The Gospel According to John:
An Enc
ounter with Grace & Truth

Lesson 18 I Am the True Vine
the Gospel According to John 15:1–27

Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition (RSVCE)*
New American Bible Revised Edition (NABRE)*
Catechism of the Catholic Church
ex libris (in our library)
glossary for the Gospel According to John
cross references in the Gospel According to John
next lesson: When the Spirit of Truth Comes

This material coordinates with Lesson 18 on pages 97–100 in The Gospel According to John: An Encounter with Grace & Truth.


“Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; but these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in his name.”—the Gospel According to John 20:30–31


welcome to our in-depth study of the Gospel According to John
We invite groups and individuals to check out the sample first lesson and video from this 25-question marklesson Turning to God’s Word Catholic Bible study. Our online pages link to the free buy a booklesson videos, a glossary, cross references in the biblical text, and include maps, additional commentary, and prayers based on  Scripture in each lesson. The Gospel According to John: An Encounter with Grace & Truth has been granted an imprimatur. It may be purchased from our website shop. If you have a Bible-study question or comment, click on the “ask us your question” or “what do you think” button on any study page.


open with prayer
It’s always wise to begin any Bible study with prayer, whether reading the Scriptures alone or meeting with others in a discussion study group. You can pray using your own words or use one of the opening prayers on our website. We especially like the following:

Lord Jesus, you promised to send your Holy Spirit
to teach us all things.
As we read and study your word today,
allow it to touch our hearts and change our lives. Amen.

let’s review—the Gospel According to John 14:1–31
In Lesson 17 I Am the Way, the Truth & the Life, Jesus focuses his teaching on preparing his disciples for what is about to happen. Jesus begins by saying that he is going to his Father’s house where he plans to arrange for the disciples to join him. It’s in this context that Jesus announces that he’s the way, the truth and the life. Philip asks to see the Father, and Jesus responds by saying that anyone who’s seen Jesus has seen the Father. Then Jesus explains that he expects the disciples to keep his commandments, and toward that end he intends to send the Holy Spirit to be with them. Jesus also promises that the Holy Spirit will teach the disciples all things, a surprising idea because it suggests that at that point there still is much that Jesus hasn’t taught his followers.

map notes—a world of hate
In the Gospel According to John 15:18, Jesus talks frankly to his disciples about the hatred that they can expect to experience as a result of following Jesus’ new commandment to love one another. When Jesus began his ministry, faith or trust in God was the focus of his teaching. Now that Jesus is preparing for his death, his farewell discourses focus on love and the necessity of his disciples bearing witness to him after he’s gone. What’s always been easy for Jesus’ followers to miss is that Jesus is raising the bar on the kind of love he expects of his friends. To learn more about what Jesus has in mind, read “Greater Love” on page 99 in The Gospel According to John: An Encounter with Grace & Truth. Click on the image to enlarge the map, which appears on page 99

Jesus chooses his friends (52:50)
In the video overview for Lesson 18, Matthew discusses the Gospel According to John 15:16, in which Jesus tells his disciples: “You did not choose me, but I chose you.” It’s easy to misinterpret this verse in a way that leads to the Protestant doctrine of predestination, which holds that everything that happens in our lives is predetermined by God. The problem with such thinking is that it gives rise to the idea that we have no say in our own salvation, which flies in the face of free will. Because of free will, all men and women always have the option to turn our backs on Jesus. That would be stupid, but the world is full of stupid people. To read our response about a question regarding whether Jesus might have been talking about predestination in the Gospel According to John 6:44, read “Q&A—A verse that’s easy to misinterpret” in the supplemental online material for Lesson 8 I Am the Living Bread.


The Scripture ranges for the videos that accompany this Catholic Bible study match the Scripture ranges for the sets of questions in The Gospel According to John: An Encounter with Grace & Truth. You can follow along as Matthew discusses Lesson 18, “I Am the True Vine,on pages 97–100 in the study book.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN to be a friend?
On the video, Matthew points out that it’s impossible to be friends with someone unless they are in some way like us, and he points out that in English, the word friend isn’t a verb. The electronic age has brought about a fairly recent language change, however, and it’s now grammatically possible to use social networking sites to “friend” someone.

Do you have any friends with whom you have nothing in common?
?  How many of your closest friends have you met on the Internet?

ex libris—are you interested in love?
If you are, we recommend Faith Hope Love by Joseph Pieper. (If you aren’t interested in love, you might want to ask why not.) In his book, Pieper also looks at the other two theological virtues—faith and hope. All three are essential to the Christian faith. Pieper’s academic discipline is philosophy rather than theology, and he does an exceptional job focusing on language to narrow the definition of the concept of love to bring it into sharper focus for Catholics. Read excerpts and learn more about Faith Hope Love and other works related to Bible study at ex libris—main bookshelf.

WHAT DOES JESUS MEAN THAT we can ask for anything?
In the Gospel According to John 15:7, Jesus tells his disciples that they can ask for whatever they like and it will be done for them. Some Christians run into difficulty with this verse because they have a limited understanding of the conditional phrase that Jesus includes with this promise. That conditional phrase is: “If you abide in me, and my words abide in you …”.

?  What does Jesus have in mind when he talks about his followers abiding in him, and how is it possible for us to abide in him today?
?  What does it mean for Jesus’ words to abide in us?
?  What evidence is there that Jess’ words are abiding in you?

how Jesus functions as a dwelling place
The fifteenth chapter in the Gospel According to John presents Jesus as a dwelling place. You can learn more about what it means to abide in Jesus by reading the vocabulary sidebar “Abide” on page 98 in The Gospel According to John: An Encounter with Grace & Truth.

what’s with all the farming advice?
Christians are well aware that Jesus taught in parables, short stories that present a moral example. What is less well known is that Jesus’ parables are almost impossible to understand unless the audience already knows what they mean. Without our cultural background as Christians, most of Jesus’ parables would come across as material suitable to include in an almanac, not spiritual teaching. The most difficult fact about Jesus’ teaching regarding the true vine (a section in the Fourth Gospel that rarely is classified by scholars as a parable) is that for the branches—humanity—there’s practically no difference between being cut away by the act of pruning or simply being cut away, the punishment for failing to bear fruit. To the branch, the cut is going to feel pretty much the same. What does this suggest about what God expects of us? What does thinking about these things disclose about our expectations of God?

lost moses w-textparables—you could look this up in our archives
Elsewhere in the Scriptures, Jesus implies that he’s being intentionally vague. Although the meaning of Jesus’ words can appear obvious, many things that he says are far more complex than they seem. To learn how to approach Jesus’ parables and stories, read Lost in Translation, an online column in which Turning to God’s Word author Matthew Phelps helps readers connect with ideas expressed in the original languages of the Scriptures. New Lost in Translation entries are posted on Mondays, and past entries are archived on our website. Contact us if you’d like to receive Lost in Translation by email every week.

Q&A—signs & parables 
question markA participant in one of our groups asked about parables in the Gospel According to John. See the supplemental online study page for Lesson 13 in this Bible study, “I Am the Good Shepherd,” to read our response to that question and to see a participant’s comment about why the content of the Fourth Gospel differs so much from the content of the Gospels According to Matthew, Mark, and Luke.

Eucharistic images of bread & wine
The fifteenth chapter in the Gospel According to John points to the fruit of the vine—wine—and pairs well with the sixth chapter, which includes Jesus’ Bread of Life discourse.

psalms logo 2pray with the Psalms—it’s not a new thing for God’s followers to be hated
In the fifteenth chapter in the Gospel According to John Gospel, Jesus warns his followers that they can expect to be hated by the world because both he and his Father are. Psalm 35 and Psalm 69 contain Old Testament evidence that being hated is not a new experience for those who wish to be faithful to God. Prayed at Sunday Vigils (Week II), Psalm 35 and Psalm 69 both will be included in Lesson 15 Let Us Ring Out Our Joy to the LORD in the Turning to God’s Word Catholic Bible study Sing a New Psalm: Communicating with God Through the Prayers of the Church—Volume II: Vigils, Day Prayer & Compline, which is scheduled for publication in 2024.

for additional reflection
In the Gospel According to John 15:7, Jesus tells his disciples that they can ask for whatever requests they wish and they will receive whatever they’ve requested. The following questions are designed to help readers begin to form their own thoughts and ideas related to the Gospel According to John 15:1–27. For more reflection questions, refer to the introduction to Lesson 18 on page 97 in The Gospel According to John: An Encounter with Grace & Truth.

?  To whom is it likely that Jesus intends his disciples to direct their requests? If necessary, refer to the Gospel According to John 15:16.
?  Whenever something sounds too good to be true, there’s some kind of catch—some negating factor or condition that needs to be met in order to gain the desired result. What is the catch in Jesus’ promise in the Gospel According to John 15:7?
?  What might Jesus mean when he asks his disciples to “remain in” him?
?  How is it that Jesus’ followers today can remain in him?
?  What can be seen as evidence that you are remaining in Jesus?

CATECHISMhe best Catholic commentary about Scripture
To find out more about how Church teaching is supported by Scripture passages in The Gospel According to John: An Encounter with Grace & Truth, check out the Index of Citations in the Catechism of the Catholic Church. Links (Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition [RSVCE*]) to the primary Scripture passages in the lesson and relevant paragraphs in the Catechism are provided here. Not every passage in the biblical text for this study is referenced in a Catechism paragraph, however.

the Gospel According to John 15:1–17paragraph 1108
the Gospel According to John 15:1–4paragraph 755
the Gospel According to John 15:1–5paragraph 1988
the Gospel According to John 15:3paragraph 517
the Gospel According to John 15:4–5paragraph 787
the Gospel According to John 15:5paragraphs 308, 737, 859, 864, 1694, 2074, 2712
the Gospel According to John 15:7paragraph 2615
the Gospel According to John 15:8paragraph 737
the Gospel According to John 15:9paragraph 1823
the Gospel According to John 15:9–10paragraph 1824
the Gospel According to John 15:12paragraphs 459, 1823, 1970, 2074
the Gospel According to John 15:13paragraphs 363, 609, 614
the Gospel According to John 15:15paragraphs 1972, 2347
the Gospel According to John 15:16paragraphs 434, 737, 2615, 2815
the Gospel According to John 15:16–17paragraph 2745
the Gospel According to John 15:19–20paragraph 675
the Gospel According to John 15:20paragraphs 530, 765
the Gospel According to John 15:26paragraphs 244, 248, 263, 692, 719, 729, 1433, 2671

ways our glossary might prove helpful
In addition to providing extra information about geographical locations, our glossary also points out persons and places mentioned in the biblical text under multiple names or spellings. If you can remember a name but aren’t sure in which lesson it shows up, you can find it in the glossary, which lists every proper noun that appears in the biblical text.

to learn more, read more Scripture
If you’re having difficulty with a passage of Scripture, it can be helpful to read the relevant cross references—but looking these up can take time. To make that easier, we’ve compiled the cross references from the Revised Standard Version Second Catholic Edition (RSV2CE)—the translation that we reprint in our study books. That list can be found at the top of every online study page accompanying this study, and it includes links to each of the cross references in the primary biblical text for The Gospel According to John: An Encounter with Grace & Truth.

don’t forget about our indexes & extra online material
question markIf you’re trying to locate information about a particular passage in Scripture, you can look it up in the index at the back of your study book. If you want to revisit a particular commentary, you can look that up by title in the topics index. If you want to learn more about another book of the Bible for which there’s a Turning to God’s Word study, you can read all of the online commentaries and watch the accompanying videos by going to the online study directories. Finally, if you have a question or would like to make a comment about one of our studies, you can use the “ask us your question” or “what do you think” button to email our authors.

visit our library—Church documents & books about religious topics
You can find links to magisterial documents referred to in Turning to God’s Word Catholic Bible studies at ex libris—magisterial documents. This page includes a listing of significant recent encyclicals as well as a number of historical Church documents. Recommended books related to Scripture study can be found at ex libris—main bookshelf.

round black doveclose with Bible-based prayer related to this lesson
Many of our Catholic study groups like to conclude their discussions with a prayer based on the scriptural focus of their lesson, and some participants include Scripture-specific prayer in their individual study. If you’re uncomfortable composing your own Bible-based prayers, you can follow our four easy steps, or you can use the following prayer based on this lesson’s text from the Gospel According to John.

God our Father, you have sent the Holy Spirit
to serve as our Counselor and Advocate.
Help us to listen to the promptings of the Spirit
in order that we might love one another

as your Son has loved us.
We ask this through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.

Lesson 19 When the Spirit of Truth Comes—the Gospel According to John 16:1–33
Lesson 17 I Am the Way, the Truth & the Life—the Gospel According to John 14:1–31

you also may like our study of the book of Genesis
The first seven lessons of In the Beginning: The Book of Genesis, a 28-lesson Catholic Bible study with an imprimatur, provide an in-depth look at the very earliest biblical history—including the two accounts of Creation, events surrounding the Fall of Adam and Eve, the relationship between Cain and Abel, and the baptismal foreshadowing present in the account of Noah and the Flood. Remaining lessons look at lives of the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph. Click on the book’s cover to view a sample lesson.

start a Turning to God’s Word Bible study
Thank you for your interest in The Gospel According to John: An Encounter with Grace & Truth. Information about beginning a Turning to God’s Word individual or group Bible study can be found at start a Bible study. Tami, Matthew, and I are available to answer your questions and to offer support. You may use this email to contact us directly if you’re interested in starting a Turning to God study or in having your study schedule listed with other TtGW study groups on our website. —Jennifer


wondering how to pronounce some of these words?
The following link is to a reading from the New International Version (NIV) Bible. To listen, click on the audio icon above the printed text. Although not taken from the translations used in our study materials, the NIV reading provides an audio guide to pronunciation of words in this lesson’s primary biblical text. An online version of the translation of the Bible used in Catholic liturgy in the United States as well as an audio guide for daily Mass readings for the current month can be found on the website of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB).

the Gospel According to John 15:1–27


*Turning to God’s Word printed Bible studies use the 2006 Revised Standard Version Second Catholic Edition (RSV2CE) translation for all Scripture references except those to the Psalms, which are taken from The Abbey Psalms and Canticles, prepared by the Benedictine monks of Conception Abbey and published in 2020 by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB). Online references link to the 1966 Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition (RSVCE) translation. The New International Version (NIV) audio recordings follow the same chapter and verse numbering as the RSVCE and RSV2CE but do not include the deuterocanonical books and passages.

The 1966 RSVCE uses archaic pronouns and verb forms such as “thee,” “thou,” “didst” in the Psalms and in direct quotations attributed to God. The 2006 RSV2CE replaces those with more accessible English. A handful of more significant translation changes in the RSV2CE include rendering almah as “virgin” in the Book of Isaiah 7:14 and restoring the term “begotten” in the Gospel According to John 3:16.

psalms logo 2You can learn more about the Psalms by viewing a sample lesson from the Turning to God’s Word Catholic Bible study Sing a New Psalm: Communicating with God Through the Prayers of the Church—Volume I: Lauds & Vespers. The second part of that study, Sing a New Psalm: Communicating with God Through the Prayers of the Church—Volume II: Vigils, Day Prayer & Compline, is scheduled for publication in 2024. Some verse numbers may vary in different translations of the Psalms.