John 15:18-25

Easy-to-Read Version

Jesus Warns His Followers

¹⁸ “If the world hates you, remember that they hated me first. ¹⁹ If you belonged to the world, the world would love you as it loves its own people. But I have chosen you to be different from those in the world. So you don’t belong to the world, and that is why the world hates you.

²⁰ “Remember the lesson I told you: Servants are not greater than their master. If people treated me badly, they will treat you badly too. And if they obeyed my teaching, they will obey yours too. ²¹ They will do to you whatever they did to me, because you belong to me. They don’t know the one who sent me. ²² If I had not come and spoken to the people of the world, they would not be guilty of sin. But now I have spoken to them. So they have no excuse for their sin.

²³ “Whoever hates me also hates my Father. ²⁴ I did things among the people of the world that no one else has ever done. If I had not done those things, they would not be guilty of sin. But they have seen what I did, and still they hate me and my Father. ²⁵ But this happened to make clear the full meaning of what is written in their law: ‘They hated me for no reason.’^[a]