Dynamics of Abiding in John 15
Remsen Bible Fellowship, 02/09/2020
Introduction:
What does it mean to abide in Jesus? Is abiding our work or God’s work? Is this something we have to make an effort toward, or do we just sink back into his grace and let him take over? These are the type of questions we’re going to ask (and hopefully answer!) this morning.
Read: John 15:1-11
I want to re-read verse 4: 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.
As we looked at this last week, we drew the line between abiding in Jesus, being connected to the vine, and saving faith. To abide is, first of all, to trust in Jesus as your savior and Lord, to embrace him for all that he is, placing your hope in him alone. He is the source of all spiritual life. All true disciples are connected to Christ, and that connection always bears fruit.
It’s very clear from this passage that things ultimately go well for the abiding branches, isn’t it? They are pruned by the Father (v2) which might be painful, but is also an evidence of being connected to him and is done in love (cf Hebrews 12:4ff); they are clean because of Jesus’ words (v3, cf 13:10); they can bear fruit because of their connection to Jesus (v4), indeed, much fruit (v5); they can pray in assurance that God will answer their prayers (v7); they bring God glory (v8); and their fruit proves them connected to Jesus (v8). Continuing past what we saw last week, those who are abiding in Jesus are said to be abiding in his love (v9-10), which brings them to a fullness of joy (v11). All sounds pretty sweet, right? Who wouldn’t want to be one of the abiding branches?
But what of those branches who don’t abide? What of those who are cut away, not pruned? Who are the branches who are burned for their unfruitfulness? I mentioned last week that there are some contrasting views on these issues. And those views are pretty widespread, so I want to lay them out for you. The views of who the unfruitful branches are basically fall into three categories.
- Fruitless branches are those who have genuinely trusted in Christ, are committed to him, but for some reason walk away. They quit bearing fruit. Either through sustained disobedience or giving up the faith, their salvation is lost. The vine-dresser throws them out and burns them.
This is an appealing explanation because these branches getting cut away are said to be in Christ, are they not (v2)? In Christ in Paul’s letters always means saved, why would it be different here in Jesus’ words?
We need to be careful, though, when reading metaphors or parables or analogies, to not make them “get up on all fours” and walk away. In a metaphor there are obvious points of connection, and Jesus does that with the different characters in the story. The vine is Jesus, the vine-dresser or gardner is the Father, the branches are the disciples. It doesn’t follow that when he speaks of fruitless branches being cut away that they have to be connected to the vine in the same way (namely, salvation) that the genuine and fruit bearing branches are. When Jesus speaks of cutting way, there is a real cutting happening here. These people have relationships in churches, they have friendships built on their supposed faith, they’re connected in some sense to Jesus and his people. But it is not the same vital, life-giving, dependent relationship upon the vine which bears fruit.
We also have to realize that to teach a lose-able salvation is to contradict the words of Jesus in John 10:27-30. The abiding of the sheep with the Shepherd does not ultimately rest in their power, but in his. All the Sheep are secure in his hand. Salvation, true abiding, is never lost.
- Fruitless branches are “carnal Christian.” That is, they are believers who have trusted Jesus as savior, but have not submitted to him as their Lord. In this reading, the Father is either gently encouraging (lifting up, rather than cutting away) or severely chastising these carnal Chrsitians. Their salvation isn’t lost, they just aren’t fruitful like they could be.
This view is probably a little more influential in the type of evangelical circles many of us have spent a long time around. We should be glad and commend this view for taking seriously what we just talked about, that salvation cannot be lost. However, it has some dangerous problems of its own.
The largest of these problems is that it creates two classes or tiers of Christians. There are spiritual and unspiritual, mere believers and real disciples, abiding and non-abiding. In some circles this category is tied to being a believer on the one hand and a Spirit-baptized believer on the other hand.
But the New Testament doesn’t give us these categories. When Paul writes to the Corinthian church-a church full of division, sexual sin, taking the Lord’s table lightly, lacking in love, not understanding how to use their spiritual gifts, susceptible to worldly wisdom-how does he refer to them? 1 Corinthians 1:2, To the church of God that is in Corinth, to those sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints together with all those who in every place call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, both their Lord and ours. He writes to the church, those who are sanctified in Christ Jesus, that is, set part in him; he then calls the saints, which just reiterates that point, saints in the NT doesn’t mean super-Christian it means someone set apart one. Someone called out of the world by God into his people. All the believers there fell into this one grouping.
If we take that concept and drop back into John 15, I think what we see is that there is only one group of believers in this passage: those who abide. The non-abiding aren’t JV Christians who just need a higher experience, they aren’t believers who need an extra dose of the Spirit, they are branches who aren’t connected in the vital life-giving sense that is necessary to have and hold salvation. When Jesus speaks of branches being cut off and burned, he really means that, and it doesn’t happen to those in Jesus. We can’t embrace Jesus as savior but refuse to bow to him as Lord, because Jesus can’t be chopped up into pieces like that. When we come to Christ, we bow before our Savior and receive him- all of him.
- Fruitless branches are those who have made a confession of Christ, but whose connection to Christ is superficial. They are cut away because they don’t have the Spirit, they don’t bear fruit, they aren’t truly Jesus’ disciples.
I think this lines up most clearly with the context (Judas’ exit in John 13), and with the rest of New Testament teaching. Wheat and tares grow up together, then God sorts them out (Mt 13), false believers go out from us because they were not of us (1 Jn 2), and false teachers rise up in the church (2 Pet 2). True disciples abide in the vine. False believers don’t. One of the key ways we distinguish genuine faith from false is this: Jesus’ disciples, his followers, keep following.
If this is true, then abiding in the vine, abiding in Christ, is both:
- A present reality for everyone who has trusted in Jesus
- A command that those who are in Christ are to continue abiding
Does God give this type of commands? I think so. Take, for example, 1 John 4:7-12. In this passage love is given as an indicator that someone knows God: vs 7b, 8, 12. But is it just an indicator? No, in this very same passage it is a command: vs 7a, 11. John assumes the presence of love within them, or he would not address them as believers. In this sense telling them that love is an indicator should give them an assurance that they are of God, that God is abiding in them (v12). Nonetheless, he has no qualms about commanding them to love.
Is there any room in John’s description for the believer who isn’t loving, for the “carnal” believer? No. Why is this? Because connection to Jesus, being given the gift of the Spirit, being born of God: these things fundamentally change us: 1 John 3:8-10, esp v9.
So, if we are by definition abiding in Christ when we come to him by faith, how can we conform to and grow in his likeness? How can we obey the command to abide, even in the knowledge that all believers are abiders? How can we be more consciously dependent upon his lifegiving sap, and so bear fruit, more fruit, indeed, much fruit? Again, there are three main views on this part of the Christian life, what is often called sanctification.
- The first posits a “God did his part, now I do mine.” This is perhaps what most of us default toward. God saved us by his grace, now we work to get holy. Perhaps you’ve heard the phrase “trust as if it all depends on God, but work as if it all depends on you.” That’s definitely the mentality I grew up with and often surrounded by The problem with this sort of white-knuckled-effort approach to Christianity is that it is doomed to failure, isn’t it? Just ask our boy, Peter. I’ll never deny you!, then later that night...this sort of God helps those who help themselves type of believing often leads to legalism on the one hand, or despair on the other. If being a good Christian depends mainly on my hard work, then either I’m on top of the world, or down in the gutter. I think this view could also lead to believing salvation is loseable, because if growth or non-growth is all on me, why wouldn’t the abiding nature of salvation all be on me, too?
- The second position says that we grow by surrender. Perhaps you’ve heard the phrase, “Let go, and let God.” This idea of Christian growth says that my effort has nothing to do with my growth, indeed it believes that making an effort can actually interfere with “the Christ life” living through me. The problems with this form of “non-striving” toward growth are multiple, but here’s the main one: it has to fly in the face of biblical language: Put to death the deeds of the body (Romans 8:13), Put to death what is earthly in you (Colossians 3:5), flee from [sin] (1 Tim 6:11), fight the good fight of faith (1 Tim 6:12), we could keep going, but I think you get the point. Action language is really important in the New Testament conception of growing in Christ. Growth is not a passive thing. Is it dependent upon God’s power? Absolutely! But God doesn’t work on us by voodoo magic, he works on us and in us and through us by changing us. And he gives us means toward that end.
God definitely does want us to be surrendered to him, but again, this isn’t something that happens at a point way into our Christian life. Surrendering to him is part of what trusting in Jesus means. How can we embrace the gift of salvation without acknowledging our wrongdoing in the eyes of God and look to Jesus alone as the only one who can redeem us? A biblical understanding of the gospel implies that when we come to Jesus we are by definition surrendering to him, bowing to him, giving our whole selves to him. So abiding certainly includes “surrender”, but that can’t be all that’s happening here.
- Which brings us to the third way to look at Christian growth. That is that Jesus is calling us to God-honoring, God-glorifying, God-empowered, effort. Christians are to work hard at growing in likeness to Jesus, and that is both the desire to do that, and the power to accomplish it comes directly from the Holy Spirit, not your good-Christiansness. Sanctification is something that both you and God are at work in. Not in a you do your part, he’ll do his, sort of sense. You have to work. There are no shortcuts, no quick fixes. The Christian life is a long obedience in the same direction, to borrow a phrase from Eugene Peterson. But all of that work: I repeat, all of it- is empowered and enabled by God himself.
When you’re tempted to lust do you just let go and let God? Or do you turn your eyes away, and redirect your thoughts, meditating on a verse like Matthew 5:8? I’ll tell you right now which one will be more effective. But you can’t do that on your own, can you? Maybe for a while, maybe occasionally. But not day in day out, not over the course of years. And when we fail, when we fall, where can we go if it’s all on us? We’re left to loathe our sinfulness and wallow in the mire. But in Christ we can rest in the knowledge that our sufficiency is in him, our forgiveness in him, our acceptance in him. And in that confident knowledge of our place before God, get up and get back to working. The rest we can have in Christ’s finished work shouldn’t make us lazy, it should drive us to lay hold of that which he has called us to! Philippians 3:12-16
But how can we grow like this? How do we develop these patterns of life, of abiding. I want to get super-practical here, and so in your bulletin you have a copy of our “core commitments.” Now, when we get to the point where we formalize church membership this will be one of the things, along with the doctrinal statement, that we’ll ask folks to sign on to. But for now I just want to use it as a way to outline practical ways we can pursue abiding in Christ.
Remsen Bible Core Commitments: https://rbf-g.faithlifesites.com/mission