John 15:18-16:4
New Catholic Bible
Witnesses to Jesus in the Face of the World’s Hatred[a]
18 “If the world hates you,
be aware that it hated me
before it hated you.
19 If you belonged to the world,
the world would love you as its own.
But you do not belong to the world
because I have chosen you out of the world,
and therefore the world hates you.
20 “Remember the word that I said to you:
‘a servant is not greater than his master.’
If they persecuted me,
they will persecute you.
If they kept my word,
they will keep yours as well.
21 But they will do all these things to you
on account of my name,
because they do not know the one who sent me.
22 “If I had not come
and spoken to them,
they would not 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 works among them
that no one else had ever done,
they would not be guilty of sin.
But now they have seen and hated
both me and my Father.
25 All this was to fulfill the word
that is inscribed in their Law:
‘They hated me without cause.’
26 “When the Advocate comes
whom I will send you from the Father,
the Spirit of truth who comes from the Father,
he will testify on my behalf.
27 And you also are my witnesses
because you have been with me from the beginning.
Chapter 16
1 “I have told you this
to prevent you from falling away.
2 They will expel you from the synagogues.
Indeed the hour is coming
when anyone who kills you
will believe that by doing so
he is serving God.
3 And people will do such things
because they have not known the Father or me.
4 But I have told you this
so that when the hour arrives
you may remember that I forewarned you about them.
The Spirit of Truth, Our Guide to All Truth[b]
“I did not tell you all this previously
because I was with you.
Footnotes
- John 15:18 The trial of Jesus, which the fourth Gospel unveils all through its pages, will not cease until the Father, to whom he is going, will have rendered justice to him in glorifying him. This drama, which people sometimes would like to conceal through reassuring words and sentiments, will not cease until the end of time. Persecution awaits Jesus, not because of some fatal error but because Christianity is different from what we want and claim it to be.
The early Christians were excluded from the synagogue; hatred and violence were stirred up against them under the guise of religion. Blindness and stubbornness: this is the world in the Johannine sense, the world of the persecutors. The Spirit is the strength and the light that assists the persecuted to hold fast in this affront, which no doubt also comes to pass in the heart of every believer. - John 16:4 The disciples have to overcome sadness at the departure and absence of Jesus so that they may understand the meaning of the event: passage to glory, gift of the Spirit, and the beginning of a new era in the world. But until the end of history the trial of Jesus will not stop, and the disciples will have to testify to him in a world where unbelief appears unceasingly.
The testimony of Christians can never stop; such testimony does not depend on the intelligence and the strength of people but on the action of the Spirit, who unveils to Christians, in faith, the glory of Christ and the view that history takes of this light (Christ). It is not a matter of a new revelation but of a discovery of what the words, actions, Death, and Resurrection of Jesus mean for each era: the truth of God that denounces the falsehood of sin, the goodness of God that denounces evil, and the condemnation of the forces that enslave people. The Spirit is the Paraclete: defender of Jesus in the heart of believers, defender of believers facing unbelief and refusal of the light—that is, the world in the sense the world is taken here (Jn 15:5-15). The Spirit is strength, support, light (see Jn 14:16).
