Please turn in your Bibles to John chapter 15. While you’re turning there, John chapter 15 is part of what’s called “The Farewell Discourse.” After the Last Supper, Jesus reminds His disciples of a few things from His teaching, gives them a few notes of farewell, things He wants them to remember, things He wants them to be thinking about as He leaves them by His physical presence, and He often confirms His relationship with them in these verses, tells them more about the nature of His relationship. And you’ll see that’s true of our text today. So let me pray and we’ll read.
Heavenly Father, You are light. You are pure light, and in You is no darkness at all. Lord, we confess that in us is darkness and we ask that You would give us light by Your Word this morning. It’s in Jesus’ name we pray, amen.
John chapter 15, starting in verse 1:
“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 does bear fruit he prunes, that it may bear more fruit. Already you are clean because of the word that I have spoken to you. 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. I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing. 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. If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. By this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples. As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love. 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. These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full.”
This is God’s Word.
In 2013, it was discovered that a software developer working for Verizon had hired a Chinese consulting firm to fulfill all of his work responsibilities. He paid the consulting firm about a third of his salary, $50,000 a year, while he pocketed the other two-thirds so he wouldn’t have to work. He could just coast along. But that fact did not change his job title. It didn’t change his position with the company. He was still formally a software developer for Verizon. That’s what he was known as. That was his position. But he even, from time to time, received excellent performance reviews. So formally he was a software developer, but he didn’t actually do anything that the title or job position included.
I was thinking about, when I was thinking through this passage, I was thinking about the doctrine of union with Christ, what it means to be united to Christ. We can be truly united to Him by faith, yet without taking hold of the realities of that union. So that’s the question we’ll ask today – “How can I take hold of my union with Christ? If I am united to Christ by faith, how can I take hold of that reality?” We’ll cover the text in three points. How can I take hold of my union with Christ? First, we need to step back. Step back, seeing the big picture. Look at verses 1 and 2. Jesu says God the Father is the vinedresser. He is the gardener. He is the keeper of the vineyard. He is in charge of keeping the vineyard productive. And this is not a new metaphor in Scripture. Israel was God’s vine which He rescued from Egypt. They were to be His productive people, bearing fruit, bringing life to a dead world. Israel is described as a vine in many places in Scripture, especially in the prophets, but most of those references are negative because Israel was unfaithful to the covenant and so judged.
If you’ve been in the evening service the past five weeks, Wiley has been preaching on Lamentations, which describes the deep grief of Israel after the fall of Jerusalem, after the destruction and exile of God’s people. That destruction was judgment, it was the judgment of God for the people’s unfaithfulness. It’s hard to read that book without being struck by the vivid detail of the judgment that’s described there. Things like starvation, the death of children, slaughter, anguish, despair, violation, humiliation, famine, and even cannibalism. The vine that God had brought out of Egypt, rescued and cared for, had become overrun with thorns. It’s described that way in Hosea 10. Look at verse 1 again. That’s why Jesus says He is the true vine, because He was accomplishing and is accomplishing and will accomplish what national Israel failed to do.
So look at what He says about how He functions as the true vine. “Every branch in me that does not bear fruit He takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit He prunes, that it may bear more fruit.” And there are two types of branches He says are actually in the true vine. It says it right there. If a branch does not bear fruit, that is, does not grow the fruit of the Spirit, isn’t productive for the kingdom of Christ, the Father will cut it away. If a branch does bear fruit, it is pruned. It is cut back so that it can become even more productive.
We had baptisms this morning. One of the reasons I love our sacramentology, I love that we baptize babies because we are taking into account – I think this is part of the reason God gave us two sacraments – taking into account the tension of the visible and the invisible Church. The visible Church is all who profess to trust Jesus and their children. They are formally united to Christ by virtue of that profession or by the profession of their parents. There is a formal union. They are the part of the Church that we can see. The invisible Church includes all those who are spiritually united to Christ, who truly have faith, who truly have been baptized by the Spirit. And we see that tension in this verse, don’t we? There are false Christians in the Church, and the vinedresser will cut them away.
Well let’s take a few moments to think about what He does to those who do produce fruit. It says He prunes them. This is discipline. And it comes in many forms. God doesn’t bring suffering and trials into the life of a believer because He hates His good branches. He does it for a purpose. He does it for a good purpose. He does it so that we may bear more fruit. He is truly invested in our growth, in what is best for us. As Christians, we get into so many situations, so many trials, so many circumstances where we just want to ask, “Why? Why is God allowing this to happen to me? Why didn’t He work this situation differently? Isn’t this thing that I’m praying for a good thing? Doesn’t God say it’s a good thing? Why wouldn’t He grant it?” Listen to the words of J.C. Ryle. “If Christians were allowed to choose their own course through life, they would never learn hundreds of lessons about Christ and His grace which they are now taught in God’s ways. The time may come when we are called to take some journey in life which we greatly dislike. When that time comes, let us believe that all is right.” When we get to heaven, and we see God’s plan unfolded, we will see that He was so much wiser than we knew in the moment. We will see that all was right.
Think with me about the discipline of Peter when he denied Christ three times. Jesus predicted that he would do that, and his experience of that was his discipline. Jesus wanted to show him, “This is where your heart is right now.” Jesus wanted to show him his need. I’m sure Peter wouldn’t have chosen that at the time, but Jesus is wiser, and so He grew Peter into someone who would preach at Pentecost and thousands would be converted through it. Peter would go on to help establish the Jerusalem church. He was more fruitful because he was pruned, cut back, so he could become more productive. God is doing the same thing in you if you are His, and sometimes we need to step back and see that. To take hold of our union with Christ, we need to step back and see that bigger picture, distinguishing between the formal union to Jesus Christ and the spiritual union that comes by faith. He is the true vine, and the pruning that comes from the Father is what’s truly best for us.
Secondly, we need to step in, step in, abiding in the vine. Verse 3 says, “Already you are clean because of the word that I have spoken to you.” Jesus is saying, “You eleven disciples, you are clean because of this word I have spoken to you.” God’s Word is indeed the cleansing agent of His people. And Jesus is saying to the eleven, because Judas had already left, the Word, meaning that whole message that He had spoken to them, has cleansed them because they received it in faith. One theologian says it is like Jesus telling them not to put their trust in past attainments. “Here’s how to use it. Here’s how to grow. Here’s how to continue in your spiritual progress. Here’s how to take hold of your union with Me.”
And notice that His next exhortation, this exhortation from Jesus Himself, is more of His cleansing Word, as is all of Scripture. He tells them to abide. He tells us to abide. You know that’s the secret of the Christian life. You want to live a vibrant, strong, beautiful, productive Christian life? Abide in the vine. He is where life is found. We cannot bear fruit on our own. Apart from Him we can do nothing. We are about to sing the words of the hymn, “Other refuge have I none, I helpless hang on Thee. Leave, O leave me not alone, support and comfort me.” That’s a recognition that He is all we have when it comes to growth. He is all we have when it comes to life in a branch. This is why earning our way to heaven will never work. We don’t have the ability. We don’t have the ability to break from the chains of sin without this life-giving vine. This is why when you hear moralistic teaching – nor moral, moralistic teaching – you may be energized to do better, but that doing better won’t last. Because apart from Him we can do nothing. Don’t miss the difference here. The cleansing word of the Gospel must be the starting point for the Christian life.
I mentioned that Hosea 10 passage earlier where God is rebuking the vine of Israel, rebuking them for not recognizing their King, the God in heaven, rebuking them for being “overgrown with thorns,” the passage says. And the fact for every true believer is that we have a lot of thorns. We have many things that are choking out the vibrancy of our Christian lives. We have sin that has crept up over time, destroying our fruitfulness. It leads to death. And Jesus bore those thorns in a crown on His head. He took the curse of the cross. The righteous for the unrighteous. And defeating death by triumphing over it, He lives now as the true vine, the life-giving vine. And living in Him, that’s the only way those branches can produce fruit.
Verse 5 teaches that abiding in Him necessarily produces fruit. It has to happen. If you are abiding in Christ, you will produce fruit. Leon Morris says it this way. “Always, the true disciple is becoming more fully a disciple.” Grapes on a branch show that the branch is actually productive. It has life. And that productivity, the fruit of the Spirit growing in your day to day life, is the only satisfactory evidence of being a true Christian. Jesus says, “You will recognize them by their fruits.” Fruitfulness is evidence to your own heart of your bond with Christ. You can produce fruit in Him by abiding. That’s what this passage teaches us.
The alternative to abiding in Jesus Christ has the worst consequences. And I’m not being hyperbolic when I say that. Verse 6 more explicitly states what he said in verse 2. Those awful judgments mentioned in Lamentations that we talked about a minute ago, well this is worse. To be cut off from the source of life is to lose all graces that you enjoy in this life. It is to truly die. It is to experience the second death that Revelation mentions. So if you are hearing this right now, this is life or death. Life can only be had through faith in Jesus Christ, through trusting Him for your sins, through realizing your need and resting on Him alone for salvation.
Cory Brock, who many of you know, used to be our Young Adults minister here. He had a gym in his garage at his house, affectionately known as “The Brock Box.” And I’ll never forget this. We were working out there one day, just the two of us, and we had this workout going where you would do twenty seconds of one thing, twenty seconds of another thing, and twenty seconds of rest. And you did, I don’t know, fifteen or twenty minutes of that. And we had this twenty seconds of rest between sets and we were both crouched down beside each other, just absolutely exhausted toward the end of the workout, and he looked up and me, just sweat dripping off his face, and he said, “It feels like death, but it’s actually life,” and then he popped up and started doing more boxjumps, and I was like, “I can’t keep going!”
Listen, I have met with the youth of our church very often over the past several years, and it is telling to me how many struggle to read their Bibles regularly. Maybe you could say the same about yourself. Why is it so difficult if we as Christians know that’s where life is found – life is found in Christ who is the Word, life is found in the true vine – it’s because uprooting the idols of our heart feels like death, but it’s actually life. It is often painful to exercise your faith, to trust Christ in this moment or that. Trust Jesus when He says, “This is where life is to be found.” Step in, lean in by abiding.
How do we take hold of our union with Christ? We need to step back and see the grand scheme of God. He prunes His branches for their good. We need to step in, abiding in the true vine for fruitfulness. And last, we need to step up, step up, proving our union with Christ. We often use that phrase, don’t we, “Step up,” when we want someone to prove something to us, when we want them to prove their words with action. “Alright, step up. Show me. Prove it.” In verse 8, Jesus says by bearing fruit the Father is glorified and it proves us as true disciples. Look at these next verses. Jesus uses four possessives. He says in verse 7, “My words.” He says in verse 9, “My love.” He says in verse 10, “My commandments.” And in verse 11, “My joy.” Jesus doesn’t just tell us to abide and then leave us to figure out what that means. He tells us how and where to abide. And if we are to abide in the true vine who is speaking to us here, we should pay attention to what He says He is all about. What does He say is His? Let’s look at each of these four things.
Verse 7, “If you abide in me and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish and it will be done for you.” We are to abide by His words and prayer. Did you know that some Christians have more effective prayer than others? Abiding in Christ yields special replies from God. The nearer you are to Christ, the more powerful your prayers will be. And the key to that nearness is the words of Jesus abiding in you. So we must seek Him in His Word. And this incredible promise should be motivation enough. Of course it doesn’t mean I will become the best golfer because I ask for it. It means as you draw near to Christ in His Word, your prayers will be more like the mind of God, and He will answer. So step up in prayer.
Verses 9 and 10, He says this. “As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you. Abide in my love. 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.” Jesus equates His love for His people, His love for us, to that between Him and His Father. He is pressing that idea on the minds of His disciples as He is about to leave. If Jesus has loved us with the same love that is between He and His Father, an unmeasurable and infinite love like that between members of the Trinity, why would we not want to abide there? Our hearts are so deceitful that we really think there’s something better than that. He tells us how to abide in that love. And it’s not mystical, it’s not a feeling, it’s not an experience that you get on a church retreat. It is simple obedience. It is hearing what He has said in His Word and exercising your faith by taking that seriously, by trusting it. Like a son who wants to please his parents pays attention to their instructions, word for word.
The last one of these possessives, one of these things that Jesus calls His in verse 11, He says, “My joy.” And maybe it’s just me, but I think that many equate joy with happiness still, so let me give you a good definition of joy. It is a deep, abiding sense of contentment and delight, rooted in God’s grace, presence and promises. A deep, abiding sense of contentment and delight, rooted in God’s grace, presence and promises. When you become a Christian for the first time, you experience that joy because you know Jesus has overcome even your worst sins. You find contentment and delight in His promise to keep you to the end. As you abide in the Christian life, your joy increases. He says it is perfected, it is made whole, it is made full as you dive deeper into God and His Word, as you take hold of the promises He gives. As you abide, you feel your nearness to Christ and so find joy. That abiding sense of contentment and delight.
My three-year-old son, Shepherd, has started to be a little bit of a bully to his little brother who is nine months old. And it really is at this point classic older brother stuff, like a little push or a nudge, but Archie, because he’s nine months old and he’s started pulling up on things and he’s trying to stand, but he is very wobbly. And Shepherd will see him climbing up on something, give him a little nudge, and watch him fall. It’s actually awful.
But let me ask you, do you think I stop loving Shepherd because he does that to his brother? Do I lose my love for him? Of course not. Of course I don’t stop loving him. Now let me ask you a different question. Do you think when he does that, that he’s abiding in my love? No, he’s not. You see the distinction? When Shep does something like that, it proves to me that he needs more discipline. He hasn’t learned what he needs to learn for his own good. And we both feel the tension in the relationship that comes from the discipline that he receives. I may love him and he may love me, but the relationship isn’t healthy when that’s happening. He isn’t abiding in my love. And until he learns to obey, even in this specific way, there’s something holding back our relationship from deepening.
Can the same be said for you this morning in your relationship with God? What is holding you back from deepening your connection to the true vine? We take hold of our union with Christ by faith, so believe, step back, believing that God is working even in your trials. Step in, believing that Jesus Christ is where true life is found, and without Him we can do nothing. And step up, believing that your sin is killing you, believing that your sin is causing the unfruitfulness, and believing that all will be made right in that vine that is Christ Jesus. Let me pray for us. Heavenly Father, we can all relate. We all have thorns in our lives. Lord, we thank You for the truth of the Gospel, that You have taken those thorns on the cross, that You have taken those things that choke out our fruitfulness and have given us life. And so Lord, we pray that as we go from here, that You would help us – You would help us to abide, You would help us to pray, You would help us to be in Your Word, You would help us to be obedient and so find joy in Your love. It’s in the name of Jesus Christ we pray