John 15:1-8
Most people carry a set of keys with them on a daily basis. But, if you are like me you have another key ring (or two) at home that is filled with keys you rarely use. They may be important keys, but not the essential ones to your daily life. The essential keys are the ones in your pocket/pocketbook right now, which you never leave behind.
In a similar fashion, there are many important keys to the spiritual life, but some are essential to your daily walk with Christ. Those keys are the ones you need to keep with you at all times and which you will utilize frequently.
- For instance, we all need the “key” of sound doctrine. I know that many people think of doctrinal studies as being boring, but they are actually the foundation of your spiritual life. If your foundation isn’t sound, nothing you build on that foundation with be sound, either.
- We all need the “key” of corporate worship as we exalt the Lord and learn His Word together. Worship lifts our spiritual eyes above the mundane and temporal matters of this world to see that God rules in everything.
- We all need the “key” of Bible reading and prayer. These are the moments when we privately commune with God and learn His truths for ourselves that guide our choices and give us direction in life.
- We also need the “key” of spiritual community. It’s in these small groups that we get to be transparent, learn from others as they walk with Jesus, and find the kind of friendships that encourage us to continue toward spiritual maturity.
In addition to these, there is another essential “key” that too rarely gets discussed and is sometimes totally left out. It is, in fact, the “secret” to most of the other “keys” that we need in following Jesus.
By a “secret,” I don’t mean that I have discovered some new truth that has never been known before. Actually, If you meet someone that says he’s/she’s discovered something that 2000 years of church history has never known...don’t listen to him/her.
The key of which I speak is the “secret” to the spiritual life primarily because it is the one “key” that releases the power of God in us to do all that He commands us to do. If you don’t realize and utilize this “key” you will forever be limited in the depth and breadth of your spiritual walk with Jesus Christ. Without this “key” you will miss out on the divine enablement that is promised to you apart from which you cannot fully live the Christian life in a manner that honors Christ.
What is this “key,” you ask? It is the secret (as I call it) found in John 15:1-8, which is “abiding in Christ.”
In this pericope (John 14-16), Christ is in the Upper Room reminding His disciples that though His crucifixion is looming, they will continue to have His presence with them. It is this divine presence (the indwelling Holy Spirit) that will enable them to be “fruitful” in their lives and ministries. They will not be left alone to do the best they can in maintaining a life something like Christ’s life. Instead, He will be in them and work through them to accomplish all He wants from them.
There are significant differences between a person being “fruitful” and a person being successful (as it is commonly defined). Success is too often something that can be manufactured and/or manipulated. It is usually the result of strenuous self-effort expended over long periods of time. Almost anyone can be successful, if he is willing to work hard enough at it.
However, “fruitfulness” is altogether different! “Fruitfulness” is the natural process resulting from the inner flow from an organic source. You will never see a fruit tree struggling to bear fruit. It just does what fruit trees do naturally.
In a similar fashion, God has placed within each of us, who are His children, the divine life that enables true spirituality...the Holy Spirit. It is as we learn to live (“abide”) in the Spirit that we find an organically produced “fruitfulness” and a sense of true fulfillment in life.
No apple tree ever says, “I wish I was a peach tree.” The apple tree is happy to produce apples and the peach tree is happy to produce peaches. When the believer begins to live His life in the fullness of God’s Spirit, he/she will find fulfillment in the “fruit” that is born from his/her life.
John wants us to know definitively that when we are “fruitful” (not necessarily successful), we bring glory to God through our lives (John 15:8).
In addition to drawing on the life source placed within us at conversion, He also provides the external care (lifts us up-15:2a & prunes us-15:2b) that enables us to maximize “fruitfulness” in our lives. Notice carefully in the text the progression of ever-increasing “fruitfulness” in our lives (15:2, 5, 8, 16).
Trying to live the spiritual life in the strength of our flesh is like the severed branch of an apple tree trying to produce apples on its own. For the branch to produce fruit it must “abide” (draw it’s life from) in the tree so that it can experience the inner life source of the tree.
The Greek word for “abide” is used 12 times in this one (John 15) chapter. John uses it 41 times in his gospel and another 26 times in his epistles. It is a key word for him that unlocks the secret of the spiritual life.
This word is translated in other texts as: remain, stay, dwell, live, continue, and endure.
Distinguished professor and author, Dr. J. Dwight Pentecost, writes poignantly about the idea of “abiding.” He says, “The word abide has in it the idea of drawing from something that which sustains life. The plant is abiding in the ground when it is so related to its environment, the ground, that it is drawing from the ground that which nurtures and sustains the life of the plant. The fish is abiding in the sea, not when it is afloat upside down in the ocean, but when it is so related to its environment that it is drawing from that environment sustenance for life. The bird is abiding in the air when it is drawing from its environment that which sustains its peculiar kind of life. When there is a break between that living thing and its environment so that it is not being sustained by it, it is no longer abiding. A believer is abiding in Christ when his life is being nurtured and sustained by Jesus Christ...”
Another way of speaking about this matter of abiding in Christ is to say that we live by the divine life within us. This is not about the strength we can muster to follow God and obey His commands. This is about the divine life of Christ through the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit flowing through us so that we can do what we never thought we could do and what we cannot maintain in the energy of the flesh.
Why do we think that we can live the Christian life apart from Christ’s enabling help? If Christ acknowledged that He could do nothing apart from His Father (John 5:30), we must concede that we can do nothing apart from Christ (John 15:5)!
Christ repeatedly says in John 14-16 that the Holy Spirit is going to be in us where He can enable us to to be “fruitful” followers of Him. We have to learn to depend on Christ’s inner presence to live “fruitful” Christian lives that bring glory to Him and demonstrate that we are His disciples.
Maybe an analogy will help us further understand what this “abiding” life is really like.
Let’s suppose one day that you are driving down the highway and you see a man standing next to his car parked beside the road. Out of the kindness of your heart you stop and ask if you can help him. What you discover is that his car is out of gas, but you happen to have a tow-rope in your trunk, so you offer to tow his car to the next gas station where he can fill up. After arriving at the gas station and his car now filled with gas, the man tells you, with great embarrassment, that he just realized he has no money or even a credit card with which to pay. Again, out of the generosity of your heart, you pay the bill. In other words, you pay a debt you did not owe because he owes a debt he cannot pay.
After you pay for the man’s gas, he thanks you profusely, and you turn and walk away. As you get into your own car, you look back to wave good-bye. and to your astonishment you see the man straining behind his car, pushing it.
As crazy as that man with a filled tank of gas seems to us, that is how many of us try to “power” our Christian lives. When you received Christ as Savior, He gives us the fullness and power of His resurrection through the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit. In essence, He gives us a car with a full tank of gas for which He paid the price because we could not pay it ourselves. Many times, however, instead of using the power deposited into our lives we try to push our spiritual lives along in the strength of our flesh...by sheer willpower. How foolish!!
God has provided to every believer all that is needed for “life and godliness” (2 Peter 1:3) so that we might live in all the fullness and fruitfulness He can produce!
Living this kind of life means accepting five things that will unlock the secret to our spiritual lives.
- We must be born again to become part of the life-giving vine. There is no other way to experience this fulfillment and “fruitfulness” than through a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.
- We must believe that we are indwelt by the presence of the Godhead! (Romans 8:9-11) Such incredible power dwells within us and is available to us...the very power that raised up Jesus from the dead.
- We must depend on this truth of His indwelling presence in our lives. Paul says we are to “set our minds on” (Romans 8:5) this wonderful fact. To “set your mind on” means that you keep giving serious consideration to, you let your mind dwell on, fix your attention on, and keep thinking about this truth. At different moments in our daily lives, let’s stop and remind ourselves that He is with us, in us and enabling us!
- You have to die to yourself and your own self-effort in order to fully experience the life of Christ within you. We cooperate with the indwelling Holy Spirit by surrendering ourselves to Him and getting out of the way of what He wants to do in and through us!
- We must fill our minds and hearts with His eternal Word by which He guides and enables us. Being filled with the Spirit and being filled with the scripture are parallel ideas in Paul’s writings (Ephesians 5:18 & Colossians 3:16; cf. John 15:7).
