JOHN

Chapter 1

¹ In the beginning was the Word. The Word was with God, and the Word was God. ² He was with God before he began to create anything. ³ He is the one who carried out God's command to create everything—yes, absolutely everything that was made! ⁴ All life is in the Word, so he could give life to everything and everyone. The Word was God's light that shone on everyone, everywhere. ⁵ This light shone in the darkness, and the darkness tried to put it out, but it could not.

⁶ God sent a man named John. ⁷ He came to testify to the people about the light. What he said was true, and he proclaimed that message so that everyone might believe. ⁸ John himself was not the light, but he came to tell people about the light. ⁹ This was the true light that shines upon everyone, and that light was coming into the world.

¹⁰ The Word was in the world and, although he had made the world, none of its people knew who he was. ¹¹ Although he came to the world he owned, and even to his own people, the Jews, they rejected him. ¹² But all who took him into their lives and trusted in him, to them he gave the right to become God's children. ¹³ These are children born from God. They were not born by means of a normal human birth, nor out of a human desire or choice, nor because of a husband's desire to become a father.

¹⁴ Now the Word became a real human being and lived here where we live for a while. We have seen him display his splendid and amazing nature, the nature of the one and only Son of the Father, who shows us that God loves us faithfully and teaches us about his truth.

¹⁵ One day John the Baptizer was telling people about the Word, and Jesus came to him. John shouted to the crowd around him, "I told you someone would come after me, someone who is much more important than I am. He existed long before me, eternal ages before I was born. This man here! This is that man I was talking about!" ¹⁶ We have all benefited very much from what he has done. Again and again, he has acted very kindly toward us. ¹⁷ God gave Moses his law. That law showed us our failures and sin. But how much greater is the person and work of Jesus Christ. He was kind and forgiving to us when we had broken God's law, and he forgave us, and he taught us the truth about God. ¹⁸ No one has ever seen God. But Jesus Christ, the Only Son, who himself is God, is always close to the Father. Christ has shown us what God is like.

¹⁹ This is what John gave as his testimony: The Jews sent priests and the Levites from Jerusalem; they came to ask John, "Who are you?" ²⁰ So John testified to them and said, "I am not the Christ!" ²¹ Then they asked him, "What do you say about yourself? Are you Elijah?" He said, "No." They asked again, "Are you the Prophet whom the prophets say will come?" John answered, "No." ²² So they asked him once more, "Then who do you claim to be? Tell us so that we can go back and report to those who sent us. What do you say about yourself?" ²³ He answered as Isaiah the prophet had written, "I am the one shouting in the wilderness, 'Make the road good for the Lord to come to us.'"

²⁴ Some of these people came to John from the Pharisees. ²⁵ They asked him, "Since you say you are not the Christ nor Elijah nor the Prophet, then why are you baptizing?" ²⁶ John replied, "I am baptizing people with water, but there is now someone standing among you whom you do not know. ²⁷ He follows after me, but I am not important enough even to untie his sandals."

²⁸ These things happened at the village of Bethany over on the east side of the Jordan River. That is the place where John was baptizing.

²⁹ The next day John saw Jesus coming toward him. He said to the people, "Look! The Lamb of God, who will give his life as a sacrifice to take away the sins of the world. ³⁰ He is the one of whom I said, 'Someone will come after me who is more important than I am because he existed long before me, eternal ages before I was born.' ³¹ I did not know him at first, but now I know who he is. My work was to come and baptize with water those who were sorry and turned from their sins. I want the people of Israel to know who he is."

³² It was John's work to tell us what he saw. He spoke like this: "I saw God's Spirit as he was descending from heaven in the form of a dove. The Spirit came down and remained on Jesus. ³³ At first, I myself did not know him, but God sent me to baptize people with water, people who said they wanted to turn from their sinful ways. God told me, 'The man on whom you will see my Spirit descend and remain is the one who will baptize all of you with the Holy Spirit.' ³⁴ I have seen and I bear witness to you that he is the Son of God."

³⁵ John the Baptizer was at the same place again the next day with two of his disciples. ³⁶ When he saw Jesus passing by, he said, "Look! The Lamb of God, the man whom God appointed to give his life, like a lamb killed by the people of Israel as a payment for their sins!" ³⁷ The two disciples of John, when they heard John, left John and followed him. ³⁸ Jesus turned around and saw them following him, and he asked them, "What are you looking for?" They said to him, "Rabbi (which means 'teacher'), tell us where you are staying." ³⁹ He replied, "Come with me, and you will see!" So they came and saw where Jesus was staying. They stayed with him that day because it was getting late. (It was about 4 pm.)

⁴⁰ One of those two disciples who followed Jesus was named Andrew; he was Simon Peter's brother. ⁴¹ Andrew first went off to find his brother Simon. When he came to him, he said, "We have found the Messiah (which means Christ)!" ⁴² Andrew took Simon to Jesus. Jesus looked intently at Peter and said, "You are Simon. Your father's name is John. You will be given the name Cephas." Cephas is an Aramaic name that means 'solid rock.' ('Peter' means the same thing in Greek.)

⁴³ The next day Jesus decided to leave the Jordan River valley. He went to the region around Galilee and found a man named Philip. Jesus said to him, "Come with me." ⁴⁴ Philip, Andrew, and Peter were all from the town of Bethsaida (in Galilee). ⁴⁵ Then Philip went to search for his friend Nathaniel. When he came to him, he said, "We have found the one Moses wrote about in the law, the one called Christ. The prophets prophesied that he would come. His name is Jesus. He is from the town of Nazareth. His father's name is Joseph." ⁴⁶ Nathaniel replied, "From Nazareth? Can anything good come out of Nazareth?" Philip replied, "Come and you will see!" ⁴⁷ When Jesus saw Nathaniel approaching, he said this about him: "Look there! There is an Israelite who never deceives anyone!" ⁴⁸ Nathaniel asked him, "How do you know what kind of man I am? You do not know me." Jesus replied, "I saw you before Philip called you, when you were sitting by yourself under the fig tree." ⁴⁹ Then Nathaniel declared, "Teacher, you must be the Son of God! You are the King of Israel we have been waiting for!" ⁵⁰ Jesus replied to him, "Do you trust in me just because I told you that I saw you under the fig tree? You will see me do things that are much greater than that!" ⁵¹ Then Jesus said to him, "I am telling you the truth: Just like the vision your ancestor Jacob long ago saw, you also will see heaven opened up and you will see God's angels going up and coming down on me, the Son of Man."

Chapter 2

¹ Three days later, there was a wedding in Cana, a city in Galilee, and Jesus's mother was there. ² Jesus and his disciples were also invited to the wedding. ³ After a while, all the wine was gone. Jesus's mother said to him, "They are out of wine." ⁴ Jesus said to her, "Madam, what does that have to do with me? The chosen time to begin my most important work has not yet come." ⁵ Jesus's mother turned and said to the servants, "Do whatever he tells you." ⁶ Six empty stone jars were there. They held water so that the guests and servants could wash their hands and feet, and so that other Jewish rites of cleansing could be done. Each jar could hold 75 to 115 liters. ⁷ Jesus said to the servants, "Fill the jars with water!" So they filled the jars to the brim. ⁸ Then he told them, "Now, draw some water out of a jar and take it to the director of the feast." So the servants did that. ⁹ The director of the feast tasted the water, which had now become wine. He did not know where the wine had come from, although the servants knew. So he called the bridegroom to himself. ¹⁰ And the director of the feast said to the bridegroom, "Everyone serves the best wine first, and later when the guests have drunk a lot and the best is gone, then they serve the cheap wine. But you have kept the best wine until now." ¹¹ That was the first miracle Jesus did, one that signified truth about Jesus. He did it in the village of Cana, in the region of Galilee. There he showed that he could do amazing things. So the disciples trusted in him.

¹² After this Jesus and his mother and brothers, along with his disciples, went down to the city of Capernaum, and they stayed there a few days.

¹³ Now it was almost time for the Jewish Passover Celebration. Jesus and his disciples went up to Jerusalem. ¹⁴ There in the temple courtyard he saw men selling cattle, sheep, and pigeons. The animals were sold to those who were making their sacrifices at the temple. He also saw men sitting at tables selling temple money. ¹⁵ So Jesus made a whip from some leather cords and he used it to drive out the sheep and the cattle from the temple. He overturned the tables of the moneychangers and scattered their coins on the ground. ¹⁶ He commanded those who were selling pigeons, "Take these pigeons out of here! Do not turn my Father's house into a marketplace!" ¹⁷ This reminded his disciples about what someone had written in the scriptures long before: "I love your house so much, O God, that I will die for it."

¹⁸ The Jewish leaders asked him, "What miracle can you do for us to prove you have permission from God to do what you are doing?" ¹⁹ Jesus replied to them, "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will rebuild it again." ²⁰ "Are you saying that you are you going to rebuild this entire temple in just three days?" they asked him. "It took forty-six years to build this temple." ²¹ However, the temple Jesus was speaking about was his own body, not the temple building. ²² Later, after Jesus had died and God had raised him from the dead, his disciples remembered what he had said about the temple. They believed both what the scriptures said and what Jesus himself had said.

²³ When Jesus was in Jerusalem during the Passover Festival, many people trusted in him because they saw the miracles that signified truth about Jesus. ²⁴ Nevertheless, Jesus knew what people were like, and because he knew them so well, he did not trust them. ²⁵ He did not need anyone to tell him how evil people were. He knew everything about them.

Chapter 3

¹ There was a man named Nicodemus. He was a member of the Pharisees, a very strict group within the Jewish faith of that day. He was an important man, a member of the highest Jewish governing council. ² He went by night to see Jesus. He said to Jesus, "Teacher, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God. We know this because no one could perform the miracles you are doing unless God helped him." ³ Jesus replied to what Nicodemus said: "I am telling you the truth, no one can enter God's kingdom unless he is born again." ⁴ Then Nicodemus said to him, "How can a person be born again when he is old? No one can enter his mother's womb and be born a second time!" ⁵ Jesus answered, "I guarantee that this also is true, no one can enter God's kingdom unless he is born both by water and the Spirit. ⁶ If someone is born from a human, that person is a human being. But those who are born again by the work of God's Spirit have a new spiritual nature that God makes within them. ⁷ Do not be amazed when I tell you that you must be born again. ⁸ It is like this: The wind blows wherever it wants. You hear the sound of the wind, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. It is just like that with everyone who is made alive by the Spirit: The Spirit gives a new birth to whomever he desires. ⁹ Nicodemus replied to him, "How can this be true?" ¹⁰ Jesus replied to him, "You are an important teacher in Israel, and yet you do not understand what I am saying? ¹¹ I am telling you the truth, we say the things that we know to be true, and we are telling you what we have seen, yet none of you to whom we speak these things trusts what we are saying. ¹² If you do not trust what I say when I tell you about things of this earth, how will you trust what I say when I tell you about things of heaven? ¹³ I, the Son of Man, am the only one who has gone up to heaven, and I am the only one who has come down here to the earth. ¹⁴ Long ago Moses, when he was in the wilderness during the Exodus, lifted up a poisonous snake on a pole and all who looked up at it were saved. In the same way, the Son of Man must be lifted up ¹⁵ so that whoever looks up and trusts in him will have eternal life.

¹⁶ God loved the world in this way: He gave his only Son, so that anyone who trusts in him would not die, but would have everlasting life. ¹⁷ God did not send his Son into the world to pronounce sentence on it, but to save it. ¹⁸ Everyone who trusts in the Son, God will never condemn. But everyone who does not trust in him, God has already put under his condemnation because they did not put their trust in the name of the only Son of God. ¹⁹ God has made his justice for sinful people plain for all to see: His light has come into the world, but the people of this world have loved their darkness and they hide from the light. They loved the darkness because what they were doing was ugly and evil. ²⁰ Everyone who does wicked deeds hates the light, and they never will come to it, because the light exposes what they do and reveals how wicked they are. ²¹ But those who do what is good and true come to the light so that what they do may be seen by all and so that all might know that they were obeying God when they did these things.

²² After those things happened, Jesus and his disciples went to the region of Judea. He stayed there a while with his disciples and he baptized many people.

²³ John the Baptizer was also baptizing people near the village of Aenon near Salim in the region of Samaria. There was much water in that place, and so many people kept coming to John. ²⁴ This is before the time when John's enemies had put him in prison. ²⁵ An argument arose between some of John's disciples and one particular Jewish man about washing to make oneself acceptable to God. ²⁶ Those who were arguing came to John and said, "Teacher, there was a man who was with you when you were baptizing people on the other side of the Jordan River. You pointed him out to us and told us who he was. Well, now he is baptizing across the way in Judea and many people are going out to him." ²⁷ John replied to them, "A person cannot receive even one thing unless God gives it to him. ²⁸ You know I was telling the truth when I told you, 'I am not the Christ. But I have been sent before him.' ²⁹ I am like the friend of the bridegroom. I am standing there waiting for the bridegroom to come. The friend of the bridegroom is very happy when he hears the bridegroom's voice when he finally arrives. Therefore, because all this has happened, my joy is overflowing because he has come. ³⁰ Over time he will grow in status and importance, and I will become less and less important.

³¹ Jesus comes from heaven, and he is higher in position than anyone else. We have our home on earth, and we can speak only of things that belong to the earth. The one who comes from heaven is above everyone on the earth and everything there is. ³² Now there is one here who gives his testimony to what he has seen and heard, but no one accepts what he says or trusts it to be true. ³³ However, those who have trusted in what he said, they testify that God is the source of all truth, and that he alone is the measure and standard of everything that is true. ³⁴ God has sent his spokesman, and what he has said is true, for he speaks God's words. And he gives his Spirit with no concern for how much he gives. ³⁵ The Father loves the Son and puts everything under his power. ³⁶ Whoever trusts in God's Son has everlasting life. Whoever does not obey the Son of God can never have everlasting life, and the righteous fury of God for every sin which that person has done will remain upon him forever."

Chapter 4

¹ Jesus got a report about the Pharisees. They found out that Jesus was gaining more followers than John the Baptizer and that he was baptizing more people than John was. ² But Jesus himself was not personally doing the work of baptizing; his disciples were doing that. ³ So Jesus and his disciples left the region of Judea and returned once more to Galilee. ⁴ Now they had to go through the region of Samaria. ⁵ So they arrived at a town called Sychar in the region of Samaria. Sychar was near the plot of ground that Jacob had given to his son Joseph long ago. ⁶ Just outside the town of Sychar was Jacob's well. Jesus was very tired from his long journey, and he sat down to rest beside the well. It was about noon. ⁷ A woman from Samaria came out to the well to draw some water. Jesus said to her, "Give me a drink." ⁸ Now his disciples had left him alone because they had gone into the town to buy food. ⁹ The woman said to him, "I am surprised that you, a Jew, are asking me, a woman from Samaria, for a drink." (She was surprised that he spoke to her because it was common practice for Jews to have nothing to do with people from Samaria.) ¹⁰ Jesus replied to her, "If you had known the gift that God wants to give you and if you had known who is asking you for a drink, you would have asked me for a drink, and I would have given you living water." ¹¹ "Sir, you do not have a bucket or a rope with which to draw the water up out of the well, and this well is deep. Where would you get this living water? ¹² You cannot be greater than our father Jacob. He dug this well that we use today, and he drank from it himself, as did his children and his animals." ¹³ Jesus replied to her, "Everyone who drinks water from this well will be thirsty again, ¹⁴ but those who drink the water I will give them will never be thirsty again. The water I give will become a spring of water that fills them up and brings them everlasting life." ¹⁵ The woman said to him, "Sir, give me this water, so that I will never be thirsty or have to come here to draw water again."

¹⁶ Jesus knew she did not understand what he was saying, so he said to her, "Madam, go and call your husband and bring him here." ¹⁷ The woman answered him, "I do not have a husband." Jesus said to her, "You are right in saying that you have no husband, ¹⁸ because you have had not one but five husbands, and the man you are living with now is not your husband. What you have said about not having a husband is true."

¹⁹ The woman said to him, "Sir, I see you are a prophet. ²⁰ Our ancestors worshiped God right here on this mountain, but you Jews say that Jerusalem is the place we must worship God. Who is right?" ²¹ Jesus said to her, "Madam, believe me when I say that a time is coming when neither here on this mountain, nor in Jerusalem, will people worship the Father. ²² You people in Samaria worship what you do not know. We Jewish worshipers know whom we worship because salvation comes from the Jews. ²³ The time is coming and has now arrived when those who truly worship God will worship the Father spiritually and in truth. The Father searches for such people so that they may worship him in this way. ²⁴ God is Spirit, and those who worship him must worship him spiritually, and the truth must lead them in worship." ²⁵ The woman said to him, "I know that the Messiah is coming (the one called Christ). When he comes, he will explain everything to us." ²⁶ Jesus said to her, "I, who am speaking to you now, am he!"

²⁷ Just then, the disciples came back from town. They were amazed that Jesus was talking with a woman who was not a member of his family. (That was against Jewish custom.) Nevertheless, no one was brave enough to ask him, "What were you doing talking to a woman by yourself?" or "Why are you talking with her at all?"

²⁸ The woman left her water jar there and went back into town. She said to the people of the town, ²⁹ "Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done! Can that man be the Christ?" ³⁰ Many people started heading out of town, going where Jesus was.

³¹ His disciples, who had just returned with the food, urged him, "Teacher, eat something." ³² Jesus said to them, "I have food to eat that you know nothing about!" ³³ So they were saying to one another, "No one else could have brought him something to eat, could they?" ³⁴ Jesus said, "I will tell what I am most hungry for: It is to do what my Father who sent me wants and to complete all his work. ³⁵ At this time of the year you usually say, 'There are four months left, and then we will harvest the crops.' Yet look all around you! The fields are ready for harvest at this moment. ³⁶ The one who believes this and is ready to work in this kind of harvest is already receiving his payment and is gathering much fruit for eternal life. Those who sow the seed and those who reap the harvest will be glad together. ³⁷ This statement is true: One person plants the seeds, and another person harvests the crops. ³⁸ I sent you to gather the harvest from a crop you did not plant. Others have worked very hard, but you are now joining in their work."

³⁹ Many Samaritans who lived in the town of Sychar put their trust in Jesus because of what they heard about him from all the woman told them. She said, "He told me everything I have ever done." ⁴⁰ When the Samaritans came to Jesus, they urged him to stay a longer time with them. So he stayed there two more days. ⁴¹ Many more of them trusted in Jesus because of what he proclaimed to them. ⁴² They told the woman, "We believe in Jesus now, not just because of what you told us about him but also because we have heard his message for ourselves. Now we know that this man truly is the Savior of the world."

⁴³ After those two days in Samaria, Jesus and his disciples left and went to the region of Galilee. ⁴⁴ (Jesus himself confirmed that a prophet receives honor in many places but never in the place where he grew up.) ⁴⁵ However, when he arrived in Galilee, many of the people there welcomed him. They knew who he was because they saw all the things he had done in Jerusalem during the recent Passover Festival that was held there. ⁴⁶ Jesus went back again to Cana in Galilee. (That was where he had turned the water into wine.) There was an official of the king who lived in Capernaum just twenty-seven kilometers away, and his son was very sick. ⁴⁷ When that man heard that Jesus had come back to Galilee from Judea, he went to Jesus in Cana and begged him, "Come down to Capernaum and heal my son. He is about to die!" ⁴⁸ Jesus said to him, "Unless you see me do things that prove who I am and watch me do miracles, you will not trust in me!" ⁴⁹ Yet the official said to him, "Sir, please come down to my home before my son dies!" ⁵⁰ Jesus said to him, "Go. Your son will live." The man trusted what Jesus said and he started on his way back home. ⁵¹ As he was traveling down to his home in Capernaum, his servants met him along the road. They told him, "Your child is going to live." ⁵² He asked them, "At what time did my son begin to improve?" They said to him, "His fever ceased yesterday afternoon at one o'clock." ⁵³ Then the boy's father realized that this was the time Jesus told him, "Your son will live." So he trusted in Jesus, along with everyone who lived in his house.

⁵⁴ That was the second time Jesus did something to prove to people who he was. He did it during the time that he came to the region of Galilee, having traveled there from Judea.

Chapter 5

¹ Then the time came for another Jewish festival, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem for it. ² There is in Jerusalem, beside one of the gates going into the city, a place called the Sheep Gate. At that gate there is a pool called Bethesda (as it said in Aramaic). Next to the pool are five roofed porches or colonnades. ^3-4 A great number of people were there who could not take care of themselves. There, next to the pool, were people who were blind, people who could not walk, and even people who were paralyzed. ⁵ One man was there next to the pool who had been sick for thirty-eight years. ⁶ Jesus saw him lying there and realized that he had been in this condition for a long time. He said to the man, "Do you want to become healthy and strong?" ⁷ The man replied to him, "Sir, I have no one here to help me get down into the pool when the water is stirred. While I am trying to get to the pool, someone else always steps down in front of me." ⁸ Jesus said to him, "Get up! Take up your bed and walk!" ⁹ At once the man was healed, and he picked up his bed and walked.

Now that day was the Sabbath, the day of rest. ¹⁰ So the Jewish leaders said to the man who had been healed, "It is the Sabbath day, and you know it is against our law for you to carry your mat on this day of rest." ¹¹ The man who had been healed said to them, "But the one who healed me told me, 'Take up your bed and walk!'" ¹² They asked him, "Who was that man?" ¹³ Now although Jesus had healed the man, the man did not know his name. After healing him, Jesus had left the man and disappeared into the crowd.

¹⁴ Later, Jesus found the man in the temple and said to him, "See, you are well now. Do not sin anymore, so nothing worse will happen to you." ¹⁵ The man went away and told the Jewish leaders that the man who had healed him was Jesus. ¹⁶ So the Jews began efforts to stop Jesus because he was doing marvelous things and was showing his power and because he often did those works on the Sabbath day. ¹⁷ Jesus gave this answer to them, "My Father is working even now, and I am also working." ¹⁸ This is why the Jews were trying more and more to put Jesus to death, not only because he was breaking the Sabbath day but also because he even called God his own Father, claiming that he was equal to God.

¹⁹ Jesus replied to them, "I am telling you the truth: I, the Son of Man, can do nothing on my own authority. I can do only what I see the Father doing. Whatever the Father does, that is what I, the Son, do. ²⁰ The Father loves me, the Son, and shows me everything he is doing. Even greater works than these the Father will show me, so that you may see what I can do and be amazed. ²¹ As the Father raises up those who have died and gives them life again, so I, the Son, give life to anyone I want. ²² The Father judges no one, but has given over all judgment to me, ²³ so that all people may honor me, the Son, in the same way that they honor the Father. Whoever does not honor me cannot honor the Father. ²⁴ I am telling you the truth: Anyone who hears my message and trusts that God sent me has eternal life and will not come into God's judgment. Instead, he has gone from being dead to being alive.

²⁵ "I am telling you the truth: A time is coming when those who have died will hear my voice—the voice of me, the Son of God—and those who hear me will live. ²⁶ For as the Father is able to cause people to live, in the same way he has given power to me, the Son, to cause them to live. ²⁷ The Father has given me authority to do whatever he knows is just, because I am the Son of Man. ²⁸ Do not be surprised at this, because there will be a time when all people who have died will hear me call, ²⁹ and they will come out of their graves. God will raise to everlasting life those who have done good. But those who have done evil—God will raise them up, but only to condemn them and punish them forever. ³⁰ I can do nothing on my own. Whatever I hear from the Father, that is how I judge, and I judge in a just manner. I judge justly because I do not try to do what I want, but what the Father wants, he who sent me here.

³¹ "If I alone were the only one to be a witness about myself, no one would believe my witness to be true or reliable. ³² Nevertheless, there is someone else who bears witness about me, and I know that his testimony about me is true. ³³ You sent messengers to John the Baptizer, and he told you the truth about me. ³⁴ I do not actually need for him or anyone else to be a witness about me, but I am saying these things so that God can save you. ³⁵ John the Baptizer was a burning and shining lamp, and you were glad to rejoice for a while in his light. ³⁶ However, the witness I give about myself is even greater than the witness John gave about me. All the things that the Father has allowed me to do—I do those things every day, and you see me doing them—those things tell much about who I am; they explain my purpose for coming here. They are proof that the Father has sent me. ³⁷ The Father who sent me, he is the one who has given testimony about me. You have never heard his voice and you have never seen him physically. ³⁸ The proof that you do not have his word living in you is that you do not trust me, the one he sent. ³⁹ You carefully study the scriptures because you think that by studying them you will find eternal life, and those scriptures tell about me. ⁴⁰ Yet still you refuse to come to me in order that you might receive everlasting life from me.

⁴¹ "If people honor me or congratulate me, I ignore them. ⁴² I know this about you, you do not love God. ⁴³ I have come with my Father's authority, but still you do not welcome me or trust me. If someone else came with his own authority, you would listen to him. ⁴⁴ How can you trust in me when you work so hard for others among yourselves to honor you? Yet all the while you refuse to seek the true honor that comes from the one and only God.

⁴⁵ "Do not think that I am the one who accuses you before my Father. You thought Moses would defend you, so on him you have set your hopes. However, it is Moses who accuses you. ⁴⁶ If you had accepted what Moses said, you would have received what I said as the truth. ⁴⁷ Since you did not even believe in what Moses wrote, how could you possibly trust what I have said to you!"

Chapter 6

¹ Jesus went across the lake to the other side. The name of the lake was the 'Sea of Galilee' to some people; other people called it the 'Sea of Tiberias.' ² A large crowd followed him because they had seen the wonders he had done in healing people who were very sick. ³ Jesus went up on a steep hillside and sat down with his disciples. ⁴ Now it was the time of the year for the Passover Festival, a special celebration of the Jews. ⁵ Jesus looked up and saw that there was a very large crowd of people making their way toward him. Jesus said to Philip, "Where will we buy bread so that all these people can have something to eat?" ⁶ He asked Philip this question to test him, to see what sort of answer he would give. However, Jesus already knew what he was going to do about this problem. ⁷ Philip replied to him, "If we had the money that a man can earn in two hundred days of work, it would not be enough money to buy bread to give each person in this big crowd even a little piece to eat." ⁸ Another one of his disciples, Andrew, who was Simon Peter's brother, said to Jesus, ⁹ "There is a boy here who has five little barley loaves of bread and two small fish. Yet, how could so little food feed so many people?" ¹⁰ The place where the people were all coming together had a lot of grass. So Jesus said, "Tell the people to sit down." So all of the people sat down, and after the disciples counted the crowd, they found that there were about five thousand people. ¹¹ Then Jesus took the small loaves of bread and the fish, and he thanked God for them. Then he passed the bread and the fish among all who were sitting on the ground. The people ate all the fish and bread they wanted. ¹² When everyone had finished eating, he said to the disciples, "Gather up all the pieces of barley bread that the people did not eat. Do not let anything go to waste." ¹³ So they gathered up the pieces from the five barley loaves, and they filled twelve large baskets full from what was left over.

¹⁴ After the people saw the miracle that Jesus had performed in front of them, they said, "Surely he is the Prophet that God has been going to send into the world!" ¹⁵ Jesus knew what the people were planning; they were about to come and force him to be their king. So he left them and went up the mountain to be by himself.

¹⁶ When it was evening, his disciples went down to the Sea of Galilee, ¹⁷ got into a boat, and started to sail across the sea to the city of Capernaum. It was now dark, and Jesus was not with them. ¹⁸ A strong wind started to blow, and the waves on the sea became very rough. ¹⁹ After they had rowed five or six kilometers, the disciples saw Jesus walking on the water and coming near the boat. They were terrified! ²⁰ Jesus said to them, "It is I! Do not be afraid!" ²¹ They were very glad to take him into the boat. As soon as he was with them, their boat arrived at the place where they were going.

²² The next day the crowd of people that had stayed on the other side of the lake realized that there had been only one boat there the day before. They also knew that Jesus had not gone in the boat with his disciples. ²³ Some men came across the lake from the city of Tiberias in other boats they had. They put their boats near the place where the people had eaten the bread for which the Lord had given thanks to God. ²⁴ When the crowd realized that neither Jesus nor his disciples were there, some of them got into those boats and sailed to Capernaum to find Jesus.

²⁵ They searched and found Jesus in Capernaum on the other side of the Sea of Galilee. They asked him, "Teacher, when did you come here?" ²⁶ Jesus replied to them, "I am telling you the truth: You are not looking for me because you saw me perform miracles that show who I am. No! You are looking for me only because you ate until you were full of the loaves of bread. ²⁷ Stop working for food that will soon spoil! Instead, work for the food that will bring you everlasting life! That is the bread that I, the Son of Man, God's chosen one, will give you. For God the Father approves of me in every way."

²⁸ Then the people asked him, "What works and service should we do to please God?" ²⁹ Jesus replied, "What God wants you to do is this: Trust in me, the one he has sent." ³⁰ So they said to him, "Then perform another miracle to prove who you are so that we can see it and believe that you came from God. What will you do for us? ³¹ Our ancestors ate manna, just as the scriptures say: 'God gave them bread out of the heavens to eat.'"

³² Jesus said to them, "I am telling you the truth: It was not Moses who gave your ancestors that bread from heaven. No, it was my Father, the same one who is giving you the true bread from heaven. ³³ The true bread of God is I, the one who has come down from heaven in order to make everyone in the world truly able to live."

³⁴ They said to him, "Sir, always give us this bread." ³⁵ Jesus said to them, "Just as people need food to live, everyone needs me to live spiritually. Those who take ordinary food and water will become hungry and thirsty again. But for those who ask me and trust me to enable them to live spiritually, I will do this for them. ³⁶ Nevertheless, I have told you that, although you see me, you still do not trust me. ³⁷ All the people my Father gives to me will come to me, and I will never drive away anyone who comes to me. ³⁸ I came down from heaven not to do what I want, but to do the will of him who sent me. ³⁹ This is what the one who sent me wants, that I lose none of those whom he has given me, and that I raise all of them up on the last day. ⁴⁰ For this is what my Father wants, that everyone who looks in faith on me, the Son, and who trust in me will have everlasting life. I will raise them up on the last day."

⁴¹ The Jewish leaders began to grumble about Jesus because he said, "I am the bread who came down from heaven." ⁴² They said, "Is this not Jesus, whose father is Joseph? Do we not know his father and mother? How can he say with any truth, 'I have come from heaven'?" ⁴³ Jesus answered them, "Stop grumbling among yourselves. ⁴⁴ No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him to me. The one who comes to me, I will raise him up on the last day. ⁴⁵ It is written in the Prophets, 'God will teach them all.' Everyone who hears and learns from the Father comes to me. ⁴⁶ No one has seen the Father except me, the one who comes from God. I alone have seen the Father. ⁴⁷ I am telling you the truth: Whoever trusts in me has everlasting life. ⁴⁸ I am the bread that gives true life. ⁴⁹ Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, but they still died. ⁵⁰ However, the bread that I am speaking of is the bread that comes down from heaven, and the one who eats it will never die. ⁵¹ I am the bread that makes people truly live, the bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats this bread, he will live forever. The bread that I give for the life of the world is the death of my physical body."

⁵² The Jews who had listened to Jesus were now angrily arguing among themselves. They could not understand how anyone could promise that others would eat his own body. ⁵³ So Jesus confronted them with difficult words: "I am telling you the truth: Unless you eat the flesh of me, the Son of Man, and drink my blood, you will never live forever. ⁵⁴ Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood will live forever, and I will make them alive again at the last day ⁵⁵ because my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink. ⁵⁶ Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood will be joined to me, and I will be joined to him. ⁵⁷ My Father, who makes everyone alive, has sent me, and I live because my Father has made me able to. In the same way, those who feed on me will live forever because of what I will do for them. ⁵⁸ I am the true bread that comes down from heaven. Anyone who eats me—this bread—will never die, but will live forever! What I do is not like what happened to your ancestors, because they ate the manna and then died." ⁵⁹ Jesus said these things while he was teaching in the synagogue in the city of Capernaum.

⁶⁰ Many of his disciples said, "What he is teaching is hard to understand. How can anyone accept what he is saying?" ⁶¹ Jesus was aware that some of his disciples were complaining, so he said to them, "Does what I teach offend you? ⁶² What would you say if you saw me, the Son of Man, go back up to heaven? ⁶³ Only the Spirit gives life that can make anyone live forever. The human nature is no help in this matter. The words I have taught you tell you about the Spirit, and they tell you about eternal life. ⁶⁴ Yet there are some of you who do not trust what I am teaching you." Jesus said this because he knew from the start of his work who it was who would not trust in him, and he knew the person who would betray him.

⁶⁵ Then he said, "That is why I told you that no one can come to me and to live forever unless the Father makes him able to come to me."

⁶⁶ From that time on, many of Jesus's disciples turned back from following him. ⁶⁷ So he said to the twelve, "You also do not want to leave me, do you?" ⁶⁸ Simon Peter replied, "Lord, to whom would we go? Only you have the message that allows us to live forever! ⁶⁹ We trust in you, and we know for certain that you are the Holy One whom God has sent!" ⁷⁰ Jesus answered them, "Did I not choose you, the twelve disciples? Yet one of you is a devil!" ⁷¹ He was talking about Judas, the son of Simon Iscariot. Even though Judas was one of the twelve, he was also the one who would later betray Jesus.

Chapter 7

¹ After this, Jesus went to other areas in the region of Galilee. He avoided traveling to Judea because the Jewish authorities were searching for a way to charge him with a crime and to have him put to death. ² Now it was time for the Jewish Festival of Shelters. This was a time to remember when the Jewish people lived in tents during the Exodus long ago. ³ Because the festival was to take place in Judea, Jesus's brothers said to him, "Leave here and go to Judea so your other followers can see the powerful works you can do. ⁴ No one hides his work if he wants people to know what kind of a person he is. Show yourself to the world!" ⁵ For not even his own brothers trusted in him or thought he was telling the truth. ⁶ So Jesus said to them, "It is not yet time for me to bring my work to an end. However, you can choose any time you want to accomplish whatever you wish. ⁷ The people who live for themselves and love the things of this world cannot hate you, but they do hate me. I am the one who tells them that what they do with their lives is evil. ⁸ You go ahead to the festival. I am not going up now; it is not the right time for me." ⁹ After he said that, Jesus stayed a little longer in Galilee.

¹⁰ However, a few days after his brothers left for the festival, he also went, but he did so secretly. ¹¹ The Jewish opponents of Jesus were looking for him, hoping to find him at the festival. They were asking people, "Where is Jesus? Is he here?" ¹² Among the crowds, many people were quietly speaking with each other about Jesus. Some were saying, "He is a good man!" Others were saying instead, "No! He is deceiving and misleading the crowds!" ¹³ Because they were afraid of the Jewish enemies of Jesus, no one spoke of him in a public place where other people could overhear what they were saying.

¹⁴ When the Festival of Shelters was about half over, Jesus went to the temple courtyard and started to teach there. ¹⁵ The Jews were amazed at what he was saying. They said, "This man never studied our doctrines with an approved instructor; he never enrolled in our schools! How does he know so much?" ¹⁶ Jesus replied to them, "What I teach does not come from myself. It comes from the one who sent me. ¹⁷ If anyone chooses to do what God wants, he will find out if what I teach comes from God or if I speak only by my own authority. ¹⁸ Anyone who speaks on his own authority speaks so others will honor only him. However, if a servant works hard to honor the person who sent him, to give him a good reputation as a man of integrity, there is no fault in that kind of a servant. ¹⁹ Did not Moses give you the law? Yet none of you does what the law demands. You are the ones plotting to murder me right now!

²⁰ Someone in the crowd answered, "You have a demon! Name the person who wants to put you to death!" ²¹ Jesus replied to the crowd, "Because I did one work of power for you to see, you all marvel at it. ²² Moses gave you a law, and that law says you must circumcise your male children and that you must do that exactly seven days after the children are born. (To be accurate, this rite was from your forefathers Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and not from Moses, who wrote down the law about this practice.) Because of that requirement in the law, you sometimes have to circumcise a baby on the Sabbath day, and that is working, too! ²³ You sometimes circumcise boys on the Sabbath so that you will not violate the law of Moses. So why are you angry with me, saying I worked on the Sabbath when I was healing a man! Healing someone is more wonderful and a greater work than circumcising a baby! ²⁴ Stop deciding whether healing this man was right or wrong according to a false application of God's law, and that without any thought! Instead, decide what a person should do and how he should be judged by the principle of what is right and what is just according to God, not man."

²⁵ Some of the people from Jerusalem were saying, "Is this not the man they are trying to put to death? ²⁶ He is saying these things publicly, but the authorities are not saying anything to oppose him. Is that because they know he is the Christ? ²⁷ But he cannot be the Christ, because we know where he comes from. But when Christ comes, no one is supposed to know where he comes from."

²⁸ So while Jesus was teaching in the temple courtyard, he called out as he taught, "Yes, you say you know me, and you think you know where I am from. But I have come here not because I appointed myself. Instead, the one who sent me bears the truth as his testimony, and you do not know him. ²⁹ I know him because I have come from him. He is the one who sent me."

³⁰ Then they tried to lay their hands on him, but no one could arrest him because it was not yet the time for him to complete his work and for his life to end. ³¹ Many in the crowd, after they heard him and saw his works, put their trust in him. They said, "When the Christ comes, will he be able to do more miraculous signs than this man has done?" ³² The Pharisees heard them quietly speaking these things about Jesus. So the chief priests and Pharisees together sent some officers to arrest him.

³³ Then Jesus said, "I will be with you for only a short time. Then I am going back to the one who sent me. ³⁴ You will search for me, but you will not find me. Where I am going, you cannot come." ³⁵ So the Jewish people who were his enemies said to themselves, "Where can this man go where we cannot find him? Does he intend to go where the Jews are spread all across the Greek world, and will he teach the people there these new things? ³⁶ What did he mean when he said, 'You will search for me, but you will not be able to find me,' and when he said, 'Where I am going, you cannot come'?"

³⁷ So on the last day of the festival, the great day, Jesus stood up cried out with a loud voice, "If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink. ³⁸ Whoever trusts in me, as the scripture said, 'Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.'" ³⁹ He said this about the Spirit, whom the Father was going to give to those who trusted in him. God had not yet sent the Spirit to live within those who trusted him because Jesus had not yet finished his work, that work which would bring great honor to God by saving his people through his death.

⁴⁰ When some of the crowd heard those words, they said, "This truly is the Prophet that we were expecting." ⁴¹ Others said, "This is the Christ." Other people said, "But the Christ cannot come from Galilee. ⁴² Do not the scriptures say that the Christ must come through the descendants of David and that he must be born in Bethlehem, the village that was David's home?" ⁴³ So there was a division of opinion about Jesus. ⁴⁴ Some of the people wanted to arrest him. Yet no one laid a hand on him.

⁴⁵ So the officers returned to the chief priests and the Pharisees. These were the officers that the rulers had sent to arrest Jesus. The Pharisees said to the officers, "Why did you not seize him and bring him here?" ⁴⁶ The officers replied, "No one ever spoke like this man." ⁴⁷ Then the Pharisees replied, "Have you also been deceived? ⁴⁸ None of the Jewish authorities or the Pharisees have trusted in Jesus. ⁴⁹ This crowd who does not know the teachings of our laws, let them be cursed!"

⁵⁰ Then Nicodemus spoke. (He was the one who had gone to see Jesus at night to speak with him, and he was one of the Pharisees.) He said to them, ⁵¹ "Our Jewish law does not permit us to condemn a man before we have listened to him. First, we give him a hearing, and we must learn about what he has done." ⁵² They replied to him, "Are you also from Galilee? Search carefully and read what is written in the scriptures! You will find that no prophet comes from Galilee."

⁵³ [Then they all left and went to their own homes.

Chapter 8

¹ Jesus went with his disciples to the Mount of Olives, and they stayed near there that night. ² Early the next morning, Jesus returned to the temple courtyard. Many people gathered around him, and he sat down to teach them. ³ Then men who taught the Jewish laws and some who were Pharisees brought a woman to him. She had been caught in the act of adultery—she had been sleeping with a man who was not her husband. They made her stand up in the front of this group so they could question her. ⁴ They said to Jesus, "Teacher, this woman was caught committing adultery with a man, someone not her husband. ⁵ Now Moses commanded us in the law that we must execute such a woman with stones. Nevertheless, what do you say we should do?" ⁶ They asked this question as a trap so that they could accuse him of saying something wrong. If he said that they should not kill her, they could say that he dishonored the law of Moses. However, if he said that they should kill her, he would be breaking the Roman law that reserved for the governor the power to execute people.

However, Jesus bent down and wrote something on the ground with his finger. ⁷ While they continued to question him, he stood up and said to them, "Whichever one of you has never sinned, you are one who should lead the rest to punish her. You throw the first stone!" ⁸ Then Jesus stooped down and wrote some more on the ground. ⁹ After they heard what he said, those who were questioning him started walking away, one by one, the older ones first and then the younger ones. They knew they were all sinners. Finally only Jesus was there with the woman. ¹⁰ Jesus stood up and asked her, "Woman, where are those who accuse you? Has no one brought a charge against you that you must be punished?" ¹¹ She said, "No, sir, no one." Then Jesus said, "I do not condemn you either. Go home now, and from now on, do not sin like this anymore!"] ^[1]

¹² Jesus spoke to the people again. He said, "I am the light of the world. Anyone who follows me will have the light that gives life, and he will never walk in darkness again. ¹³ So the Pharisees said to him, "It sounds as though you are trying to convince us to trust you by talking about yourself more and more! What you say about yourself does not prove anything!" ¹⁴ Jesus replied, "Even if I were the only one to say these things about myself, what I say is true because I know where I came from and I know where I am going. Nevertheless, you do not know where I came from and you do not know where I am going. ¹⁵ You judge people according to human standards and the laws of men. I have not come at this time to judge anyone. ¹⁶ When I do judge, it will be right and just because I am not the only one who will bring justice. I and the Father who sent me, we will execute justice together. ¹⁷ It is written in your law that a matter can be settled only when there are at least two witnesses to give evidence in the case. ¹⁸ I am bringing evidence to you about myself, and my Father who sent me also brings evidence about me. So you should believe that what we tell you is true."

¹⁹ Then they asked him, "Where is your father?" Jesus replied, "You do not know me, and you do not know my Father. If you knew me, you would also know my Father." ²⁰ He said these things when he was near the treasury within the temple courtyard, the place where the people brought in their offerings. Yet no one arrested him because it was not yet time for him to die.

²¹ Jesus also said to them, "I am going away, and you will seek me, but it is certain that you will die in your sin. Where I am going, you cannot come." ²² His Jewish opponents said among themselves, "Perhaps he is thinking that he will kill himself, and that is what he means when he says, 'Where I am going you cannot come.'" ²³ Jesus continued saying to them, "You are from this earth below, but I am from heaven above. You belong to this world. I do not belong to this world. ²⁴ I told you that you will die and that God will condemn you for your sins. This will certainly happen unless you trust that I am God, as I say I am."

²⁵ "Who are you?" they asked him. Jesus said to them, "Ever since the very beginning, I have been telling you! ²⁶ I could judge you and say that you are guilty of many things. Instead, I will say only this: The one who sent me tells the truth, and I tell the people in the world only what I have heard from him."

²⁷ They did not understand that he was talking about the Father. ²⁸ So Jesus said, "When you have lifted me up on a cross to kill me—me, the Son of Man—you will know that I am God, and you will know that I do not do anything on my own authority. Instead, I only say what my Father has taught me to say. ²⁹ He who sent me is with me, and he has not left me alone, because I do only the things that delight him." ³⁰ As Jesus was saying these things, many more people trusted in him.

³¹ Then Jesus said to the Jews who now were saying that they trusted in him, "If you listen to all I teach you and live by it in everything you do, you are truly my disciples. ³² You will know the truth, and the truth will lead you to be free from everything that made you its slaves." ³³ They answered him, "We are the descendants of Abraham, and we have never been anyone's slaves. Why do you say we need to be free? ³⁴ Jesus replied, "I am telling you the truth: All who sin obey their sinful desires just as a slave is forced to obey his master. ³⁵ Slaves will not remain as permanent members of a family but may be set free to return home or may be sold. However, a son is a member of the family forever. ³⁶ So if I, the Son, set you free, you will be absolutely free. ³⁷ I know that you are in Abraham's family; you are his descendants. Yet your people are trying to put me to death. You will not trust anything I say. ³⁸ I tell you all about the wonders and wisdom my Father has shown me, but you are only doing what your father told you to do."

³⁹ They replied to him, "Abraham is our father." Jesus said to them, "If you were Abraham's descendants, you would be doing the things he did. ⁴⁰ I have been telling you the truth that I heard from God, but you are trying to put me to death. Abraham did not do things like that. ⁴¹ No! You are doing the things that your real father did." They said to him, "We do not know about you, but we are not illegitimate children. We have only one Father, and that is God." ⁴² Jesus said to them, "If God were your Father, you would love me, because I came from God and now I have come here to this world. I did not come because I myself decided to come but because he sent me. ⁴³ I will tell you why you do not understand what I say. It is because you do not accept my message or my teachings. ⁴⁴ You belong to your father the devil, and you desire to do what he wants. He was a murderer from the time people first sinned. He has abandoned God's truth; it is not in him. Whenever he lies, he is speaking according to his character because he is a liar; everyone who lies does what the devil wants him to do. ⁴⁵ Because I tell you the truth, you do not believe me! ⁴⁶ Which one of you finds me guilty of sin? Since I tell you the truth, what reason do you give for not trusting me? ⁴⁷ Those who belong to God hear and obey what he tells them. The reason that you do not hear and obey his message is that you do not belong to God."

⁴⁸ His Jewish enemies replied to him, "We are certainly right in stating that you are a Samaritan—you are not really a true Jew at all!—and that a demon lives in you!" ⁴⁹ Jesus replied, "A demon does not live in me! I honor my Father, and you dishonor me! ⁵⁰ I do not try to persuade people to honor me. There is someone else who desires to give me what I deserve, and he is the one who will judge everything that I say and do. ⁵¹ I am telling you the truth: If anyone holds firm to my word and trusts in it as I gave it, that person will never die!"

⁵² Then his Jewish enemies said to him, "Now we are sure that a demon lives within you! Abraham and the prophets died long ago! Yet you say that anyone who holds firm to what you teach will not die! ⁵³ You are not greater than our father Abraham. He died and all the prophets died with him. So who do you think you are?" ⁵⁴ Jesus replied, "If I tried to get people to honor me, that would be mean nothing. It is my Father who honors me, and yet he is the one of whom you say, 'He is our God.' ⁵⁵ Although you do not know him, I do know him. If I said that I did not know him, I would be a liar like you. I know him and I always obey what he says. ⁵⁶ Your father Abraham was happy when, as a prophet, he looked forward and saw what I could do."

⁵⁷ Then the Jewish leaders said to him, "You are not yet fifty years old! You have seen Abraham?" ⁵⁸ Jesus said to them, "I am telling you the truth, before Abraham was, I AM." ⁵⁹ So they picked up stones to put him to death. However, Jesus hid himself, left the temple, and went somewhere else.

Chapter 9

¹ As Jesus walked along, he saw a man who had been blind his whole life, since the day he was born. ² The disciples asked him, "Teacher, whose sin caused this man to be born blind? Was it this man himself who sinned, or was it his parents?" ³ Jesus replied, "It was not that either this man or his parents sinned. He was born blind so that today people may see the powerful work God would do in him. ⁴ We must do the works of the one who sent me while it is still day. Night is on the way and when it arrives no one will be able to work. ⁵ As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world."

⁶ When he said this, he spit on the ground. He made mud with his saliva and applied it like a medicine to the man's eyes. ⁷ Then Jesus said to him, "Go and wash in the pool of Siloam!" (The name of the pool means "sent"). So the man went and washed in the pool. When he came back, he was able to see. ⁸ The man's neighbors and others who had seen him when he was begging said, "Is that not the man who used to sit here and beg?" ⁹ Some said, "He is the one." Others said, "No, but he just looks like that man." However, the man himself said, "Yes, I am the man!" ¹⁰ So they said to him, "How is it that you are now able to see?" ¹¹ He replied, "The man called Jesus made some mud and used it like medicine and put it on my eyes. Then he told me to go to the pool of Siloam and wash. So I went there and washed, and then I could see for the first time." ¹² They said to him, "Where is that man?" He said, "I do not know."

¹³ Some of the people there took the man to a gathering of the Pharisees. ¹⁴ Now it was on the Sabbath day when Jesus did this miracle. ¹⁵ So the Pharisees asked the man again about how he was now able to see. He said to them, "The man put mud on my eyes and I washed, and now I see." ¹⁶ Some of the Pharisees said, "We know this man Jesus is not from God because he does not keep the Sabbath day." Others from that group asked, "If he were a sinner, how could he do such works of power that everyone sees?" So there was a difference of opinion among the Pharisees. ¹⁷ They asked the blind man again, "What do you say about him, since he is the one who restored your sight?" The man said, "He is a prophet."

¹⁸ Now the Jews who were opposed to Jesus did not believe the man had been blind and then became able to see. So they sent someone to bring in the man's parents so that they could be questioned also. ¹⁹ They asked his parents, "Is this your son? Do you say that he was blind from the day he was born? How, then, is he able to see?" ²⁰ His parents replied, "We know that this is our son. We know that he was blind when he was born. ²¹ Nevertheless, we do not know how he is now able to see. We also do not know who healed his eyes. Ask him, he is old enough to speak for himself." ²² The Jews who were against Jesus had previously agreed with one another that they would take anyone who declared that Jesus was the Christ and put them out of the synagogue. ²³ That is why his parents said, "Ask him, he is old enough to speak for himself."

²⁴ So they called the man who had been blind, and they asked him to come before them a second time. When he got there, they said to him, "Swear to God that you will speak only the truth! We know that this man who healed you is a sinner and that he does not keep the law that Moses gave us." ²⁵ He replied, "Whether he is a sinner or not, I do not know. One thing I do know is that I used to be blind, but now I see." ²⁶ So they said to him, "What did he do to you? How did he heal you so that you now see?" ²⁷ He answered them, "I have told you that already, but you did not believe me. Why do you want me to tell you again? Do you also really want to become his disciples?" ²⁸ Then they became angry and insulted him: "You are that man's disciple, but we are Moses's disciples! ²⁹ We know that God spoke to Moses; but about this man, we do not even know where he comes from." ³⁰ The man replied, "That is very amazing! You do not know where he comes from, but he is the one who opened my eyes so that I can see! ³¹ We know that God does not listen to the prayers of sinners, those who ignore his law, but he listens to people who worship him and who do what he wants. ³² Not since the beginning of the world has it been heard anywhere that someone was able to open the eyes of a man who was blind from birth! ³³ If this man had not come from God, he could do nothing like that!" ³⁴ They replied to him, "You were born in sin and have lived your whole life entirely in sin! Do you think you are qualified to teach us?" Then they banned him from the synagogue.

³⁵ Jesus heard about what the Pharisees did to the man he healed, how they threw him out of the synagogue. So he went and searched for the man. When he found him, he said to him, "Do you believe in me, the Son of Man?" ³⁶ The man answered, "Sir, who is he? Tell me, so that I may believe in him." ³⁷ Jesus said to him, "You have seen him. He is the one who is speaking to you now." ³⁸ The man said, "Lord, I believe." Then he went down on his knees and worshiped him.

³⁹ Jesus said, "I have come into this world to judge the world, so that those who do not see may see and so that those who see may become blind." ⁴⁰ Some of the Pharisees who were with him heard him say this, and they asked Jesus, "Are we also blind?" ⁴¹ Jesus said to them, "If you were blind, you would have no guilt. However, because you now defend yourself and say, 'We see,' your guilt is staying with you.

Chapter 10

¹ "I am telling you the truth: Those who enter into the sheep pen but do not use the gate are thieves and robbers. ² The man who enters the pen through the gate is the true shepherd, for he takes care of the sheep. ³ The hired man who guards the gate when the shepherd is away will open the gate for him when he comes. However, the sheep recognize only the shepherd's voice and only when he calls them by name. Then he leads them outside of the pen to feed them and to give them water. ⁴ After he has brought out all of his own sheep, he goes in front of them. His sheep are eager to follow him because they know his voice. ⁵ They will never follow a stranger who calls out to them. They will run away from him because they do not recognize the stranger's voice."

⁶ Jesus used this illustration from the work of shepherds. Nevertheless, his disciples did not understand what he was telling them. ⁷ So Jesus spoke to them again, "I am telling you the truth: I am the gate through which all the sheep enter into the pen. ⁸ All who came before me were thieves and criminals who stole the sheep, but the sheep did not listen to them and would not follow them. ⁹ I myself am like that gate. If anyone enters through the gate and goes into the pen where the sheep are, he will be safe, and he will go out and find good pasture. ¹⁰ The thief comes only to steal, kill, and destroy. I have come so that they may have life and that life will be full to overflowing.

¹¹ "I am like a good shepherd. The good shepherd will die in order to protect and save his sheep. ¹² Someone pays the hired man money to watch over the sheep. The hired man does not treat the sheep like they belong to him; he is just an employee doing a job. So when he sees a wolf coming to kill the sheep, he does not risk his life. He leaves the sheep and runs away so that it is possible for the wolf to attack the sheep, seizing some of them and scattering others. ¹³ The hired worker runs away because he is only working for the money. He does not care about what happens to the sheep. ¹⁴ I myself am the good shepherd. I know my own sheep, and my own sheep know me, ¹⁵ just as I know my Father, and my Father knows me. Because of that, I am willing to die for my sheep. ¹⁶ I have other sheep that do not belong to the same group of sheep that you do. I will cause them to listen to me also. They will listen to me, so there will eventually be only one flock of sheep under me, the only shepherd. ¹⁷ The reason my Father loves me is that I will sacrifice my life. I will give up my life, and I will take it up to live again. ¹⁸ No one is causing me to lay down my life. I have chosen to sacrifice myself. I have authority to lay down my life and I have authority to take it up and to live again. This work is from my Father, and he has commanded me to do it."

¹⁹ After hearing these words Jesus had been speaking, the Jews were divided in their opinion of him. ²⁰ Many of them said, "A demon is controlling him and has caused him to become crazy. Do not waste time listening to him!" ²¹ Others said, "What he is saying is not something a man oppressed by a demon would ever say. No demon can open the eyes of a blind man!"

²² Then it was time for the Festival of the Dedication in Jerusalem. It was winter, ²³ and Jesus was walking in the temple in the porch of Solomon. ²⁴ Then the Jews surrounded him and said to him, "How long will you hold us doubting? If you are the Christ, tell us openly." ²⁵ Jesus answered them, "I have told you, but you would not believe me. You know who I am because of the miracles and other things I do by my Father's name and authority. Those things tell you all you need to know about me. ²⁶ You do not believe in me, because you do not belong to me. You are sheep who belong to another shepherd. ²⁷ My sheep hear my voice. I know each one of them by name; they follow me and obey me. ²⁸ I give them eternal life. No one can ever destroy them, and no one will ever be able to steal them away from me. ²⁹ My Father gave them to me; he is greater than anyone, so no one is able to steal them away from him. ³⁰ I and the Father are one."

³¹ The enemies of Jesus again picked up stones to throw at him and to put him to death. ³² Jesus said to them, "You have seen me do many good works, things that my Father had told me to do. For which of them are you going to stone me?" ³³ The Jewish opponents replied, "We are wanting to take your life, not because you did any good work but because you, just a man, are insulting God and are making yourself God!" ³⁴ Jesus replied to them, "In the scriptures it is written what God said to the rulers whom he had appointed: 'I have said that you are like gods (with great honor and with power over many).' ³⁵ God said that to those leaders when he appointed them. No one objected to that, and nothing that is in scripture can be shown to be false. ³⁶ I am the one whom my Father chose to send here into this world. So why are you angry with me for saying that I am equal with God when I said, 'I am the Son of God'? ³⁷ If I were not doing the works that my Father told me to do, I would not expect you to believe in me. ³⁸ However, because I am doing these works, place your trust in what these works tell you about me even though you do not trust what I say. If you do that, then you will know and understand that my Father is in me and that I am in my Father."

³⁹ After they heard that, they tried to seize Jesus again, but he got away from them one more time.

⁴⁰ Then Jesus went back across to the east side of the Jordan River. He went to the place where John the Baptizer had baptized many people at the beginning of his ministry. Jesus stayed there for several days. ⁴¹ Many people came to him. They were saying, "John the Baptizer never performed a miracle, but this man has performed many miracles! Everything that John said about this man is true!" ⁴² Many people came to trust him; they put their trust in who he was and in what he would do for them.

Chapter 11

¹ A man named Lazarus fell very sick. He lived in the village of Bethany where Mary and Martha lived. ² This is the same Mary who later would pour perfume on the Lord to show her love and honor of him, and would wipe his feet with her hair. It was her brother Lazarus who was sick. ³ So the two sisters sent someone to tell Jesus about Lazarus; they said, "Lord, the one you love is ill." ⁴ When Jesus heard about Lazarus's illness, he said, "This illness will not end in the death of Lazarus. The purpose of this illness is so that people may see and know how great God is when he does wonderful things and also so that I, the Son of God, may show my power to give life." ⁵ Now Jesus loved Martha, her sister Mary, and Lazarus. ⁶ Nevertheless, when Jesus heard that Lazarus was sick, he delayed going to see him. He stayed where he was for two more days.

⁷ Then he said to disciples, "Let us go back to Judea." ⁸ The disciples said, "Teacher, just a short while ago the Jews who oppose you wanted to murder you with stones, and now you want to go back there again!" ⁹ Jesus answered them, "You know there are twelve hours of light in a day, is that not true? The one who walks during the daytime will walk safely because he can see what is in the road. ¹⁰ However, when a person walks during the night, he may easily stumble because he cannot see."

¹¹ After saying these things, he said to them, "Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but I will go there to wake him up." ¹² The disciples said to him, "Lord, if he has fallen asleep, he will get well." ¹³ Jesus was really speaking about Lazarus's death, but the disciples thought that he was talking about the sleep that we all know gives us rest. ¹⁴ Then he told them plainly, "Lazarus has died." ¹⁵ Jesus continued, "But, for your sakes, I am glad that I was not there when he died so that you may see why you can trust in me. Now it is time; let us go to him." ¹⁶ Then Thomas, who was called 'The Twin,' said to the rest of the disciples, "Let us also go with Jesus so that we may die with him."

¹⁷ When Jesus arrived in Bethany, he found that Lazarus had already died and had been in the tomb for four days. ¹⁸ Now Jerusalem was only about three kilometers from Bethany. ¹⁹ Many Jews knew Lazarus and his family, and they came from Jerusalem to comfort Martha and Mary over their brother's death. ²⁰ When Martha heard someone say Jesus was nearby, she went out to the road to meet him. Mary did not get up but stayed in the house. ²¹ When Martha saw Jesus, she said to him, "Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. ²² Yet, even now I know that whatever you ask from God, God will give you." ²³ Jesus said to her, "Your brother will rise again." ²⁴ Martha said to him, "I know that he will come alive again on the day when God raises all the dead on the last day." ²⁵ Jesus said to her, "I am the one who raises people from the dead; I am the one who gives them life. Whoever trusts in me, even if he dies, yet he will live again. ²⁶ All those who receive life joined to me and who trust in me—they will never die. Do you believe me?" ²⁷ She said to him, "Yes, Lord! I trust what you say and I trust who you are, that you are the Christ, the Son of God, the one God promised would come into the world.

²⁸ After she said that, she returned to the house and took Mary her sister aside privately and said to her, "The Teacher is here, and he is calling for you." ²⁹ When Mary heard this, she got up quickly and went out to him. ³⁰ Now Jesus had not yet come into the village; he was still at the place where Martha had met him. ³¹ The people who had come to the house to comfort the sisters saw Mary get up quickly and go outside. So they followed her, thinking that she was going to the tomb where they had buried Lazarus in order to grieve for her brother there.

³² Mary came to the place where Jesus was; when she saw him, she fell down before him at his feet and said, "Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died." ³³ When Jesus saw her grieving and crying, and that the mourners who had come with her were also crying, he cried out in distress deep within his spirit, and he was very upset. ³⁴ He said, "Where have you laid his body?" They said to him, "Lord, come and see." ³⁵ Jesus wept. ³⁶ So the Jews said, "See how much he loved Lazarus!" ³⁷ However, some others said, "Did he not open the eyes of the blind man? Why could he not have kept this man from dying?"

³⁸ Jesus was physically shaken and emotionally upset when he came to the tomb. It was a cave, and the entrance had been covered by a large stone. ³⁹ Jesus gave a command to those standing there, "Take away the stone." However, Martha objected, "Lord, by this time there will be a putrid odor, for he has been dead for four days." ⁴⁰ Jesus said to her, "Did I not tell you the truth when I told you that if you trusted me, you would see who God is and you would know what God can do?"

⁴¹ So they took away the stone. Jesus looked up toward heaven and said, "Father, I thank you that you have heard me. ⁴² I know that you always hear me. I said this for the sake of the people who are standing here so that they might put their trust in you and have confidence in the fact that you sent me." ⁴³ After he said that, he cried out with a loud voice, "Lazarus, come out!" ⁴⁴ The man who had died came out! His hands were still wrapped and his feet were still bound with linen strips of cloth, and there was a cloth wrapped around his face as well. Jesus said to them, "Take off the strips of cloth that bind him and untie him. Let him go."

⁴⁵ As a result, many of the Jews who had come to see Mary and who had witnessed what Jesus did put their trust in him. ⁴⁶ Nevertheless, some of the others went to the Pharisees and told them what Jesus had done. ⁴⁷ So the chief priests and the Pharisees gathered all the members of the Jewish council together. They were saying to each other, "What are we going to do? This man is performing many miracles. ⁴⁸ If we allow him to keep doing them, everyone will trust in him and rebel against Rome. Then the Roman army will come and destroy both our temple and our nation!"

⁴⁹ One of them on the council was Caiaphas, the high priest for that year. He said to them, "You all know nothing! ⁵⁰ Do you not realize that it is better that one man die for the people than that the whole nation perishes?" ⁵¹ He said that, not because he thought of it himself. Instead, since he was the high priest that year, he was prophesying that Jesus would die for the Jewish nation. ⁵² But he was also prophesying that Jesus would die, not just for the Jewish nation only, but also so he could gather into one nation all the children of God, those who live in other lands everywhere. ⁵³ So from that day forward, the council began to look for any way to arrest Jesus and put him to death.

⁵⁴ Because of that, Jesus no longer traveled around publicly among his Jewish opponents. Instead, he left Jerusalem and, with the disciples, went to a town called Ephraim in an area near the wilderness and desert region. There he stayed with his disciples for a while.

⁵⁵ Now it was almost time for the Jewish Passover Celebration, and many worshipers went up from the country and the villages to Jerusalem. They would wash themselves in preparation, to make themselves clean according to the Jewish rules, so that they would be allowed to celebrate the Passover. ⁵⁶ The worshipers who came to Jerusalem for the Passover Festival were all looking for Jesus. When they came and stood in the temple, they said to one another, "What do you think? He will not come to the Passover, will he?" ⁵⁷ The Jewish chief priests and the Pharisees had issued orders that if anyone found out where Jesus was, they should report it to them, so that they could arrest him.

Chapter 12

¹ Jesus arrived in Bethany six days before the Passover Festival began. Bethany was the village where Lazarus lived, the man Jesus made alive again after he had died. ² There in Bethany, they gave a dinner to honor Jesus. Martha made preparations for the dinner, and Lazarus was among those who were sitting together and eating. ³ Then Mary took a bottle of expensive perfume (called nard) and, to honor Jesus, she poured it out on his feet and then wiped his feet with her hair. The fragrance of the perfume filled the entire house.

⁴ However, one of his disciples, Judas Iscariot (he was the one who broke the trust Jesus had in him, and soon he would give Jesus up to his enemies)—he objected and said, ⁵ "We should have sold this perfume for three hundred days' wages and given the money to the poor." ⁶ He said this, not because he cared about the poor people but because he was a thief. He kept charge of the bag that held their money, but he would take money for his own use whenever he wanted. ⁷ Then Jesus said, "Leave her alone! She bought this perfume for the day when I would die and they would bury me. ⁸ You will always have the poor with you, but you will not always have me."

⁹ A large crowd of Jews in Jerusalem heard that Jesus was in Bethany, so they went there. They came not only because Jesus was there but also to see Lazarus, whom Jesus had made alive. ¹⁰ Then the chief priests decided it was necessary to also put Lazarus to death, ¹¹ for it was because of him that many of the Jews were no longer believing in what the chief priests were teaching; instead, they were putting their trust in Jesus.

¹² The next day the large crowd that had come for the Passover Festival heard that Jesus was on his way to Jerusalem. ¹³ So they cut branches from palm trees and went out to welcome him as he came into the city. They were shouting, "Hosanna! Praise God! God bless the one who comes in the name of the Lord! Welcome, King of Israel!" ¹⁴ When Jesus came near to Jerusalem, he found a young donkey and sat on it, riding into the city. By doing this, he fulfilled what had been written in scripture:

     ¹⁵ "Do not be afraid, you who live in Jerusalem.

     Look! Your King is coming.

     He is riding on a donkey's colt!"

¹⁶ When this happened, his disciples did not understand that this was a fulfillment of prophecy. However, after Jesus had finished his work and had received again his full powers as God, they looked back and remembered what the prophets had written about him and what people had done to him.

¹⁷ The crowd that was following along with Jesus kept telling others what they had seen, that Jesus had called Lazarus out of the tomb and had made him alive again. ¹⁸ The other crowd of people, those who went out of the city gate to meet Jesus, did so because they heard he had done great things to show them his power. ¹⁹ So the Pharisees said to each other, "See! We are gaining no advantage here. Look! The whole world is following him!"

²⁰ Among those who went up to Jerusalem during the Passover Festival were some Greeks. ²¹ They came to Philip, who was from Bethsaida in the district of Galilee. They had something to ask him; they said, "Sir, would you introduce us to Jesus?" ²² So Philip reported this to Andrew, and they both went and told Jesus. ²³ Jesus answered Philip and Andrew, "It is time for God to show the people everything that I, the Son of Man, have done and to tell them all that I have said. ²⁴ I am telling you the truth: Unless a seed of wheat is planted in the earth and dies, it remains only one seed; but after it dies in the ground, then it will grow and produce a harvest of many seeds. ²⁵ Anyone who tries to live to please himself will fail, but anyone who does not live to please himself will keep his life forever. ²⁶ If anyone wants to serve me, he must also follow me because my servant must be where I am. The Father will honor everyone who serves me.

²⁷ "Now my soul is greatly troubled. Should I say, 'Father, save me from this time when I will suffer and die'? No, for this is the very reason I came into this world. ²⁸ My Father, show how powerful you are in all you have said, in all you have done, and in all you are!"

Then God spoke from heaven, "I have already displayed my nature, my words, and my works, and I will do it again!" ²⁹ The crowd that was there heard the voice of God, but some said it was just thunder. Others said an angel had spoken to Jesus. ³⁰ Jesus replied to them, "The voice you heard speaking was God's voice. However, he spoke not for my benefit, but for yours! ³¹ Now is the time for God to judge the world. Now is the time when he will drive out Satan, the one who rules this world. ³² As for me, when people raise me high on a cross, I will draw everyone to myself." ³³ He said this to let the people know how he would die.

³⁴ Someone in the crowd answered him, "We understand from the scriptures that the Christ will live forever. So why do you say that the Son of Man will die? Who is this 'Son of Man'?" ³⁵ Jesus answered, "My light will shine on you for just a little longer. Walk in the light while you have my light, or the darkness will overtake you. Those who walk in the darkness cannot see where they are going! ³⁶ Trust in that light while you have the light; then you will belong to the light.

After he said those things, Jesus left them and hid from them. ³⁷ Although Jesus had done many miracles, most of the people did not believe what he had told them. ³⁸ This was to make come true what Isaiah the prophet had written long ago:

     "Lord, who has believed anything that they have heard from us?

     Has anyone seen how powerfully you, our Lord, can rescue us?" ³⁹ Yet, they could not trust in him for the reason that Isaiah had written: ⁴⁰ "The Lord has made them so they cannot see,

     and he has made them stubborn;

     they cannot even see with their eyes.

     If they could, they would understand;

     they would repent and pray for me to forgive them.

     For this reason, I cannot heal them!"

⁴¹ Isaiah wrote those words long ago because, as a prophet, he could see and understand the glory of Christ and he wrote about him in his prophecy.

⁴² Although this was true, many of the leaders of the Jewish people put their trust in Jesus. Nevertheless, they greatly feared that the Pharisees would ban them from the synagogues, so they did not speak out about trusting in Jesus. ⁴³ They preferred that other people honor and respect them rather than that God would honor them.

⁴⁴ Jesus shouted out to the crowd that had gathered, "Those who put their trust in me are not only putting their trust in me but also are putting their trust in the Father who sent me. ⁴⁵ When you see me, you are also seeing the one who sent me. ⁴⁶ I have come into the world as the light of the world; whoever puts his trust in me will not remain in the darkness.

⁴⁷ "I do not judge those who listen to my words but refuse to obey me. I did not come into the world to condemn the world. ⁴⁸ Yet, there is something that will condemn those who reject me and do not follow my message. They are condemned by the message I have spoken to them. ⁴⁹ When I taught about God, I was not merely saying what I thought. The Father, who sent me, gave me clear instructions on what I should say and how I should say it. ⁵⁰ I know that the Father's most important instructions are the ones that teach people how to live forever, and I have said exactly what my Father has told me to say."

Chapter 13

¹ It was now the day before the Passover Festival was to begin. Jesus knew it was time for him to leave this world and to return to his Father. He showed how much he loved those who were with him here in this world, and he loved them until the end of his life. ² Before Jesus and the disciples had their evening meal, the devil had already put the thought into the mind of Judas Iscariot, the son of Simon, that he would hand Jesus over to his enemies. ³ Yet Jesus knew that his Father had given him complete power and authority over everything. He also knew that he himself had come from God and would soon return to God. ⁴ Jesus got up from the dinner. He took off his outer clothing and wrapped a towel around his waist. ⁵ He poured out some water into a basin and began to wash the disciples' feet and to wipe them dry with the towel.

⁶ He came to Simon Peter, who said to him, "Lord, are you going to wash my feet?" ⁷ Jesus replied to him, "You do not understand now what I am doing for you, but later you will understand." ⁸ Peter said, "You will never wash my feet!" Jesus replied to him, "If I do not wash you, then you have nothing to do with me." ⁹ So Simon Peter said to him, "Lord, wash not only my feet! Wash my hands and my head also!" ¹⁰ Jesus said to him, "One who has taken a bath needs only to wash his feet. The rest of his body is already clean. You are clean, but not all of you." ¹¹ He knew who was going to hand him over. That is the reason he said, "Not all of you are clean."

¹² After he finished washing their feet, he put his outer clothing on again. Then he sat down at his place again and said, "Do you understand what I have done for you? ¹³ You call me 'teacher' and 'Lord.' You are right to say this, for that is what I am. ¹⁴ If I, your teacher and Lord, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another's feet. ¹⁵ I have given you an example to follow, in order that you should do as I have done for you. ¹⁶ I am telling you the truth: A servant is not greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who has sent him. ¹⁷ If you know these things, how fortunate you will be if you do them. ¹⁸ I am not saying this about all of you. I know the ones I have chosen. However, what is written in scripture must come true: 'The one who ate my food with me as a friend, he has turned against me and treated me like an enemy.'

¹⁹ "I am telling you this now before he hands me over so that when it does happen, you may believe that I am God. ²⁰ I am telling you the truth: Whoever receives the one I send also receives me, and whoever receives me also receives my Father who sent me."

²¹ After Jesus said this, he was troubled within himself. He solemnly declared, "I am telling you the truth: One of you is going to hand me over to my enemies." ²² The disciples looked at one another. They were confused about which of them he was talking about. ²³ One of the disciples, John, the one whom Jesus especially loved, was at the table next to Jesus. ²⁴ Simon Peter motioned to John that he should ask Jesus which disciple he was talking about. ²⁵ So John leaned back against Jesus and asked him quietly, "Lord, who is it?" ²⁶ Jesus answered, "It is the one to whom I will give this piece of bread after I dip it in the bowl." Then he dipped the bread and gave it to Judas, the son of Simon Iscariot. ²⁷ As soon as Judas took the piece of bread, Satan entered into him and took control of him. Jesus said to him, "Whatever you need to do, do it quickly." ²⁸ No one else at the table knew why Jesus had said that to him. ²⁹ Some thought that because Judas had the money bag, Jesus was telling him to go and buy some things needed for the Passover Festival. Others thought Jesus was telling Judas to give something to the poor. ³⁰ After receiving the bread, immediately Judas went out. It was night.

³¹ After Judas left, Jesus said, "Now God will make people know what I, the Son of Man, am doing. I, the Son of Man, will make people know what God is doing as well, and people will honor him for it. ³² Since I, the Son of Man, make God known to people and since I honor him, God will also honor me. God will do this immediately.

³³ "Little children, I am with you just a little while longer. You will look for me, but just as I told the Jews and as I am now telling you, where I am going you cannot come. ³⁴ I will give you this new command: You must love one another, just as I have loved you. ³⁵ If you love one another, all people will know that you are my disciples."

³⁶ Simon Peter said to him, "Lord, where are you going?" Jesus replied, "Where I am going you cannot come with me now, but you will come later." ³⁷ Peter said, "Lord, why can I not come with you now? I would lay down my life for you!" ³⁸ Jesus answered, "Would you really lay down your life for me, Peter? I am telling you the truth: The rooster will not crow in the morning before you will say three times that you do not know me!

Chapter 14

¹ "Do not be upset or anxious. You are trusting in God; trust also in me. ² Where my Father lives there are many places to live. If that were not true, I would have told you. I go there to prepare a place for you. ³ If I am going there to prepare a place for you, I will return and take you to be with me, so that where I am, there you may be with me. ⁴ You know where I am going, and you know the way."

⁵ Thomas said to him, "Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?" ⁶ Jesus said to him, "I am the way, I am the truth, and I am the life. No one can come to the Father and live with him unless he comes through me. ⁷ If you knew me, you would have known my Father also. From now on, you know him and you have seen him."

⁸ Philip said to Jesus, "Lord, show us the Father and that will be all we will ever want!" ⁹ Jesus said to him, "Philip, I have been with you so long, and still you do not know me. Those who have seen me have seen my Father. So why do you say 'Show us the Father'? ¹⁰ Do you not believe that I am joined to my Father and that my Father is joined to me? The things I have told you—I did not think of these things; rather, it is my Father who has sent me to tell you all of these things, for my Father is joined to me and works through me. ¹¹ Trust me because I have told you that I am joined to the Father and that the Father is joined to me, or else trust me because of all the signs and mighty acts you have seen me do. ¹² I am telling you the truth: Whoever trusts in me will also do the things that I do. He will do even greater works because I am going to be with the Father. ¹³ Whatever you ask in my name, that I will do. I will do this in order that everyone might honor the Father and that they might know the Father because of everything that I, his Son, do. ¹⁴ If you ask the Father for anything because you belong to me, I will do it.

¹⁵ "If you love me, you will live as I have taught you. ¹⁶ Then I will ask the Father to give you another gift, and he will send you another Helper, one who will come alongside you to be with you forever. ¹⁷ He is the Spirit who tells the truth about God. The unbelieving people in this world will never welcome Him. The world cannot see him or know him. You know him because he lives with you and he will be joined to you. ¹⁸ I will not abandon you and leave you with no one to care for you; I will come to you. ¹⁹ Soon the world will not see me anymore, but you will see me. Because I live, you will live. ²⁰ When you see me again, you will know that I am joined to the Father and that you are joined to me and I to you. ²¹ Everyone who has heard my commandments and obeys them, they are the ones who love me. And the ones who love me, my Father will love them also; I will love them and I will reveal myself to them."

²² Then Judas (not Iscariot, but the other disciple with the same name) spoke to Jesus. He said, "Lord, how will you reveal yourself just to us and not to the whole world?" ²³ Jesus replied to him, "This is how you can tell whether people love me: whether they do what I have told you to do. Any people like this, my Father will love them. He and I will come to them and live with them. ²⁴ As for those who do not love me, they will not obey what I have told them to do. The things I have told you are not things that I have decided to say on my own; instead, they are things that my Father has sent me to tell you. ²⁵ I have said these things to you while I am still with you. ²⁶ The Helper, the one who comes alongside to be with you—my Father will send him in my name. He will teach you everything that you need to know. He will also cause you to remember all the things that I have told you. ²⁷ As I leave you with peace, it is my peace that I am giving to you. I give you a kind of peace no one and nothing that belongs to this world can give you. So do not be upset or anxious, and do not be afraid.

²⁸ "You heard me say to you that I am going away and will later come back to you. If you loved me, you would be glad that I am going back to the Father because the Father is greater than I am. ²⁹ I have told you these things now before they happen so that, when they do happen, you will continue to trust me. ³⁰ I will not be able to talk with you much longer because the ruler of this world is coming. However, he has no power over me, ³¹ and I will do what the Father has commanded me to do. This is so that the world will know forever that I love the Father. Come, let us go from here.

Chapter 15

¹ "I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. ² Every branch in me that does not grow fruit—my Father cuts it off and takes it away. As for every branch that gives good fruit, he makes it clean by pruning it so that it may produce even more fruit. ³ You are already pure because of the message I spoke to you. ⁴ Remain joined to me, and I will remain joined to you. As the branch cannot bear any fruit on its own, neither can you bear fruit unless you stay joined to me and depend upon me for everything.

⁵ "I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain joined to me and I remain joined to you, you will bear much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing at all. ⁶ Everyone who does not stay joined to me and draw his life from me will be thrown away like a dead branch. Those branches are gathered together and thrown into the fire and burned. ⁷ If you stay joined to me and live by my message, you can ask God for anything, and he will do it. ⁸ When you bear much fruit, it causes people to honor the Father. Then you are my disciples.

⁹ "As the Father loved me, so I have loved you. Continue to allow me to love you. ¹⁰ If you obey what I tell you to do, you will continue to allow me to love you. You will be like me in this way: I obeyed what my Father required me to do, and because of my obedience, I have stayed in his love. That will be true of you, too. ¹¹ I told you these things so that my joy may be in you, and so that you may rejoice to the fullest extent. ¹² What I command you to do is this: Love each other in the way that I have loved you. ¹³ No one has greater love than a person who gives up his life for his friends. ¹⁴ You are my friends if you not only listen to my commands but also live by them. ¹⁵ I no longer call you my servants, for the servant does not understand what his master is doing. I now call you friends, for everything I heard from my Father I made known to you so that you also could understand it. ¹⁶ You did not choose me, but I chose you for a reason, so that you should go out and bear much fruit and so that your fruit should last forever. As a result, everything you ask the Father in my name, he will do for you. ¹⁷ This is what I command you to do: Love one another.

¹⁸ "If the world despises you, you should realize that it hated me first. ¹⁹ If you belonged to the unbelievers in this world, the world would love you, and you would love what they love and do what they do. But you do not belong to them; instead, I chose you to come out from among them. That is the reason the unbelievers in this world despise you. ²⁰ Remember when I taught you this: 'A servant is not greater than his master.' Since they have made me suffer, you can be sure they will make you suffer also. If any of them have received my teachings and followed them, they will also follow what you teach them. ²¹ The unbelievers in this world will do horrible things to you because you represent me and because they do not know my Father who has sent me to you. ²² If I had not come and spoken God's message to them, they would not have been guilty of rejecting me and my message. However, now I have come and told them God's message, and they have no excuse for their sin. ²³ Whoever hates me also hates my Father. ²⁴ If I had not done those things among them—those things in which I showed my power, things that no one else has ever done—they would not have been guilty of sin. Yet now that they have seen me, they hate me, and they hate my Father also. ²⁵ These words were written in their law and have now come true: 'They hated me for no reason.'

²⁶ "When the Helper comes, he is the one who will come from the Father and who will comfort you. He is the Spirit who tells the truth about God and me. He will tell everyone who I am, and he will show everyone all that I have done. ²⁷ You also must tell everyone what you know about me, because you have been with me the whole time from the very first days when I began to teach the people and to do miracles.

Chapter 16

¹ "I told you these things so that you would not stumble or stop trusting in me because of the difficulties you must face. ² Difficult days are ahead. Your enemies will stop you from worshiping in the synagogues. However, something even worse will happen. The days are coming when people will put you to death and think that they are pleasing God. ³ They will do this because they have not known the Father or me. ⁴ I have told you these things so that at the time when these hardships come, you will remember that I warned you. I did not tell you these things at the beginning because I was with you then.

⁵ "Now I am going back to the Father. He is the one who sent me. Yet none of you dares to ask me, 'Where are you going?' ⁶ Because I have said these things to you, now sorrow has filled up your hearts. ⁷ I tell you the truth, it is good for you that I am going away. Unless I go away, the Helper who comforts you will not come. If I go away, I will send him to you. ⁸ When the Helper comes, he will convict them of the sins they have committed; he will show them that they do not reach God's standard of goodness, and he will promise them that God will judge them because they did what God commanded them not to do. ⁹ Their guilt from sin comes because they could not put their trust in me. ¹⁰ Their failure to measure up to God's standard of goodness is confirmed because I am going back to my Father, and you will no longer see me. ¹¹ Their final accounting will come when God brings his punishment against them for their sin. This is shown by the punishment that Satan, the prince of this world, will receive because he fought against God.

¹² "I have many more things I want to tell you. However, if I tell you now, you will not be able to live well knowing these things. ¹³ When the Spirit of truth comes, he will lead you into all the truth you need to know. He will not speak from his own authority, but whatever he hears he will tell you, and he will tell you ahead of time about things that will happen. ¹⁴ The Spirit will honor me by telling you who I am and showing you what I have done. He will explain to you everything he heard from me. ¹⁵ Everything my Father has belongs to me. That is why I said that the Spirit will take whatever he receives from me and will explain it to you.

¹⁶ "In a little while you will not see me. Then after a little while you will see me again." ¹⁷ So some of his disciples said to one another, "What does Jesus mean when he says to us, 'In a little while you will not see me,' and 'after a little while you will see me again' and what does he mean by 'because I am going back to my Father'?" ¹⁸ They kept asking, "What does he mean by saying, 'after a little while'? We do not understand what he is saying."

¹⁹ Jesus saw that they wanted to ask him more questions. So he said to the disciples, "Why are you asking each other what I meant? I said that in a little while you would not see me, and then after a little while you would see me again. ²⁰ I am telling you the truth: You will cry and grieve, but those who belong to this world will rejoice. You will go through great sadness, but your sadness will turn into joy. ²¹ This is like a woman who is suffering the pains of labor when giving birth. After her baby is born, she forgets her anguish because of the joy she has that her child has been born into the world. ²² You, like her, have sorrow now, but I will see you again and God will give you great joy, joy no one can take from you. ²³ On that day, you will have no more questions to ask me. I am telling you the truth: Whatever you ask the Father, he will it give it to you when you ask because you are joined to me. ²⁴ Up until now, you have not asked for anything like that. Ask and you will receive it, and God will make you very glad.

²⁵ "I have been speaking these things in parables, but there will soon be a time when I will no longer speak that way. Instead, I will tell you all about my Father in ways that you can clearly understand. ²⁶ At that time you will make your requests to God in my name and according to God's purposes. I will not have to ask the Father to meet your needs, ²⁷ for the Father himself loves you because you have loved me and have put your trust in me and because you know that I came from God. ²⁸ I came from the Father, and I entered this world. Now I am leaving this world, and I am going back to the Father."

²⁹ Then his disciples said, "Finally! Now you are speaking plainly and not using figurative language. ³⁰ Now we understand that you know everything. There is no need to ask you questions. This is why we gave you our trust, and we know for certain that you came from God."

³¹ Jesus replied to them, "Do you now finally put your trust in me? ³² Look! The time is coming when others will scatter you everywhere! Each one will go toward his own home, and you will leave me. However, I will not be alone because the Father is always with me. ³³ I have told you these things so you may have peace in me. In the world you have trials and sorrows, but be brave! I have conquered the world!"

Chapter 17

¹ After Jesus said these things, he looked up to the sky and said, "Father, it is time for you to announce to everyone and to tell them who I, your Son, am, and to show them all that I have done. Do this so that I, your Son, may reveal you to everyone who you really are, the great King who can do anything. ² Do this just as you have allowed me, your Son, to rule over all people. Father, you have done this in order that I might be able to give eternal life to all the people you have given to me. ³ This is everlasting life: to know you, Father—you, who are the only true God, and Jesus Christ, the one whom you have sent into the world. ⁴ I have brought all kinds of people to you to show them all about you. I did this by finishing the work you gave me. ⁵ Father, give me honor by bringing me into your own presence, as we were before the time we created the world.

⁶ "Those whom you chose from everyone in this world to belong to me—I have taught them who you really are and what you are like. They belonged to you and you have given them to me. They have believed in what you said to them, and they have obeyed it. ⁷ Now they know that everything you have given me comes from you. ⁸ I gave them the message that you gave me. They accepted it, and now they know for sure that I came from you, and they believe that you sent me. ⁹ I am praying for them. I am not praying for those who belong to this world, those who continue to oppose you. I am praying for those whom you gave me because they belong to you. ¹⁰ All I have belongs to you, and all you have is mine. They know who I am, and they sincerely tell the truth about who I am. ¹¹ I am not staying in the world any longer. However, they are staying in the world. I am coming to you. Holy Father, keep them safe; keep them belonging to yourself by the same power that you gave to me so that they may be united together, just as we are. ¹² While I was with them, I kept them safe and watched over them by your own power. Not one of them was lost, except the one whom you had destined for destruction, as the scriptures foretold long ago.

¹³ "Now I am coming to you, Father. I have said these things while I am here in the world so that I may give them my complete joy. ¹⁴ I have spoken your messages to them, and the world has hated them and would not listen to your message. The world hated them because, like me, they do not belong to this world, but they have another home. ¹⁵ I am not asking for you to take them out of this world, but instead for you to protect them from the harm that the evil one can do to them. ¹⁶ They do not belong to this world, just as I do not. ¹⁷ Set them apart for yourself by teaching them the truth about yourself. Teach them what they need to know so that you can set them apart, for your messages are completely true. ¹⁸ As you sent me into the world, I am sending them into the world. ¹⁹ I am giving myself completely to you for their sakes so that they can truly give themselves to you.

²⁰ "I am praying not only for these, but also I am praying for those who will trust in me when they hear their message. ²¹ I pray that they may all be united, just as you and I are united. Father, you are united to me, and I am united to you, and so, may they also be united to us. Do this so that the world will know you sent me. ²² I have shown them who I am, and they have seen what I have done. I have taught them this so that they may be united together, as you and I are united. ²³ I am united with them and you are united with me. I have done this so that they may be perfectly united together and so that the unbelievers may know that you sent me and that you love them, just as you love me.

²⁴ "Father, I want these whom you have given to me to be with me always where I am so that they can see the splendor and majesty you will give to me when I am with you. You do this because you have loved me from before the time we created the world.

²⁵ "O Righteous Father, the world does not know you, but I know you; and these with me here know that you have sent me to them. ²⁶ I have made them know who you are. I will continue to do this so that you may love them like you love me and so that I may be united with them."

Chapter 18

¹ When Jesus finished his prayer, he went with his disciples and crossed the Kidron Valley. On the other side there was a grove of olive trees, and they entered it.

² Judas, the one who was about to hand Jesus over to his enemies, knew where the place was because Jesus often went there with his disciples. ³ Now the chief priests and the Pharisees had ordered some soldiers and officers to go there with Judas. So they went to the garden with lanterns, torches, and weapons. ⁴ Jesus knew what was going to happen to him, so he went forward and asked them, "For whom are you looking?" ⁵ They replied to him, "Jesus the Nazarene." Jesus said to them, "I am that person." (Now Judas, the one who was handing him over, was standing with them.) ⁶ When Jesus said to them, "I am that person," they swiftly moved back and fell to the ground. ⁷ So he asked them again, "For whom are you looking?" They answered, "Jesus the Nazarene." ⁸ Jesus replied to them, "I told you that I am that person. Since I am the one you are looking for, let these other men go." ⁹ This happened in order to fulfill the words he had said when he was praying to his Father, "I did not lose even one of those you gave me."

¹⁰ Then Simon Peter drew out a short sword and struck the high priest's servant, a man named Malchus, and cut off his right ear. ¹¹ Jesus said to Peter, "Put your sword back into its sheath! Of course I will suffer in the way that my Father has planned for me to do."

¹² Then the group of soldiers, along with their captain and some of the temple guards, seized Jesus and tied him to prevent him from escaping. ¹³ Then they took him to Annas, the father-in-law of Caiaphas, who was the high priest that year. ¹⁴ It was Caiaphas who had advised other leaders that it would be better that one man should die for the people than that all the people should perish.

¹⁵ Simon Peter followed Jesus and so did another disciple. The other disciple was known to the high priest, so he had permission to enter the high priest's courtyard when the soldiers took Jesus. ¹⁶ Peter had to stop outside at the gate. So the other disciple went out again and he spoke to the servant girl who was watching the gate, and he let Peter in. ¹⁷ That servant girl said to Peter, "You are one the disciples of the man whom they have arrested, are you not?" He said, "No, I am not." ¹⁸ It was cold, so the high priest's servants and temple guards made a charcoal fire and were standing and warming themselves around it. Peter was also there with them. He was standing and warming himself.

¹⁹ The high priest questioned Jesus about his disciples and what he had been teaching them. ²⁰ Jesus replied, "I have spoken openly to everyone. I have always taught in the synagogues and in the temple, in the places where our people come together. I have said nothing in secret. ²¹ So why are you asking me these questions? Ask the people who heard what I taught them. They know what I said." ²² When Jesus said these things, one of the temple guards standing near him struck him hard with his hand. He said, "That is not the right way to answer the high priest." ²³ Jesus replied to him, "If I had said something wrong, tell me what it was. However, if what I said was right, you should not slap me!" ²⁴ Then Annas sent Jesus, who was still tied up, to Caiaphas the high priest.

²⁵ Simon Peter was still standing and warming himself. Another person said to him, "You are one of the disciples of the man whom they have arrested, are you not?" He said, "No, I am not." ²⁶ One of the high priest's servants, a relative of the man whose ear Peter had cut off, said to him, "Surely I saw you in the olive tree grove with the man they have arrested, did I not?" ²⁷ Peter again denied it, and immediately a rooster crowed.

²⁸ Then the soldiers led Jesus from Caiaphas's house to the headquarters of Pilate, the Roman governor. It was early morning. Pilate was not a Jew, so Jesus's accusers thought that if they entered his headquarters, they would defile themselves and be unable to celebrate the Passover Festival. So they did not go in. ²⁹ So Pilate came out to talk to them. He said, "Of what are you accusing this man?" ³⁰ "If this man were not a criminal, we would not have brought him to you!" they replied. ³¹ Then Pilate said to them, "Take him yourselves, and judge him by your own law." Then the Jewish leaders said, "We want to execute him, but your Roman law prevents us from doing that." ³² They said this in order to make true what Jesus had said about the kind of death he was going to die.

³³ Pilate then went back inside his headquarters. He summoned Jesus and said to him, "Are you the king of the Jews?" ³⁴ Jesus replied, "Are you asking because you yourself want to know, or did others tell you to ask me this question?" ³⁵ Pilate replied, "I am not a Jew! Your own nation and the chief priests have delivered you over to me. What have you done wrong?" ³⁶ Jesus replied, "My kingdom is not part of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would have been fighting to keep me from being handed over to my Jewish opponents, but my kingdom is not of this world." ³⁷ Then Pilate said to him, "So you are a king?" Jesus replied, "Yes. The reason I was born and came into this world was to tell people the truth about God. Everyone who loves the truth listens to me." ³⁸ Pilate asked him, "What is true?"

After Pilate asked that question, he went outside and talked to the Jewish leaders again. He said to them, "I find he has broken no law. ³⁹ However, you Jews have a custom where every year during the Passover Festival, you ask me to release one man who is in prison. So would you like for me to release to you the King of the Jews?" ⁴⁰ They shouted again, "No, do not release this man, but release Barabbas!" Now Barabbas was a leader in a rebellion.

Chapter 19

¹ Then Pilate sent for Jesus. He had his soldiers beat him severely using whips. ² The soldiers also twisted together a crown and they put it on his head. They also put a purple robe on him. ³ They mocked him and said, "Greetings, King of the Jews!" and they struck him over and over again.

⁴ Pilate came outside again and said to the people, "Look, I am bringing him out to you so that you can know that I find no reason to punish him." ⁵ So Jesus came out, wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe. Pilate said to them, "Look, here is the man!"

⁶ When the chief priests and temple guards saw him, they shouted, "Crucify him! Crucify him!"

Pilate said to them, "Take him yourselves and crucify him! As for me, I find no reason to punish him." ⁷ The Jewish leaders replied to Pilate, "We have a certain law that says he ought to die because he claimed to be the Son of God."

⁸ When Pilate heard this, he was even more afraid. ⁹ He entered his headquarters once more and called the soldiers to bring Jesus back inside. Then he said to Jesus, "From where do you come?" However, Jesus gave him no answer. ¹⁰ So Pilate said to him, "Will you not speak to me? Do you not know that I have authority to release you, and I also have authority to crucify you?"

     ¹¹ Jesus answered him, "You would have no authority over me at all, if God had not given it to you. So the one who handed me over to you is guilty of a worse sin."

¹² From that moment on, Pilate kept trying to release Jesus. However, the Jewish leaders cried out, "If you release this man, you are no friend of Caesar! Anyone who makes himself a king stands opposed to Caesar."

¹³ When Pilate heard that, he brought Jesus out. Then Pilate sat down before him in the judgment seat, the place where he usually pronounced verdicts. This was called "The Stone Pavement," and in the Hebrew language it was "Gabbatha."

¹⁴ Now it was the day before the Passover Festival, the day of preparation. It was almost noontime when Pilate said to the Jews, "See, here is your king!"

¹⁵ They shouted, "Take him away! Take him away! Crucify him!"

Pilate said to them, "Should I crucify your king?"

The chief priests replied, "We have no king but Caesar!"

¹⁶ So Pilate handed Jesus over to them, and they took him away.

    

¹⁷ He went out, carrying his own cross by himself to the place called "The Place of a Skull," which in the Hebrew language is called "Golgotha." ¹⁸ There they crucified him, and at the same time they also nailed two other criminals to their crosses. One was on either side, with Jesus in the middle.

¹⁹ Pilate also told someone to write on a board a notice and fasten it to Jesus's cross. It read, 'Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews.' ²⁰ Many Jews read this sign because the place where Jesus was crucified was near the city, and the sign was written in three languages: Aramaic, Latin, and Greek.

²¹ The chief priests went back to Pilate and said, "You should not have written, 'King of the Jews,' but rather, 'This man said, "I am King of the Jews."'"

²² Pilate replied, "You must leave the sign exactly as I have written it."

²³ After the soldiers had put Jesus on the cross, they took his clothes and divided them into four parts, one part for each soldier. However, they kept his tunic separate. This tunic had been woven from top to bottom from one piece of cloth. ²⁴ So they said to each other, "Let us not tear it. Instead, let us decide who will keep it as one piece by casting lots for the one who will get it." This happened to make come true the scripture that said,

     "They divided my clothes among them.

     They cast lots for my clothing."

²⁵ The soldiers did those things.

Jesus's mother, his mother's sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene were all standing near his cross. ²⁶ When Jesus saw his mother standing there and John, the disciple whom he especially loved, standing nearby, he said to his mother, "Mother, here is the one who will act like a son to you."

     ²⁷ And he said to the disciple, "Here is your mother!" So from that very moment, that disciple took her to live in his home.

²⁸ A little later, Jesus knew that everything that God sent him to do had now been done, and in order to make come true one final thing that the scriptures had foretold, he said, "I am thirsty!" ²⁹ A jar of sour wine stood there, so they took a short branch from a hyssop plant and put a sponge on it, and they dipped in the sour wine and held it up to Jesus's mouth. ³⁰ After Jesus drank the sour wine, he said, "It is finished," and he bowed his head and died.

³¹ This was the day of preparation for the Passover (and the next day was a very special Sabbath). It was against the law to allow dead bodies to remain on the crosses on the Sabbath, so they went to Pilate and asked him to break the legs of the three men so that the men would die quickly and their bodies would be taken down. ³² So the soldiers came and broke the legs of the first and then of the other, the two men who had been crucified with Jesus. ³³ When they came to Jesus, they saw he was dead already. So they did not break his legs. ³⁴ Instead, one of the soldiers pierced Jesus's side with a spear, and right away blood and water poured out of his body. ³⁵ The one who saw this bears witness—his testimony is true, and he knows he is telling the truth—so that you may put your trust in Jesus.

³⁶ These things happened in order to fulfill what was written in scripture: "No one will break any of his bones." ³⁷ And they fulfilled another scripture that read: 'They will look on the one whom they have pierced.'

³⁸ After these things Joseph of Arimathea, a disciple of Jesus but a secret disciple because he was afraid of the Jews, went to Pilate and asked him if he might take away Jesus's body. Pilate gave Joseph permission, so he came and took away the body of Jesus. ³⁹ Nicodemus, who had once come to Jesus at night, also came and brought with him a mixture of myrrh and aloe spices to prepare the body for burial. The spices weighed about 33 kilograms. ⁴⁰ They took the body of Jesus and wrapped it in strips of linen cloth, and they packed the wrappings full with all the spices. ⁴¹ Now in the place where Jesus was crucified was a garden, and at the edge of the garden was a new tomb in which no one had been buried. ⁴² The Passover was about to begin that evening, and they chose the tomb where they would bury Jesus because it was close at hand. That is where they laid the body of Jesus.

Chapter 20

¹ Now on the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb very early in the day, while it was still dark. She saw that someone had moved the stone away from the tomb. ² So she ran to Jerusalem, where Simon Peter and the other disciple—the one whom Jesus especially loved—were staying, and told them, "They have taken the Lord from the tomb, and we do not know where they have put him!"

³ When they heard this, Peter and the other disciple rushed out to the tomb. ⁴ They were both running, but the other disciple was faster than Peter and reached the tomb first. ⁵ He bent down and looked into the tomb; he saw the strips of linen lying there, but he hesitated to go in.

⁶ Then Simon Peter, who was running behind him, arrived there, but he went inside the tomb. He, too, saw the strips of linen cloth lying there, ⁷ but he also saw the cloth cover that had been on Jesus's head, folded and put aside, separate from the linen strips. ⁸ Then the other disciple also went inside; he saw these things and began to believe that Jesus had risen from the dead. ⁹ They still did not understand the scriptures that said Jesus must rise from the dead.

¹⁰ So the disciples went back to their homes. ¹¹ Mary was left standing just outside the tomb, weeping. As she wept, she bent down and looked into the tomb. ¹² She saw two angels dressed in white robes sitting on the very place where Jesus's body had been, one at the head, the other at the feet.

¹³ They said to her, "Woman, why are you weeping?"

     She said to them, "They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have put him!" ¹⁴ After she said that, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not know that it was he.

     ¹⁵ He said to her, "Woman, why are you weeping? For whom are you looking?"

     She thought the man speaking to her was the gardener, and she said to him, "Sir, if you carried him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will take him."

¹⁶ Jesus said to her, "Mary."

     She turned and said to him in Aramaic, "Rabboni!" (which means "Teacher").

     ¹⁷ Jesus said to her, "Do not touch me, for I have not yet gone up to heaven to be with my Father. Go to my disciples and tell them, 'I am about to return to heaven to be with my Father and your Father, to the one who is my God and your God.'"

     ¹⁸ Mary Magdalene went to the disciples and announced, "I have seen the Lord"—and she reported to them what Jesus had said to her.

¹⁹ On the evening of that day, the first day of the week, the doors were locked, and the disciples were staying inside because they were afraid that the Jewish authorities might arrest them. Suddenly Jesus came and stood in the middle of their group; he said to them, "May God give you peace." ²⁰ After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. The disciples had great joy when they saw the Lord!

²¹ Jesus said to them again, "May God give you peace. Just as the Father sent me, now I am sending you." ²² After he said this, he breathed on them and said, "Receive the Holy Spirit. ²³ If you forgive the sins of anyone, God will forgive them. If you do not forgive another's sins, they will be held against them."

²⁴ Now Thomas, one of the twelve, who was called "The Twin," was not with the other disciples when Jesus came to them. ²⁵ The other disciples told him, "We have seen the Lord."

     However, he said to them, "Unless I see the marks of the nails in his hands and put my fingers in the holes made by the nails, and unless I put my hand into the gaping wound in his side, I will never put my trust in him."

²⁶ Eight days later, his disciples were again inside the house, and this time Thomas was with them. Although the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them, and he said to them all, "May God give you peace."

     ²⁷ Then he said to Thomas, "Put your finger here and see my hands, and put out your hand and place it in my side! Stop doubting that it is I; put your trust in me."

     ²⁸ Thomas answered him, "My Lord and my God!"

     ²⁹ Jesus said to him, "Now you believe that I have risen because you see me. Yet God gives great happiness to those who have not seen me and still believe."

³⁰ Now Jesus did many other works of power and miracles that proved who he is. The disciples witnessed them, but they were so numerous that I have not written them all down in this book. ³¹ Nevertheless, I have written these so that you may have complete confidence that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and so that by trusting in him, you may have eternal life in his name.

Chapter 21

¹ After that, Jesus appeared to the disciples by Lake Tiberias (also known as the Sea of Galilee). He made himself known in this way: ² Simon Peter, Thomas (called "The Twin"), Nathaniel of Cana in Galilee, the sons of Zebedee (James and John), and two other disciples were together. ³ Simon Peter said to the others, "I am going fishing."

     They said, "We will go with you." They went out and got into the boat, but that night they caught nothing.

⁴ In the morning as day was breaking, Jesus stood on the shore, but the disciples did not know that it was Jesus.

     ⁵ Jesus said to them, "My friends, do you have any fish?"

     They said, "No."

     ⁶ He said to them, "Throw your net out off the right side of the boat and you will find some." They cast it as he told them, and they caught so many fish in the net that they were unable to pull the net into the boat! ⁷ John, the disciple whom Jesus especially loved, said to Peter, "It is the Lord!"

     When Simon Peter heard him say this, he tucked up his outer garment around himself (he had worn almost nothing while working), and jumped into the water. ⁸ The other disciples came to shore in the boat, pulling behind the net full of fish. They were not far from shore, only ninety meters away. ⁹ When they got to shore, they saw a charcoal fire ready and hot, with fish cooking on it, and there was some bread.

¹⁰ Jesus said to them, "Bring some of the fish that you have just caught!" ¹¹ Simon Peter got back in the boat and dragged the net to the shore, full of large fish. There were 153 of them. Even so, the net was not torn.

¹² Jesus said to them, "Come and eat breakfast!" None of the disciples dared to ask him, "Who are you?" They knew it was the Lord. ¹³ Jesus came and took the bread and gave it to them. He did the same with the fish. ¹⁴ This was the third time that Jesus appeared to the disciples after God had brought him back from the dead.

¹⁵ When they finished breakfast, Jesus said to Simon Peter, "Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these others love me?"

     Peter said to him, "Yes, Lord, you know I love you."

     Jesus said, "Feed my lambs."

¹⁶ Jesus said to him a second time, "Simon, son of John, do you love me?"

     He replied, "Yes, Lord, you know that I love you."

     Jesus said to him, "Be a shepherd to my sheep."

¹⁷ Jesus said to him a third time, "Simon, son of John, do you love me?"

     Peter was grieved because Jesus asked him three times, "Do you love me?" Peter said, "Lord, you know everything. You know that I love you."

     Jesus said, "Feed my sheep.

¹⁸ "I am telling you the truth: When you were young, you put your own clothes on and you walked about wherever you wanted to go. However, when you are old, you will stretch out your hands, and someone will dress you and will lead you where you do not want to go." ¹⁹ Jesus said this to indicate how Peter would die in order to honor God. Then Jesus said to him, "Follow me."

²⁰ Peter turned around and saw John, the disciple whom Jesus especially loved, following them. He was the one who had leaned close to Jesus at the table and said, "Lord, who is going to hand you over to your enemies?" ²¹ When Peter saw him, he said to Jesus, "Lord, what is going to happen to this man?"

²² Jesus said to him, "If I want him to remain alive until I return, that is not your concern! You follow me." ²³ So the report circulated among the brothers and sisters that this disciple was not going to die. Yet Jesus did not say that he would not die. He said only, "If I want him to remain alive until I return, that is not your concern!"

²⁴ "I, John, am the disciple who is bearing witness about all these things, and I have written them down."

     Many others know him, and we know that his testimony is true.

²⁵ Jesus did many other things, so many that if they were all written down, I suppose the whole world could not contain the books that would be written.