same way, could imply that “the world” did in some way “keep Jesus’ word,” and might keep theirs as well. But the reader knows that this was not the case, for the verdict on Jesus’ public ministry to the world is already in (see 1:10–11; 12:37–43). Therefore, the conditional sentence is ironic—a contrary-to fact condition masquerading as a simple condition: “If they kept my word—which they did not!—they will also keep yours—which they will not!”* It is of course true that some “kept Jesus’ word” during the course of his ministry—the disciples themselves are living proof of that—and some will keep theirs as well (see 17:20), but Jesus is not looking here at “some” in contrast to “others.”* He is looking rather at “the world” as a unified entity arrayed in opposition to him and his Father, and to the disciples.
21 Jesus signals his use of irony, moving beyond it to dead seriousness, with an emphatic “But no,* all these things they will do to you for my name’s sake, because they do not know the One who sent me” (v. 21). “All these things” are presumed to be bad things—persecution, and worse (see 16:2)—not the supposedly positive response of some who might “keep your word” (compare 16:3).* “For my name’s sake”* recalls a similar tradition common to the other three Gospels, “and you will be hated by all for my name’s sake” (Mk 13:13//Mt 10:22//Lk 21:17; also Mt 24:9, “by all the Gentiles”). Jesus’ disciples will suffer persecution simply because they belong to him, and represent him. But John’s Gospel gives us the deeper reason: because “they do not know the One who sent me”—in short, they do not know God, a charge Jesus has leveled at them before (see 7:28–29; 8:19, 55). With these words, he gives the disciples not only a necessary warning but a message of consolation: when they suffer persecution they can be assured that they are doing so for Jesus’ sake and following in his footsteps, and (as Chrysostom put it) that “the Father also is insulted together with them.”*
22–23 “If I had not come and spoken to them,” Jesus continues, “they would not have sin,* but now they have no excuse for their sin” (v. 22), adding “The person who hates me hates my Father too” (v. 23). The contrary-to-fact conditional clause reinforces a remarkable feature of this Gospel’s understanding of “sin.” Even though Jesus was introduced as “the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world” (1:29), the world’s “sin” comes to expression only in its rejection of him, and consequently of God the Father. Although sin was obviously present long before Jesus came into the world (the devil, after all, was a murderer and a liar “from the beginning,” 8:44),* it was somehow not counted as sin until the coming of Jesus brought it “to light,” as it were (see 3:19). In short, there was plenty of sin before Jesus came, but no formal attribution of guilt.* In contrast to Paul, who claimed that “sin was in the world before the law, but sin is not reckoned where there is no law” (Rom 5:12), John’s Gospel has a different point of reference. Sin is identified as sin not in relation to the law of Moses, but only in relation to Jesus (see 16:9, “About sin because they do not believe in me”).
The contrary-to-fact condition also recalls what Jesus said to the Pharisees after he healed the man born blind: “If you were blind, you would not have sin.* But now you say that ‘we see.’ Your sin remains” (9:41). This too he said against the background of an announcement that “I came into this world” for a dual purpose—not only “that those who do not see might see,” but “so that those who see might go blind” (9:39). In this sense the “coming” of Jesus creates not only “friends,” but “sinners” as well. In both passages, the phrase “but now,” or “as it is,”* brings us back to reality, and the reality is that “Your sin remains” (9:41), or, here more specifically, “they have no excuse for their sin” (v. 22).* That is, they are now fully accountable. They cannot claim innocence on the basis that they have not been warned, or have not heard the word of God! They have heard it from the lips of Jesus, but have not recognized his words as words from God. In hating him and persecuting him (see vv. 18, 20) they have (unwittingly) hated as well the One they worship as God: “The person who hates me hates my Father too” (v. 23).*
24 For emphasis, Jesus says almost the same thing again, using the same contrary-to-fact conditional sentence structure: “If I had not done the works among them that no one else did, they would not have sin, but now they have both seen and hated both me and my Father.” The differences are, first, that Jesus now speaks of his “works” rather than his words—what he has “done among them” rather than “said to them” (v. 22), and, second, that he draws the pronouncement about hating both him and his Father into the “but now” clause, defining the “sin” for which there is no “excuse” (22)—the ultimate sin, and the one with which Jesus is mostly concerned in this Gospel.* As for the “works,” Jesus identifies them here as works “that no one else did,” recalling the former blind man’s observation that “It is unheard of that anyone ever opened the eyes of one born blind” (9:32; see also 10:21). But even his works, for all their uniqueness and magnitude, have not produced faith (see 5:36; 10:25, 38; 14:11) among those who hated him. While the contexts are very different, Jesus here is recognizably the same Jesus who railed against the cities of Galilee in Matthew and Luke:
“Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the miracles done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes. Nevertheless, I say to you, It will be easier in the day of judgment for Tyre and Sidon than for you. And you, Capernaum, will you be lifted up to heaven? You will be thrown down to Hades! For if the miracles done in you had been done in Sodom, it would have remained until today. Nevertheless, I say to you that it will be easier in the day of judgment for the land of Sodom than for you.” (Mt 11:21–24; see also Lk 10:12–15)
Here, instead of threatening the world with final judgment, Jesus simply levels the charge that “they have both seen and hated both* me and my Father” (repeating the thought of v. 23). “Seeing” Jesus probably refers first of all to seeing his works, but the notion that the unbelieving world has also “seen” the Father is odd in light of 1:18 (“No one has seen God, ever”), 5:37 (“You have never heard his voice nor seen his form”) and 6:46 (“Not that anyone has seen the Father except he who is from God”). Jesus seems to have in mind here what he said to Philip (“The person who has seen me has seen the Father,” 14:9), and more broadly the principle that “the person who sees me sees the One who sent me” (12:45). But he reminds his disciples that to “see” him is not necessarily to believe in him (compare 6:36), and therefore not necessarily to believe in the Father either.* To “see” and to “hate” are, unfortunately, quite compatible, making it impossible to explain away the world’s hatred as mere ignorance or unfamiliarity. Rather, as Jesus has said (v. 22), it is an unreasoning hatred, in defiance of all that is “seen,” with no valid excuse or justification.
25 Jesus clinches the point with a biblical citation, and he could not have chosen a more appropriate one: “But the word that is written in their law* must be fulfilled,* that ‘They hated me without cause.’ ”* The text, in slightly different form,* appears twice in the Greek Old Testament, Psalm 34(35):19 and 68(69):5 (LXX).* The adverb “without cause,” or gratuitously, captures perfectly what Jesus has just said—that the world has no “excuse” (v. 22), no valid reason or provocation, for its sin of hating the Father and the Son.
The citation stands as a kind of sequel to the earlier one from Psalm 41:9 (40:10, LXX), introduced similarly: “But the Scripture must be fulfilled, ‘The one who eats my bread lifted up his heel against me’ ” (13:18). In both instances, Jesus makes the words of the anonymous psalmist his own, speaking there of betrayal or treachery at the hands of someone who eats at the same table, and here more generally of “the world” and its unprovoked hatred. Just as there he had in view not only his own imminent betrayal by Judas Iscariot, but the prospect of further betrayals among the disciples in the course of carrying out their mission to the world, so here he looks both at the world’s present hatred of him and its future hatred of the disciples. As we have seen, the two texts together echo what Jesus said in very different settings in other Gospels: “And brother will hand brother over to death, and father hand over child, and children will rise against parents and will put them to death. And you will be hated by all for my name’s sake” (Mt 10:21–22//Mk 13:12–13). The psalmist’s lament, “They hated me without cause,” becomes the lament of the true disciple (and the faithful reader of the Gospel) no less than of Jesus himself. They too, as he has said plainly (vv. 18–19) will be “hated,” and for no better reason than he was.
26–27 In the face of the world’s hatred, the disciples’ only recourse is “the Advocate.”* “When the Advocate comes,” Jesus promises, “whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth that goes forth from the Father, he will testify about me” (v. 26). The term “Advocate” is introduced here with the definite article, implying that the disciples have heard it before, as indeed they have (see 14:16, 26). This is additional evidence that the material beginning at 15:1 is intended to follow chapter 14, and is not, as some have theorized, an independent discourse originally composed to follow 13:30 or 13:36.
Yet there are also small differences between the notice here and the two earlier ones. For one thing, this is the first time the Advocate is explicitly said to “come”* (see also 16:8, 13). In the preceding chapter, Jesus was the one who promised to “come” (14:18, 28), yet there was little doubt that he was promising to come in the person of the Advocate. Second, Jesus says, “I will send” the Advocate, in contrast to earlier pronouncements that the Father would “give” or “send” the Advocate (14:16, 26). This should not be exaggerated, however. In the first instance, the Father gives the Advocate in answer to Jesus’ prayer (14:16), and sends him in Jesus’ “name” (14:26), while in the present instance Jesus “sends” the Advocate explicitly “from the Father,”* and not content with that adds, redundantly, that this “Spirit of truth … goes forth from the Father” (v. 26). The most substantial difference is that in the preceding chapter the Advocate’s ministry was to the disciples only, to be “with” them (14:16–17), to “teach” them, and to “remind” them of all that Jesus said. The “world,” he said, could neither “receive” nor “see” nor “know” the Advocate (14:17). Here, by contrast, the Advocate “will testify* about me,” Jesus says (v. 26), with the implication that the testimony is not to the disciples but to the hostile “world,” even as Jesus’ own “testimony” was directed mainly to the world.* This he immediately confirms by adding, “and you too must testify* because you are with me from the beginning” (v. 27). If their testimony is to the world, it is natural to suppose that the Advocate’s testimony is as well. These twin testimonies, in fact, are not two but one, for the Advocate will testify solely in and through the lives and lips of the disciples.
This is very much in keeping with what the few references in the other Gospels to a future “Holy Spirit” might have led us to expect. In Mark and Matthew, just before warning his disciples of “betrayal” and “hatred” (again, see Mt 10:21–22//Mk 13:12–13), Jesus told them, “When they lead you to trial and hand you over, don’t worry beforehand about what to say, but say whatever is given you in that hour, for it is not you who speak but the Holy Spirit” (Mk 13:11, italics added; see also Mt 10:19–20). And in Luke he said, “When they bring you to the synagogues, and the rulers and the authorities, don’t worry about how or what to do in your own defense, or what to say, for the Holy Spirit will teach you in that very hour what you must say” (Lk 12:11). The context here is much the same, centering on the hatred and persecution they will face in the world. While Jesus emphasized in the previous chapter that the world “cannot receive,” and “neither sees … nor knows,” the Advocate in the way the disciples know him (14:17), he now insists that the Advocate can and will at least “testify” to—perhaps against!—the world (compare 16:8), and that the disciples are called to make that testimony their own.
This they must do, and this they are qualified to do because they have been with Jesus “from the beginning”* (v. 27), that is, from the beginning of—and throughout—his ministry (see 2:11, “This Jesus did in Cana of Galilee as a beginning of the signs, and revealed his glory, and his disciples believed in him”).* “From the beginning” signals Jesus’ ministry in its entirety, right up to his death on the cross (see also Acts 1:21–22). That is the perspective of 1 and 2 John, for example (see 1 Jn 1:1; 2:7, 13, 24; 3:11; 2 Jn 5, 6), and it is likely intended here as well.* It was surely on the basis of this text—or something close to it—that the author of 1 John began his tract with the words, “That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched concerning the word of Life—and the Life was revealed, and we have seen and testify” (1 Jn 1:1–2, italics added).
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