1“I am the true vine, and my Father is the farmer. 2Every branch in me that doesn’t bear fruit, he takes away. Every branch that bears fruit, he prunes, that it may bear more fruit. 3You are already pruned clean because of the word which I have spoken to you. 4Remain in me, and I in you. As the branch can’t bear fruit by itself unless it remains in the vine, so neither can you, unless you remain in me. 5I am the vine. You are the branches. He who remains in me and I in him bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing. 6If a man doesn’t remain in me, he is thrown out as a branch and is withered; and they gather them, throw them into the fire, and they are burned. 7If you remain in me, and my words remain in you, you will ask whatever you desire, and it will be done for you.
8“In this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit; and so you will be my disciples. 9Even as the Father has loved me, I also have loved you. Remain in my love. 10If you keep my commandments, you will remain in my love, even as I have kept my Father’s commandments and remain in his love. 11I have spoken these things to you, that my joy may remain in you, and that your joy may be made full.
12“This is my commandment, that you love one another, even as I have loved you. 13Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends. 14You are my friends if you do whatever I command you. 15No longer do I call you servants, for the servant doesn’t know what his lord does. But I have called you friends, for everything that I heard from my Father, I have made known to you. 16You didn’t choose me, but I chose you and appointed you, that you should go and bear fruit, and that your fruit should remain; that whatever you will ask of the Father in my name, he may give it to you.
17“I command these things to you, that you may love one another. 18If the world hates you, you know that it has hated me before it hated you. 19If you were of the world, the world would love its own. But because you are not of the world, since 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 lord.’ If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you. If they kept my word, they will also keep yours. 21But they will do all these things to you for my name’s sake, because they don’t know him who sent me. 22If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not have had sin; but now they have no excuse for their sin. 23He who hates me, hates my Father also. 24If I hadn’t done among them the works which no one else did, they wouldn’t have had sin. But now they have seen and also hated both me and my Father. 25But this happened so that the word may be fulfilled which was written in their law, ‘They hated me without a cause.’
26“When the Counselor has come, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father, he will testify about me. 27You will also testify, because you have been with me from the beginning.
John’s use of “we” here includes himself. He now states something every believer should know. The term for “know” (οἴδαμεν) John uses here refers to knowledge from instruction, not experience. This is something we can know based on God’s Word, not our experience.
What every believer can know is that we are no longer spiritually dead, because we have “passed” out from that realm into God’s realm of life. We are no longer in it. Our realm of existence is life, God’s life, not death. John uses the perfect tense verb, have passed (μεταβεβήκαμεν), to communicate the idea that the passing occurred in the past and has effects that continue to the present. John and his readers could know they were spiritually alive.
One’s love of other Christians, “love the brothers,” serves as evidence of spiritual life. It does not cause it, but reveals it. Thus, how we treat other Christians can be a source of assurance of salvation, though it does not result in salvation.
The second statement of this verse poses difficulties that are clarified by the key term, translated as “remains” (μένει). Jesus used this term extensively in the Upper Room (John 15), and John uses it with the same nuance of meaning in his epistle. The Greek term means to “remain” or “abide.” Here, “abide” communicates the concept better. It is equivalent to “walking” in light or darkness. John is speaking of the experience of a Christian. Not loving one’s Christian brother required that the person be a Christian as well. Thus, “death” in this verse cannot refer to spiritual death, but to the realm of death. The Christian who fails to love another Christian is “abiding” in the realm of death rather than life. The eternal life he possesses is not being experienced or expressed in his treatment of the other Christian. That person is not dead spiritually, just living like it.