ἵνα ὁ καρπὸς ὑμῶν μένῃ

οὐχ ὑμεῖς με ἐξελέξασθε, ἀλλ' ἐγὼ ἐξελεξάμην ὐμᾶς καὶ ἔθηκα ὑμᾶς ἵνα ὑμεῖς ὑπάγητε καὶ καρπὸν φέρητε καὶ ὁ καρπὸς ὑμῶν μένῃ, ἵνα ὅ τι ἂν αἰτήσητε τὸν πατέρα ἐν τῷ ὀνόματί μου δῷ ὑμῖν. — κατὰ Ἰωάννην 15:16

ouch hymeis me exelexasthe, all' ego exelexamen hymas kai etheka hymas hina hymeis hypagete kai karpon ferete kai ho karpos hymon mene, hina ho ti an aitesete ton patera en to onomati mou do hymin. — kata Ioannen 15:16

You did not elect me for yourselves, but rather I elected you for myself, and I have set you so that you may be underway and bear fruit and that your fruit may last, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name He may give to you. — John 15:16, translation mine

One may ask what purpose Christ has in making this distinction between Him electing His apostles and His apostles electing Him. John's recording of Christ's words in the middle voice holds the key.¹ Had Christ been popularly elected by men as from men, His purpose and servitude would necessarily have been toward men. Yet by this turn of phrase, Christ makes it inescapably clear that He comes from God the Father in the service of the One who made men.

Christ's distinction is validated by the many men of Christ's time who spurned Him, as Isaiah prophesied several hundred years before Christ's birth:

For he grew up before him like a young plant, and like a root out of dry ground; he had no form or majesty that we should look at him, and no beauty that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected by men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief; and as one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not.
(Isaiah 53:2-3, ESV)

Isaiah's prophecy is borne out in the reception Jesus received from those in his own hometown, who said,

“Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary and brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon? And are not his sisters here with us?” And they took offense at him.
(Mark 6:3, ESV)

Not even the apostles physically came to Christ on their own. Nathanael in his cynicism retorted when told of Jesus, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” (John 1:46b, ESV)

Ultimately, rejection by men captive to sin crucified Christ. By His trial, torture, and death, which Jesus' discourse with His apostles precedes by mere hours, one observes neither popularity nor power as the driving force in Christ's life, but utter subservience to the Father's mission for the Son for the sake of mankind, namely eternal salvation. The message is bound in the latter part of the verse: “so that you may be underway and bear fruit and that your fruit may last.” Christ fully intends for His apostles to branch out and bear fruit that others might be grafted into the everlasting vine, the true one. The empires of men fall and fade, just as Daniel interpreted from the dream of King Nebuchadnezzar and prophesied of the Roman Empire and the empires that preceded it:

“And in the days of those kings the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that shall never be destroyed, nor shall the kingdom be left to another people. It shall break in pieces all these kingdoms and bring them to an end, and it shall stand forever, just as you saw that a stone was cut from a mountain by no human hand, and that it broke in pieces the iron, the bronze, the clay, the silver, and the gold. A great God has made known to the king what shall be after this. The dream is certain, and its interpretation sure.”
(Daniel 2:44-45, ESV)

Man in his finiteness cannot hope to bridge the chasm of sin between himself and God. For “those of low estate are but a breath; those of high estate are a delusion; in the balances they go up; they are together lighter than a breath” (Psalm 62:9, ESV). Man's pattern of shortsighted choices runs throughout history. Even Samuel, one of the most obedient prophets in all Biblical history, does not see as God sees, favoring David's older and more seasoned brothers for anointing as king over all Israel,

but the LORD said to Samuel, “Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him. For the LORD sees not as man sees: man looks on the outward appearance, but the LORD looks on the heart.”
(1 Samuel 16:7, ESV)

Christ makes it clear to His apostles that theirs is not a mission doomed to obscurity and comforts them in light of the coming trial in which all the apostles will desert Him. If there is any doubt in Christ and the validity of His choices, Luke's account describes Christ spending the entire night in prayer with His Father before electing the twelve from among His disciples (Luke 6:12-16). Christ has spent the entire discourse at the last supper with His apostles assuring them that all He has done has been at the behest of the Father and not of His own volition.

To man's irreparable benefit, Christ elected the apostles not as man elects but as His Father elected, personally hand-picking them to be leaders from among those who were not leaders according to man: from tax collectors and fishermen rather than scribes and priests. As it is written,

But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God.
(1Corinthians 1:27-29, ESV)

God does not desire lofty spirits, but the humble and contrite in heart. David writes, “a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise” (Psalm 51:17, ESV), and the prophet Micah echoes him, writing,

He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?
(Micah 6:8, ESV)

Christ and the Father knew the men that they elected to be apostles, having created them. They knew the men's self-inflicted faults and the God-instilled strengths of each man for the purpose of establishing a church that would transcend the ages and bring God's message of salvation to all the earth. The Father and the Son did not seek the mighty as accounted among men, for they wanted servants and messengers that they could appoint and set so that those whom they sent out could bear the fruit that would last: everlasting fruit from the Tree of Life, namely Christ, the vine.

¹ Translator's Note: The interplay in this passage of John's gospel between the two forms of the Greek verb ἐκλέγω, “I choose, or I elect”, commends the reader to a dissection of the verb. Built from the preposition ἐκ, meaning “out of,” and λέγω, “I lay, I place, I call, I speak, I say,” ἐκλέγω literally means “I call out” or “I place outside.” I have rendered the verb as “elect” on cognate and semantic grounds. Since English lacks a conjugational middle voice, I have added the prepositional phrases to emphasize the reflexive nature of the Greek which John exercises to relay Jesus' reflection of purpose or benefit in the action of election upon Himself as the agent.