6 If anyone does not abide in me he is thrown away like a branch and withers; and the branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned. 7 If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. 8 By this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples. 9 As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love. 10 If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in His love. 11 These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full.
As we saw last week, in the opening verses of John 15, Jesus proclaimed Himself to be the True Vine, and as He continues to teach His disciples the importance of us abiding in Him, He goes into more detail on our responsibilities. You’ll remember that His call for us to abide in Him is a command, rather than a suggestion.
Jesus is the True Vine who promises eternal life to those who come to Him in faith, while God the Father, as the vinedresser or gardener, is the one who ensures our spiritual growth by pruning the fruitful branches.
In verse 4 Jesus said, “Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me.”
In the first 11 verses of John 15, Jesus stresses eight times that we should abide in Him and His love, so obviously, it is important. The question is, why? J. C. Ryle answers this question by saying, “To abide in Christ means to keep up a habit of constant close communion with Him, to be always leaning on Him, resting on Him, pouring out our hearts to Him, and using Him as our Fountain of life and strength, as our chief Companion and best Friend. To have His words abiding in us, is to keep His sayings and precepts continually before our memories and minds, and to make them the guide of our actions, and the rule of our daily conduct and behaviour.”
A true, Bible-believing Christian is someone who hears the Gospel, believes it, understands their need for a Saviour, and then turns to Christ to experience His forgiving grace. This dramatic conversion is then the starting point of a life of discipleship as we walk with Jesus.
A disciple of Jesus is a person who makes the conscious decision to follow Jesus wholeheartedly, and very often there is a price to pay for that obedience. Some of Jesus’ first disciples were fishermen, and in order to follow Him effectively they were challenged to hear the call, respond to it, put down their nets, get out of their boats, and follow Him.
The call that Jesus made to His earliest disciples is exactly the same call He makes to us today. We need to decide whether we’re happy to just go through the motions on Sundays, or are we really going to take the call to Christian discipleship seriously? If we want to be the disciples that Jesus wants us to be, we need to hear what He is saying in John 15.
It starts with the relationship between the vine and the branches. When Jesus described Himself as the True Vine, He spoke of Himself as the core of the vine, the main stem, or the root. As the True Vine, He is central to all that happens in the vineyard. And we, as His people are the branches - the extensions of the vine. Because we are Christians, Jesus is now our life source and life force. We are now the extensions that grow from the root of the true vine - Jesus.
It’s all about relationships, and in particular our relationship with God through Christ.
The branches have a relationship with the vine, and this is what gives the vine wholeness and completeness. As the Church, no one will ever mistake us for the vine. We are not Jesus in human form, but as we are called to abide in Him, we learn what it means to display Christlikeness in our lives. We are to be as accurate a representation of Christ as we could possibly be.
When you trusted Jesus by faith, something happened to you. In Romans 11 we’re told that we are now grafted into Him. That means you are now connected to Him in a mysterious, yet glorious way that we don’t fully understand. You began a relationship with Him that will never end. Eternal life with Jesus does not begin when you die and go to Heaven. If you are a Christian, it began for you the moment you turned to Him in repentance and faith.
Our disciple relationship with Jesus is a very real presence here and now. We don’t have to wait until we get to Heaven to have that relationship with Him. Jesus doesn’t say we will be branches at some point in the future when we finally manage to pull ourselves together and sort out this or that issue in our lives. He says we are the branches – present tense. We are branches, intimately attached and fully related to Jesus right now.
We all have close, intimate relationships in life with our parents, children, spouses and friends. There is a sense of connection that goes deep into our core. One of our greatest and deepest needs is to love and be loved, and this is what defines our human relationships – our hearts are linked. These relationships are not casual, take it or leave it, relationships. They are the kind of relationships that help to define who we are and usually determine what we live for.
Unfortunately there are times when our relationships lead us into trouble simply because of the people we’re connected to, but that just proves how true that principle is. For good or for bad, our relationships with each other play a huge role in shaping the people we are, and at the same time we play a role in shaping others.
These types of relationships are what our lives revolve around.
What we need to understand is that we should seek that same character-shaping relationship with Christ. A casual, non-committed, take it or leave it relationship with Jesus Christ is simply a contradiction in terms. You will either love Him or hate Him. You will either obey Him or rebel against Him. In Matthew 12:30 and Luke 11:23 Jesus says, “Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters.” There is no room in that statement for a take it or leave it attitude to Him. For the Christian disciple, Jesus is not some far away, mythical figure in our lives. He is not just one of our acquaintances.
Proverbs 3:5-6 says, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make straight your paths.” How we are to relate to God through Christ, the True Vine, means more than mere reverence. In other words, nodding in God’s direction is not enough. We are to know Him by living closely with Him, relating to Him personally in every aspect of our lives.
Jesus wants a close, intimate relationship with us. He wants His connection with us to be the very core of our lives, because He is the only source of truth in our sinful world. The good news is that for the Christian, a totally committed relationship with Jesus is possible. Remember, (and this is important) you’re starting from a position of strength. You are already grafted into Him as the vine. He did that for you when you first turned to Him in faith. Now we are to stay connected to Him, and abide in Him.
As we saw last Sunday, Jesus does warn us of the consequences if we don’t. A close, intimate relationship with Him is possible, but branches removed from the vine cannot survive alone. Remove them from the root and the vine, and not only do they not produce fruit, but soon they will shrivel up and die.
When branches on the vine are cut and severed from the root, death comes to the branches and leaves. Their life source is removed without that vital connection to the root, as they lose their only source of life. The root supplies the sap they need to survive, and without that connection there is no more life.
If we remove ourselves from our relationship with Jesus we shrivel and dry up. There may still be physical life without Christ, but that’s only temporary.
All over the world there are people who flock to worship services week after week. They sing the songs, they say the right things, but in reality they have disconnected themselves from the true vine, so while on the outside things all seem to be fine, spiritually they are shrivelled and dried up.
They still know who Jesus is, but they now have a distant relationship with Him. The complete trust and reliance is no longer there, and that’s a dangerous place to be. Somehow, somewhere they made the decision to lean on their own understanding, rather than God’s.
That decision has separated them from their only source of true life. They go through the motions of life – physically they may be fit and well. They live, but their hearts are dry and barren. They live, but their lives are drudgery. There’s no more true direction, and they now find themselves sapped of the spiritual energy they once had. That absolute assurance of their infinite worth in Christ has now become a distant and fuzzy memory.
You may be in that place right now, but if so, there is good news, because nothing is impossible for God. A surrendered life, a life fully reliant on Him is possible. It is possible for the branch to be fully reliant on the vine. In fact, there is no real alternative if you think about it.
We have to be connected to, and stay connected to the vine. Once we do that with God’s help, it is then that we’ll begin to understand the purpose of our existence as Christian disciples.
What does an effective grapevine do? It produces fruit.
Jesus says in verse 9 that we are to abide in His love, and He expands on this teaching in the next verse by saying, “If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in His love.” (John 15:10)
So Christians who know and rely on His love respond by obeying His commands. It’s important to note that we are not saved by obedience, since we are saved by faith alone in His perfect saving work for us. However, as we rely on His love for us and respond with loving obedience to His commandments, the result is that we are drawn near to Him to abide in His love.
Throughout His earthly life, Jesus repeated the importance of showing His love for the Father by obeying His commands, and in much the same way, our love for Christ and our abiding in Him involves the submission of our will to His will.
As He continues to teach His disciples, Jesus teaches a number of benefits for those who abide in Him. The first is deliverance from the judgment of God. Verse 6, “If anyone does not abide in me he is thrown away like a branch and withers; and the branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned.”
Throughout the New Testament, fire is used as a picture of God’s judgment. In Matthew 13, Jesus explained the parable of the sower to His disciples, and in verses 39-42 He said, “The harvest is the close of the age, and the reapers are angels. Just as the weeds are gathered and burned with fire, so will it be at the close of the age. The Son of Man will send His angels, and they will gather out of His kingdom all causes of sin and all law-breakers, and throw them into the fiery furnace. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”
What is of particular importance here is that Jesus is talking not just about sinners in general, but as you read the parable in Matthew 13, the judgment He describes is on those who profess belief in Him, but who in reality, are not saved and do not bear fruit.
James wrote, “Faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.” (James 2:17) This doesn’t mean that we are saved by a combination of faith and works, but rather that saving faith is always a faith that goes on to bear the fruit of good works, along with a changed life.
So to abide in Christ is to be delivered from God’s judgment, for the simple reason that the branches that abide in Him will bear fruit because they are grafted into the True Vine, which means they are no longer under judgment. It is only through faith in Jesus Christ that we can be saved from the wrath of God that we all deserve because of our sin. Unless if Jesus pays the price of our sin on the cross, we will have to pay that price ourselves.
A second result of abiding in Him is that He will deepen and enrich our prayer lives. He says in verse 7, “If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.” (John 15:7) This is very similar to His words in the previous chapter. “Whatever you ask in my name, this I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask me anything in my name, I will do it.” (John 14:13-14) We can only guess at how many times these passages of Scripture have been twisted to teach that God will give us whatever we want when we tack on “in Jesus’ name” at the end of the prayer.
A. W. Pink explains the truth of Jesus’ promise here by referring to a life that is “regulated by the Scriptures. Jesus speaks of His words which refer to the precepts and promises of Scripture personally appropriated, fed upon by faith, and hidden in the heart. It is constant and habitual communion with God through the Word, until its contents become the substance of our innermost beings.”
When Jesus talks about asking for whatever we wish, He is speaking directly about His command and our call to abide in Him. The greatest wish, the greatest desire of our hearts should be to abide in Him. This should be our deepest prayer.
What is it that we pray for or about the most? Do we pray for faith to believe, for compassion for the lost so that we become faithful witnesses of the Gospel, and for courage to stand against temptation and sin? Those are the kind of prayers He will faithfully answer, as we learn to pray within His will.
The theologian F. B. Meyer wrote some 100 years ago, “If you abide in Christ in daily fellowship, it will not be difficult to pray aright, for He has promised to abide in those who abide in Him; and the sap of the Holy Ghost securing for you fellowship with your unseen Lord, will produce in you, as fruit, desires and petitions similar to those which He unceasingly presents to His Father.”
Go into any “Christian” bookstore, and you’ll see that the shelves literally sag under the weight of books on the “secrets” to power in prayer, but the vast majority are a complete waste of time and money. The only people who benefit from these books are the charlatans who write, publish and sell them. The real secret to an effective and powerful prayer life is to abide in Christ, as He changes our desires to be moulded and shaped by His Word. This is how we understand John 15:7. “If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.”
A third benefit of abiding in Christ the True Vine, is that God receives the glory, as Jesus says in verse 8. “By this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples.” (John 15:8)
Just before going to the cross, as Jesus begins His high priestly prayer in John 17, He prays, “Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son that the Son may glorify you, since you have given Him authority over all flesh, to give eternal life to all whom you have given Him. And this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. I glorified you on earth, having accomplished the work that you gave me to do. And now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed.” (John 17:1-5)
The hour has come. What hour? The hour of His sacrificial death, and it is because of what He did on the cross that Jesus glorified the Father, and as we are granted the gift of saving faith, the Father is glorified through our faith in Christ. The logical conclusion is that the greatest means of us glorifying God (which, according to the Westminster Catechism, is the purpose of our existence), is to believe in Jesus Christ and to abide in Him.
The evidence of our faith in Jesus is that we bear fruit for Him as we bring glory to God, but the opposite is also true. If we are not abiding in Jesus Christ and bearing the fruit of changed lives, then we are denying God the glory that is His.
As we bear fruit for Him, we become the salt and light we are called to be in this sinful world. Pointing the lost to God through Christ is one of the ways we bring glory to the Father. The American pastor Gordon Keddie wrote, “The unbeliever may pour contempt on his friend who is converted and gives up his former wicked ways, but he knows somehow that he protests too much and is really covering a deeper amazement at a change that he cannot explain. Even the hard-hearted world cannot but see the hand of God in the saving change of an otherwise corrupt and condemned sinner.”
As we abide in Christ, we will bear fruit which both glorifies the Father and proves the authenticity of the faith He gives us.
The final verse we’re looking at today is verse 11, as Jesus describes a fourth benefit of abiding in Him. “These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full.” The world teaches the exact opposite. Turning away from the things of the world and following Jesus Christ takes all the pleasure out of life, but this is part of the devil’s great deception, which we first see in Genesis 3. How often do we hear the old lie that God is restrictive, and some kind of cosmic spoilsport? True joy and true fulfillment in life is to be found in Christ, not the things of the world, which only bring temporary happiness.
It is when our fellowship with Christ is threatened by the things of the world that we lose our true joy. Contrary to what the world teaches us, it is disobedience and unbelief that steal our joy. David, in his prayer of repentance after his sin of adultery with Bathsheba in Psalm 51 pleaded with God when he said, “Cast me not away from your presence, and take not your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation.” (Psalm 51:11–12)
He realised that because of his disobedience and sin, he had lost the spiritual joy that he previously had, so he begged God not only to forgive him but also to restore His presence and therefore His joy. If you want true joy in this life and in the next, there is only one way to receive it: Turn from your sin, confess your need of a Saviour, and receive the gift of salvation through Jesus Christ. There is no greater joy than understanding the Gospel message and knowing you have been reconciled to God.
This is how “your joy may be full,” as Jesus said in verse 11, but of course, the devil doesn’t want you to know that. This is why true joy which is found only in Jesus Christ is a complete mystery to those who don’t have it. As we abide in Christ, the True Vine, we, as the branches, are filled with His strength and vitality, and one of the fruits we receive as a result of that, is true joy.
We might not be happy all of the time, but even in the struggles of life, we have joy, and we receive this joy as we abide in the one who gave His life for us.
So again, as we abide in Christ, we are delivered from the judgment of God, He will give our prayer lives a whole new meaning, God will receive the glory that is rightfully His, and as Jesus promises in verse 11, “These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full.”