What He said!, Pt 2: Abide In Me

John 15:1-11                          1“I am a true sprouting vine, and the farmer who tends the vine is my Father. 2He cares for the branches connected to me by lifting and propping up the fruitless branches and pruning every fruitful branch to yield a greater harvest. 3The words I have spoken over you have already cleansed you. 4So you must remain in life-union with me, for I remain in life-union with you. For as a branch severed from the vine will not bear fruit, so your life will be fruitless unless you live your life intimately joined to mine.  5“I am the sprouting vine and you’re my branches. As you live in union with me as your source, fruitfulness will stream from within you—but when you live separated from me you are powerless. 6If a person is separated from me, he is discarded; such branches are gathered up and thrown into the fire to be burned. 7But if you live in life-union with me and if my words live powerfully within you—then you can ask whatever you desire, and it will be done. 8When your lives bear abundant fruit, you demonstrate that you are my mature disciples who glorify my Father! 9“I love each of you with the same love that the Father loves me. You must continually let my love nourish your hearts. 10If you keep my commands, you will live in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commands, for I continually live nourished and empowered by his love. 11My purpose for telling you these things is so that the joy that I experience will fill your hearts with overflowing gladness! (Passion Translation)

Many of the more traditional translations of this passage use the word ‘abide’; others use ‘remain’.  Both are attempts to convey the life-long union with Jesus that he is calling for here.  The Passion Translation, used here, uses ‘remain’ but clarifies it further by adding ‘life-union’.  The Greek word translated abide or remain has the connotation of extended relationship or expectancy between two individuals.  While life-union is not in Scripture, it does pick up the connotation of extended relationship between the believer and Jesus.  While I am a lifelong user of the NIV translation, I have chosen the Passion Translation for this section because of the clarity it adds to the passage.

Jesus did not come to the world in the first century just to save that generation from their sins.  No, he came to save all people, everywhere, and throughout all time.  Since to effect that salvation meant that he had to die and resurrect, we His people have the responsibility of listening to Him and furthering His Kingdom through our interaction with the world.  We can’t do that on our own though as any missionary will attest.  So we need to remain in life-union with Jesus.

So that brings us back to the main question: just what does ‘abide in me’ or ‘remain in life-union with me’ mean?  Jesus is using an agricultural metaphor here to describe life with him, and those of us who are not familiar with such things might need some explanation to understand.   Grape vines are supported off the ground because they don’t have the strength to support their own weight as do trees, and to promote maximum health and sunlight.  The vines are pruned back every dormant season to guide the growth of the crop and encourage maximum grape production.  Farmers graft new stock onto existing vines for a variety of reasons to strengthen the overall crop, to add new flavor qualities, and to overcome disease.

Each of us is a branch on Jesus’ sprouting vine and each of us produces fruit in season and lies dormant occasionally.  When Jesus lifts us up when we fall, he is in essence propping us up to promote healthy spiritual growth.  Healthy growth produces good fruit which in turn enhances the growth of his Kingdom.  These ‘fruitless branches’ aren’t thrown away, but as the wise and loving farmer, he lifts them up off the ground to enhance their growth.  If we find ourselves in a major life change it could just be that Jesus is in the process of pruning us and grafting us back into the vine to promote our spiritual growth.   In the context, Christ’s endless love for his disciples on the last night of his life on earth seems to emphasize God’s love even for those who fail and disappoint him.  Even Peter’s denial didn’t bring rejection from Jesus. 

Jesus’ use of the agricultural metaphor carries with it an opportunity for misstep though.  Many of us are what is called left-brained people, by which is meant we tend to look at things in a logical way.  We are detail oriented people prone to see the tree and not the forest.  We are not big picture people.  We tend to limit the scope in which Jesus can work.  As I said earlier, we see Jesus as the vine and ourselves as one of the branches.  Jesus is so much more than that.  I have written before about a great early 20th Century missionary to China by the name of J. Hudson Taylor who struggled a great deal with the idea of abiding in Christ.  What does that mean?  He felt his work had been fruitless and saw himself to be a hypocrite:  How could he preach the good news of Jesus to become Godly men and women when he, in fact, could not manifest the same in his own experience?  After months of struggle an epiphany was reached:

All the time I felt assured that there was in Christ all I needed, but the practical question was how to get it out. He was rich, truly, but I was poor; He strong, but I weak. I knew full well that there was in the root, the stem, abundant fatness; but how to get it into my puny little branch was the question. As gradually the light was dawning on me, I saw that faith was the only prerequisite, was the hand to lay hold on His fulness and make it my own. But I had not this faith. I strove for it, but it would not come; tried to exercise it, but in vain. Seeing more and more the wondrous supply of grace laid up in Jesus, the fulness of our precious Savior—my helplessness and guilt seemed to increase. Sins committed appeared but as trifles compared with the sin of unbelief, which was their cause, which could not or would not take God at His word, but rather made Him a liar! Unbelief was, I felt, the damning sin of the world—yet I indulged in it. I prayed for faith, but it came not. What was I to do?..... [But then] I saw it all! "If we believe not, He abideth faithful." I looked to Jesus and saw (and when I saw, oh, how joy flowed!) that He had said, "I will never leave you." …..But this was not all He showed me, nor one half. As I thought of the Vine and the branches, what light the blessed Spirit poured direct into my soul! How great seemed my mistake in having wished to get the sap, the fulness out of Him. I saw not only that Jesus would never leave me, but that I was a member of His body, of His flesh and of His bones. The vine now I see, is not the root merely, but all—root, stem, branches, twigs, leaves, flowers, fruit: and Jesus is not only that: He is soil and sunshine, air and showers, and ten thousand times more than we have ever dreamed, wished for, or needed. Oh, the joy of seeing this truth!

Jesus is everywhere; involved in everything we do.  It’s not that Jesus is the vine, and we are the branches, but that Jesus is everything and we are partakers of it.  The extended relationship of life-union with Jesus means that Jesus is part of every decision and every action.

But there is still more.  I have been involved in ministry for many years and have come to group people into two groups:  Those who follow the green-light God and those who follow the red-light God.  Both groups are faithful to their Lord, pray often, and seek his face.  The green light group is moving, living life, making decisions, course corrections, and life changes.  They move forward in God’s blessing until he throws on the red light saying, ‘OK, this was a bad decision; let’s go back and start again.   The red-light group waits for God to tell them what to do.  They ponder, wonder, facilitate, and wait for God to show the green light to tell them to go.  Eventually life passes them by.

Abiding in Jesus means to be so aware of Jesus’ presence in one’s life as to be fulfilled in all things by Him.  It’s not that we have to ask Jesus whether to buy the blue or red truck but knowing that whatever our decision Jesus is with us in the making of it.  Look at Galatians 2:20:

My old identity has been co-crucified with Messiah and no longer lives; for the nails of his cross crucified me with him. And now the essence of this new life is no longer mine, for the Anointed One lives his life through me—we live in union as one! My new life is empowered by the faith of the Son of God who loves me so much that he gave himself for me and dispenses his life into mine! (Passion Translation)

I have occasionally been involved in ministries that didn’t seem to be going anywhere, but I discovered during those times the reason was not the absence of God, but the overabundance of me.  I was in the way!  I was looking for things to do, or programs to initiate when I should have been resting my spirit in Him.  Our verses today say that we are effective to the extent that we find our source of strength and guidance in Jesus.  It is not that we are in partnership with Him or that He guides and shapes us, but it is a combination of both as God and man interact towards a common goal.  When we go off on our own tangents things are likely to slow down.

Here’s the thing:  Jesus didn’t leave his Kingdom in the hands of churches or pastors; he left it in the hands of people.  This passage shows us that the end result of abiding in Jesus is the furtherance of His Kingdom through the life-example of each of our lives.  We don’t have to be pastors to do that; just be lovers of people.

Let’s get to it!