THE CONNECTION FOR LIFE – John 15:1-8
Posted by Pastor Greg Allen on February 4, 2018 under 2018 |
Preached Sunday,February 4, 2018 from John 15:1-8
Theme: We can only be fruitful in the Christian life to the degree that we abide in Jesus Himself.
(All Scripture is taken from The New King James Version, unless otherwise indicated).
That journey to the garden that evening became the occasion for one of the most amazing conversations recorded in all of Scripture. And if our speculation is correct, that grapevine that they might have encountered along the way became the inspiration for what is perhaps the greatest object lesson our Lord ever gave to His followers.
I am imagining that He called them together to look carefully at this grapevine. I am imagining that He gently ran His hand along the length of it; and that He asked them to consider the nature of it—the long singularity of the vine, the several well-tended branches that were connected to it and that grew from it and that drew nourishment from it, the lush and leafy grapes that grew from the ends of those branches. And then, in John 15:1-8 we read that—perhaps as He looked up from the grapevine into the eyes of His disciples—He told them;
“I am the true vine, and My Father is the vinedresser. Every branch in Me that does not bear fruit He takes away; and every branch that bears fruit He prunes, that it may bear more fruit. You are already clean because of the word which I have spoken to you. Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in Me. I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing. If anyone does not abide in Me, he is cast out as a branch and is withered; and they gather them and throw them into the fire, and they are burned. If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, you will ask what you desire, and it shall be done for you. By this My Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit; so you will be My disciples” (John 15:1-8).
Followers of Jesus have been talking ever since about the marvelous things our Lord had just declared about the true nature of the Christian life!
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You know, dear brothers and sisters; the Christian faith should never be thought of in the same way as the other religious systems of mankind are thought of. In all those other religious movements, their followers practice their religion independent from that religion’s founder. A practitioner of Confucianism, for example, simply follows the teachings of Confucius. He neither has, nor needs, nor seeks, nor can ever even have a relationship with Confucius himself. Likewise, a Buddhist can faithfully practice the precepts of Buddhism without being concerned about having any kind of personal relationship with the Buddha whatsoever. But here, Jesus teaches us as His followers that we absolutely cannot practice His teachings without being vitally connected to Himself. Take away a real, living, personally dependent relationship with Jesus Himself, and you no longer have the Christian faith as He taught it. He taught that His followers could no more bear fruit in the Christian life without Him than the branch could produce grapes without being vitally connected to the grapevine.
And this may explain why many professing Christians today are frustrated in their faith, and feel that their experience is a fruitless one. Outwardly, they seem to be doing all the right things. They have been baptized in a church. They know the Bible fairly well and read it regularly. They go to church. They tithe. They work hard at living a righteous life. They may even be giving their time in service to others. And yet, their experience with Christianity doesn’t seem to be what they know it ought to be. They don’t have joy. Their prayers aren’t answered. They are lacking peace in their hearts. They don’t have power in their testimony toward others. They’re not victorious over the sins of the flesh. They feel defeated and discouraged. Their lives—when they get right down to it—don’t seem all that much different than the lives of unbelievers. The ‘Christian faith’ doesn’t seem to work for them. And perhaps the reason for their frustration is found in this morning’s passage. Perhaps we might say that they’re only trying to ‘abide in Christianity’—but are not truly abiding in the Person of Jesus Christ Himself.
Jesus speaks much in this passage about “abiding” in Him. That word appears seven times in just these eight verses. In the original language, it means to “remain in” or to “dwell in” or to “continue in” something. With respect to a grapevine, it would mean that the branch “remains connected” to the vine in such a way as to draw its essential life from that vine. And that’s what Jesus is telling us about our relationship with Himself in this passage. In order to enjoy a fulfilling, fruitful, joyful, victorious Christian life—to enjoy the Christian life as Jesus means for us to enjoy it—we absolutely must remain connected to Him in such a way as to draw our life and strength directly from Him. We must commune with Him regularly in prayer. We must be reading His word regularly and allowing it to make its home in our hearts and minds. We must be obedient to Him and walk in conformity to His commands. We must allow our roots to grow down deep into Him and draw our daily nourishment for life from Him in a personal relationship of love. Otherwise, we cannot—absolutely cannot—bear fruit for His glory.
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We need very much to explore the principles Jesus is teaching us in this great “object lesson”. Unless we abide in Him as a Person—not merely as a distant religious leader or inspirational figure, but as a very present, very intimate, very loving Person—we will find the Christian life to be a vacuous and empty and frustrating experience. To put it another way, we can only be fruitful in the Christian life to the degree that we ‘abide in’ Jesus Himself.
Note, then, the first thing that this passage tells us about this; that …
1. JESUS IS THE TRUE VINE.
Jesus told His disciples, “I am the true vine …” In saying this, Jesus wanted His disciples to see the primary role He played in their lives. He was their true source of life and strength. He wasn’t telling them that He was one of many possible ‘vines’ to which they might choose to be connected. He wasn’t telling them that they could perhaps grow to be their own self-sufficient ‘vine’ if they wanted to, and if they worked hard enough at it. He spoke in very exclusive terms. In the original language, He spoke in an emphatic way; as if to say, “I—even I—I am the true vine; and there is no other. All others are false.”
Aside from being related to a grapevine, these words would also have had a particular ‘Jewish’ familiarity to the disciples. The disciples would have remembered what the Bible told them about the promised Messiah who would be born of the lineage of King David, the Son of Jesse. Isaiah 11:1-2 told them;
There shall come forth a Rod from the stem of Jesse,
And a Branch shall grow out of his roots.
The Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon Him,
The Spirit of wisdom and understanding,
The Spirit of counsel and might,
The Spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord (Isaiah 11:1-2).
Thus by identifying Himself as “the true vine”, Jesus was making an important affirmation about Himself to His disciples. While there may be many things in in this world from which we may be tempted to draw such things as life, health, growth, strength, fruitfulness, joy, and happiness, Jesus nevertheless declares that He alone is the only ‘true’ or ‘genuine’ vine—the only true source of these things promised as coming from the Messiah. He once told the Pharisees,
“You search the Scriptures, for in them you think you have eternal life; and these are they which testify of Me. But you are not willing to come to Me that you may have life” (John 5:39-40).
Those Pharisees sought life through ‘abiding in Judaism’—very much like some people today seek life by ‘abiding in Christianity’. But those outward religious systems aren’t ‘the true vine’. They aren’t the true source of life and strength. Only Jesus—through a personal relationship with Him by faith—is able to be that to us. As 1 John 5:11-12 says,
“And this is the testimony: that God has given us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. He who has the Son has life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have life” (1 John 5:11-12).
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Now; Jesus not only teaches us that He is the true vine, but also that …
2. HIS FATHER IS THE VINEDRESSER.
He adds, in verse 1, “and My Father is the vinedresser …” As the Son of God, Jesus never acts independently of His Father; but always in complete obedience to and in perfect cooperation with the Father. And in obedience to the Father, He submits to His own role as ‘the true vine’ and to the Father’s role as ‘the vinedresser’.
The vinedresser is the one who tenderly cares for the grapevine—the one who sees to it that the branches on the vine are healthy and strong and able to produce good fruit. And the fact that the heavenly Father is the vinedresser is something that should be a great encouragement to us. It means that just as the Father cares for ‘the true vine’, He also cares for us as the branches attached to that vine; and that He is very much committed to the fruit that we as the branches are to bear. Because we are attached to the vine, we are very much the personal concern of the Father. As Jesus Himself would later tell His disciples;
“These things I have spoken to you in figurative language; but the time is coming when I will no longer speak to you in figurative language, but I will tell you plainly about the Father. In that day you will ask in My name, and I do not say to you that I shall pray the Father for you; for the Father Himself loves you, because you have loved Me, and have believed that I came forth from God” (John 16:25-27).
In fact, Jesus would even go so far as to pray to the Father for the unity we enjoy with Him,
“that the world may know that You have sent Me, and have loved them as You have loved Me” (John 17:23).
Think of that, dear brothers and sisters! The fact that Jesus identifies His Father as the vinedresser means that we are as much under His constant love and care as Jesus Himself is!
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Jesus goes on further in verse two to tell us that …
3. FRUITFULNESS IS THE GOAL.
This name that Jesus gives the Father in relation to us is one that testifies that a specific goal is in mind; because a vinedresser works so that ‘fruit’ may be produced from the vine for which he cares.
In the case of the branch attached to the grapevine, the expected ‘fruit’ would be grapes. But in the case of a believer who abides in Jesus Christ, the sort of fruit that is sought is Christ-like character and behavior. This fruit advances the Father’s glory and pleasure; because it is the fruit of the life of Jesus Himself that is produced by the Holy Spirit in us. As Galatians 5:22-23 says,
But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Against such there is no law (Galatians 5:22-23);
and these qualities describe the very characteristics of our Lord Jesus Himself.
The Bible makes it clear in several places that such ‘fruitfulness’ is to be expected in the life of a believer. For example, Paul said in Romans 7:4 that we’ve been joined “to Him who was raised from the dead, that we should bear fruit to God.” He wrote to the believers in Philippi and told them,
And this I pray, that your love may abound still more and more in knowledge and all discernment, that you may approve the things that are excellent, that you may be sincere and without offense till the day of Christ, being filled with the fruits of righteousness which are by Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God (Philippians 1:9-11).
He told the Colossians that he prayed for them, “that you may walk worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing Him, being fruitful in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God” (Colossians 1:10). Pastor James taught, “But the wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality and without hypocrisy” (James 3:17). Paul instructed Pastor Titus to properly exhort the believers under his care, saying, “And let our people also learn to maintain good works, to meet urgent needs, that they may not be unfruitful” (Titus 3:14). And the apostle Peter encouraged his readers to work to build certain Christian character qualities into their lives, “For if these things are yours and abound, you will be neither barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ” (2 Peter 1:8).
And so, notice the wonderful care that the Father gives to this work. Jesus says, “Every branch in Me that does not bear fruit He takes away; and every branch that bears fruit He prunes, that it may bear more fruit” (v. 2). The word that is translated “takes away” can also be translated “raises up”. And I believe that this would be the correct way to understand Jesus’ words. When a good and wise vinedresser comes along and sees an attached branch that lies low and does not bear fruit, he wouldn’t simply snip it off and throw it away. Rather, he would lift it up from the dust and the dirt, wash it, and set it on the trellis so that it can get sunlight. He gently nurtures the unfruitful branch that is still ‘in the vine’ so that it will become a fruit-bearing branch. And when he comes upon every branch that is bearing fruit, he carefully trims it—cutting away the things from the branch that might sap its strength or that might compromise its growth. He ‘cleanses’ it so that it may bear more fruit.
How thankful we should be to our Father that He lovingly cares for every branch that is attached to His Son Jesus. Jesus rejoiced in the Father’s ministry as ‘vinedresser’; and so should we. We shouldn’t recoil when we see the Father coming toward us, as it were, with a pair of trimmers in His loving hand. As James wrote,
My brethren, count it all joy when you fall into various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience. But let patience have its perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing (James 1:2-4).
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So, fruitfulness is the goal of our being attached to Jesus. And notice how He then teaches us that …
4. HE HAS ALREADY CLEANSED US FOR FRUITFULNESS.
Jesus tells His disciples in verse 3, “You are already clean because of the word which I have spoken to you.” He, of course, didn’t mean that His disciples were—right then and there—‘perfect’ in every way. We know that they weren’t. And what’s more, we know that we who love and trust Him today aren’t perfect either. Rather, Jesus simply meant that the Father has already dressed these ‘branches’ and trimmed them for the purpose of bearing fruit. They are ready to begin the process of producing immediately. And so also are we. We don’t have to work our way up to being branches who are worthy of bearing fruit. We who are abiding in Him may begin right now.
And note the means of our having been cleansed. It’s the word that Jesus Himself spoke to these apostles. When He was praying for them in John 17, Jesus asked the Father, “Sanctify them in the truth; and then declared, “Your word is truth” (John 17:17). It was that word which Jesus had received from the Father and had declared to His disciples—and that they then declared to us. Similarly, Paul wrote,
Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for her, that He might sanctify and cleanse her with the washing of water by the word” (Ephesians 5:25-26).
You might think of the word of God as the great trimming knife in our lives; just as the writer of Hebrews said:
For the word of God is living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart (Hebrews 4:12).
You and I may not always enjoy the way the word of God sometimes cuts us so deeply; but it’s necessary that it do so in order for us to be able to produce the fruit the Father wishes to produce in us. That’s why, in order to truly abide in Jesus, we need to read the Bible regularly.
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But we must always remember the key to it all; that …
5. ABIDING IN JESUS IS ESSENTIAL TO FRUITFULNESS.
Jesus then commanded His disciples, “Abide in Me, and I in you.” (v. 4a). This command to “abide” constitutes the main instruction given to us in this passage
Imagine what would happen if you were driving past a grapevine, and thought to yourself how nice it would be to always have fresh grapes. Suppose you stop and just sliced off a branch, threw it in the back seat, and took it home. (You’d better never try that in real life, though. The vineyard owner might come after you with a rake if you did! But just for the sake of argument, let’s suppose you did.) Suppose you took that branch home and placed it in some water and waited for your own constant supply of fresh grapes. Of course, nothing would happen. The branch can only produce grapes so long as it is attached to the vine in such a way as to draw its life from it.
But sadly, that’s how many professing Christians try to live the Christian life. They can never reproduce the character and behavior of Christ on our own—somehow independently of Jesus Himself. As ‘branches’, we must maintain a constant, continual, vital, personal communion with Jesus Christ on an ongoing basis for His fruit to be produced in us. “As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it abides in the vine,” Jesus said, “neither can you, unless you abide in Me” (v. 4b).
And note further that it’s not just a matter of our abiding in Jesus; but also of Him abiding in us! Jesus said, “I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing” (v. 5). The branch that is abiding on the vine, in a sense, also has the vine abiding in it. The vine’s sap and juice and life-force flows from itself into the branch. A whole long grapevine that is covered over with branches, leaves and grape-clusters, has one principle of life flowing through every part; and it shares that single principle of life with everything that is abiding in it. That’s why the branch is able to produce the fruit of the vine. The branch doesn’t have the power to produce grapes on its own; it is able to produce grapes only because it is abiding in the vine, and because the vine is abiding in it. Similarly, we’re to not only abide in Jesus, but allow Jesus to abide in us. We’re to allow His life to flow through us and produce His fruit in us. As Paul was able to testify;
I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me (Gal. 2:20).
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Now; Jesus makes it very clear to us that …
6. A FAILURE TO ABIDE RESULTS IN LOSS.
In verse six He said, “If anyone does not abide in Me, he is cast out as a branch and is withered; and they gather them and throw them into the fire, and they are burned.” Jesus is not saying here that a genuine believer, who has been saved and attached to Jesus, can ever backslide fatally, or can fall away from the faith in such a way as to be cut off from the vine and lose their salvation. That can never happen. Jesus says elsewhere that the Father has given His sheep to Him; “and no one is able to snatch them out of My Father’s hand” (John 10:29). If someone has been attached to Jesus in a saving way, they will never be detached from Him and become lost to Him again.
Instead, Jesus is referring here to people who have merely attached themselves to Him in a superficial way, but not in such a way as to truly be connected to Him. He calls them a ‘branch’; but does not call them a ‘branch in Me’. They may be up-close to the vine in some way—much like people who have been raised in a Christian home, and know how to talk the talk, and can give others the impression that they are believer; but who do not really have a saving faith in Jesus. They have not been, as Paul said elsewhere, “rooted and built up in Him and established in the faith, as you have been taught, abounding in it with thanksgiving” (Colossians 2:7).
An example of what Jesus means by such a ‘casting out’ may have already actually occurred just prior to Jesus speaking these words—that is, in the person of Judas. Jesus once told the gathered apostles (Judas included), “Did I not choose you, the twelve, and one of you is a devil?” (John 6:70). Jesus even called him “the son of perdition”—that is, one who is destined to perish (John 17:12). Judas was never truly ‘abiding’ in Christ. He was never saved. Apparently not even holding the office of apostle can prevent someone from suffering eternal loss if they are not truly ‘abiding’ in Christ.
This reminds us of the seriousness with which the Father takes His role as vinedresser. Unfruitful, unattached branches hinder the growth of good, fruit-bearing branches. Only branches that abide in a vital, intimate connection with the vine are the ones that bear fruit.
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But by contrast, Jesus goes on to assure us that …
7. FAITHFULNESS TO ABIDE RESULTS IN POWER.
In verse 7, Jesus describes something of what fruitfulness means when He said, “If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, you will ask what you desire, and it shall be done for you” (v. 7). What great fruitfulness this is!—to have power in prayers that are prayed by us in Jesus name!
Earlier, Jesus told His disciples that He was going to the Father; and said,
“And whatever you ask in My name, that I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask anything in My name, I will do it” (John 14:13-14).
Similarly, in 1 John 5:14-15, we’re told,
“Now this is the confidence that we have in Him, that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. And if we know that He hears us, whatever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that we have asked of Him” (1 John 5:14-15).
To the degree that we are abiding in Jesus—and that His words are abiding in us—to that degree our will is submitted to His will. And when our will is the same as His will, and our desires are the same as His desires, we can ask what we want. What we would be asking for would be the same thing as what our Lord and Master already wants to do!
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And finally, notice that …
8. JESUS’ DISCIPLES ARE IDENTIFIED BY FRUITFUL ABIDING.
In verse 8, Jesus said, “By this My Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit; so you will be My disciples” (v. 8). Do you remember how we began by saying that the devotees of other religious faiths can entirely fulfill the tenants of those faiths without any relationship whatsoever with the founders of those faiths? Well; as we can see, it’s impossible to live a truly fruitful Christian life without a vital relationship with Jesus Himself. And because that fruit can only come through that relationship, then it follows that our fruitfulness—the result of abiding in Jesus—is proof to the world that we are His; just as the grapes would be proof that the branches belonged to the grapevine.
After Jesus had risen from the dead, ascended to the Father, and sent His Holy Spirit to the disciples, those apostles preached boldly and powerfully; and brought thousands to faith in Christ in just a matter of days. The work of the kingdom of Jesus advanced mightily through them. And how? It was because they were abiding in Christ. Even as it says of those who tried to stop them in their preaching;
Now when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, and perceived that they were uneducated and untrained men, they marveled. And they realized that they had been with Jesus (Acts 4:13).
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May we so abide in Christ that the world looks at us as people that it recognizes as having been with Jesus too. For there is no fruitfulness apart from abiding in Him. It truly is the only connection for life!
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