- Oct 10, 2022
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John 15:4-5
4 "Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself
unless it abides in the vine, so neither can you unless you abide in Me.
5 "I am the vine, you are the branches; he who abides in Me
and I in him, he bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing.
4 "Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself
unless it abides in the vine, so neither can you unless you abide in Me.
5 "I am the vine, you are the branches; he who abides in Me
and I in him, he bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing.
The "branch and Vine" analogy is a hugely important description of what it is to be a child of God and a disciple of Jesus Christ. As usual, when one digs into an analogy offered by Christ himself, there are great Truths to be discovered. First of all, the analogy doesn't describe a condition into and out of which one can move freely, like a room in a house, or a career, or human friendship. No, to "abide in Christ" is to be saved, "born-again," made a "new creature in Christ" (John 3:3-7; 2 Corinthians 5:17). This is a state of being that, once effected, cannot be undone; it isn't a changeable situation, dependent upon the powers of endurance and faith of the one abiding in Christ. To make "abiding in Christ" so dependent would be to guarantee the dissolution of such abiding in short order. As Jesus said, "Without me, you can do nothing" - not physically and certainly not spiritually. We are, in-and-of ourselves, "without strength" (Romans 5:6), helpless against the impulses of our flesh, the allure of the World and the conniving traps of the devil (Ephesians 2:1-3). We need to be delivered from ourselves and our incorrigible weakness and sinfulness, from the tantalizing call of the World and the deceitful machinations of the Evil One - and we are when we come to abide in Christ and in him find the life, wisdom and power to be all God has created us to be.
The one who trusts in Christ as their Savior and Lord is placed "in him"; they have, by faith and the Holy Spirit taking up residence within them, "put on Christ" (Romans 13:14; Galatians 3:27), "grafted" into him who is the Vine by the Spirit (Titus 3:5; Romans 8:9-11; 1 John 4:13; Romans 11:17-24). To such an one, God makes the following promises:
Hebrews 13:5
5 ...for He Himself has said, "I will never leave you, nor will I ever forsake you."
Romans 8:35-39
35 Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?
36 Just as it is written, "For your sake we are being put to death all day long; we were considered as sheep to be slaughtered."
37 But in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us.
38 For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers,
39 nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
John 6:37
37 "...the one who comes to Me I will certainly not cast out.
In the common style of ancient Jewish literature, this "abiding" state is set in contrasting parallel to the unsaved condition, to the condition of one who is not abiding :
John 15:6
6 "If anyone does not abide in Me, he is thrown away as a branch and dries up; and they gather them, and cast them into the fire and they are burned.
In accord with the nature of the parallel, the person in view here is not a saved person who ceases to abide and is then "cast into the fire and burned" but one who has never abided in Christ, one who has never been saved. Abiding in Christ and not abiding him are, then, descriptions of the saved and the lost person, not descriptions of two states into and out of which the saved person can migrate, back-and-forth, as is sometimes taught.
In any case, one who has been made a "branch in the Vine" lives in connection to Christ in very much the same way a branch lives in connection to the vine out of which it grows. How is that, exactly? Well, consider that no branch grows by dint of its own effort. No one ever sees branches of a vine quivering and straining to enlarge themselves, gripping the vine out of which they're growing tightly and fiercely lest they are blown off in a stiff wind, or shrivel under the hot sun and drop to the ground. No, the branches are actually just extensions of the vine, existing and developing only as the life-giving sap of the vine continues to flow into them, expressions or manifestations of the vine that birthed them. No branch in the vine produces or sustains itself. As Jesus said, "For without me, you can do nothing."
All branches are conduits of the life and fruit of the vine; they have no other purpose but that which arises from the life of the vine. No branch of the vine, then, has its own agenda, its own reasons for being, but exists simply to manifest the life of the vine that brought it into being. No branch in a vine thinks to itself, "I shall be a wooden spoon, or boat, or maybe an arrow, or stool." No branch breaks itself free from the vine that produced it and totters away to find its own purposes for its existence, its own identity and meaning. Instead, all branches of the vine bear the fruit of the vine and do so as naturally, plentifully and effortlessly as you and I breathe, or think. As Jesus said, "He who abides in me and I in him bears much fruit."
Does a branch in the vine produce raspberries rather than grapes? Can a branch in a grapevine bear lemons, or coconuts? No, only grapes can appear upon the branch; for that is all that the sap of the vine will ever naturally produce. Only by unnatural, forced grafting might a branch from another plant be connected to the vine and some strange aberrative fruit come into being. But what fruit does appear will not manifest the true life and character of the vine, though it be sweet, or pleasing to the eye. As Jesus said,
Matthew 7:18-20
18 "A good tree cannot produce bad fruit, nor can a bad tree produce good fruit.
19 "Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.
20 "So then, you will know them by their fruits.
Are you living as a branch in the Vine, who is Christ? Or are you straining and striving to produce spiritual "fruit" for God rather than simply abiding in Christ, waiting patiently, in loving submission to the Spirit of Christ, for him to bear the fruit of himself in you? Are you living in pursuit of your own agenda, desiring an existence separate from that of a branch in the Vine, one that serves your own will and way before any other? Or are you content to be a "vessel, sanctified and meet for the Master's use," seeking first God's kingdom (2 Timothy 2:21; Matthew 6:33) and bringing forth the life of the Vine? Are you trying to mix the life and light of the Vine with the death and darkness of the world, the flesh and the devil, bearing "strange fruit" as a result? "Come out from among them and be separate," God says to His own (2 Corinthians 6:14-18), there can be no fellowship between light and darkness, no mixture of the holy life of Christ with the foul idols of evil temples. The joy, peace, goodness, love and power of the Vine are offered to all but only those who abide in the Vine, truly abide, can enjoy its life and fruit.
Peace, Light and Life to you all in Christ.