A Word in Season: Abiding in Christ (John 15:4)

Are you growing and productive? Are you a fruitful person? For so many of us, personal development is such a big deal, something that's so significant in our world. And yet the problem is that you can't really grow unless you're alive.

And there's no real spiritual development, no real spiritual progress, unless there is first life. And that life is found only in the Lord Jesus Christ. And that life continues and develops and produces fruit when we are close to the Lord Jesus Christ.

Abiding in Christ as the Source of Spiritual Life

That's why in John's Gospel in chapter 15 and verse 4, he urged his disciples, in the light of the fact that he would soon lay down his life for them, rise again from the dead and ascend to the right hand of his heavenly Father, abide in me and I in you.

As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me. It's the language of the most intimate and substantial union. It's the language of ingrafting, of taking something that was first dead and then implanting it into that which is alive, bringing the dead branch and putting it into the living vine.

And as the life that is in the vine then spreads out into the branch, that branch now living begins to bear fruit. And Christ is urging then those who know him to stay close to him, to enjoy communion with him, to dwell upon him as he is made known in the word of God, to call upon his spirit to help us to understand him, to flee from the sins that would distance us from him, to delight ourselves in all those ordinances, the things that God has appointed by which we can truly know him in Jesus Christ.

Because unless we're walking closely with God in Christ, unless we're abiding in the Saviour, unless that life that is in him is flowing into and through us and unless we are cultivating that and depending upon that and delighting in that, we will not bear fruit.

Why Closeness to Christ Produces Fruit

One of the reasons why we are so often so cold and so slow and so dull in spiritual things is because we are not as close to the Lord Jesus Christ as we might be. If you walked into a dark and a cold room and the cold and the damp began to bite into your bones and there was a fire in the hearth, wouldn't you rush over to the fire and you'd hold your hands out and perhaps you'd stretch your feet out?

You would be near the source of heat, near the source of light. That's what would brighten you, that's what would stimulate you, that's what would enliven you. Well, how much more with the Lord Jesus Christ, the light of the world, how much more with him who is life itself.

We need to devote ourselves to the Lord Jesus Christ. We need constantly to cling to him and to draw near to him. Unless the branch abides in the vine, it cannot bear fruit of itself. We have no productive qualities of our own.

Fruitfulness Through Union with Christ

We'll never make progress, we'll never make any kind of advance. We cannot unless we are abiding in the Lord Jesus Christ. And here he is inviting us, calling us, drawing us, urging us, earnestly pleading.

I am the vine, he goes on to say. You are the branches. He who abides in me and I in him bears much fruit, for without me you can do nothing. But in Christ there is life, there is health, there is strength.

In Christ there is the vitality that produces in us genuine fruit. And it's not self-serving. It's not just so that we can say, look at me, see how I am, see what I can do. It's not just that we might satisfy ourselves, but it is that delighting ourselves in God, we may bring forth the fruit of the Spirit, we might delight the God who has saved us and we might be able to serve him and others as his beloved son, the Lord Jesus Christ did.

Life in Christ by Faith

So if we would be fruitful, we need life. And that life is in Christ. And in coming to him and in clinging to him and in being engrafted into him by faith so we become lively and fruitful as God's people.