Jesus and His disciples just finished the Passover
meal. Soon He would be betrayed by Judas
and arrested and by the next morning, crucified. But He has not yet finished giving His final
words to His own. And so He tells them:
“I am the true vine and my Father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch in me that bears no
fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit He prunes, so that it will be
even more fruitful. You are already
clean because of the word I have spoken to you.
Remain in me, and I will remain in you.
No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain
in me.”
Two things came to mind by way of illustration that brought
these verses home to me. The first is
roses.
I love roses. Not
hothouse roses like the gorgeous, but scentless ones you get at a florist for
Valentine’s Day. I love the ones you
grow yourself. They may not be as big
and beautiful as the hothouse ones, but you can’t beat their fragrance. It’s heady, and sweet, and delicious!
I heard that rose bushes can be hard to grow, but I’ve
really wanted to try my hand at growing one, so I bought a small one. I transplanted it right away into a bigger
plot, settled it in a sunny spot, fertilized the soil and waited to see what
would happen. I was rewarded with two
lovely little, very fragrant, yellow roses.
Eureka!
Then I read in an online article that cutting your roses to display
them in a vase would actually increase the production of your plant. I didn’t know whether this was true or not,
but I really wanted the fragrance of those roses where I could enjoy them, so I
cut those two lonely little flowers and put them in a small vase in my
office. They left my bush bereft and
rose-less. But my office smelled lovely!
Yesterday when I was watering my plant I noticed a lot of
new growth and 4 (Yes! Four!) new rose buds
in various stages of maturity. Very
exciting! I decided that this time
around I would encourage new growth by cutting off perfectly good, but non-rose
bearing leaves, so that the new leaf growth that was all over the plant could
be encouraged to produce even more. Time
will tell how my plant will react, but if Jesus is right, (and when isn’t He?)
then my pruning should produce even more fruit – or roses in this case.
Speaking spiritually now, if Jesus is the vine into which
our lives have been planted by faith, then what does our fruit look like?
How about the fruit of righteousness, by which I mean a right
relationship with God through faith in Jesus, as well as right or godly living,
which means living in a way that honors and glorifies Him.
Or the fruit of the Spirit, which is godly character, as
recorded for us in Galatians 5:22:
“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness,
goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self control.”
The fruit Jesus speaks of could refer to people who come to
faith through our witness, like the Ethiopian eunuch who believed in Jesus
through the witness of Phillip the evangelist in Acts 8; or the Roman Centurion
Cornelius who responded to the gospel as Peter preached it in Acts 10.
It could be the fruit of obedience which Jesus talks about
in John 14 that results from our love for Him, recorded in verse 15:
“If you love me, you will obey what I command.”
Or maybe it could refer to the spiritual fruit that is borne
in the church as we use our gifts to minister God’s grace to others for His
glory, the kind Peter speaks of in I Peter 4:10:
“Each one should use whatever gift he has received to serve others,
faithfully administering God’s grace in its various forms. . . . so that in all
things God may be praised through Jesus Christ.”
Jesus, who knows a lot more about vines than I know about
roses, says in John 15 that if we’re going to produce this kind of fruit, we
can’t do it without abiding in Him, the way vines abide – or are connected continually
- to the life giving properties of the vine.
More about that in a minute.
Jesus said that every branch that does bear fruit He prunes
to produce even more fruit. I’m not sure
that I really like that concept. Since my
rose bush is incapable of feeling the pain of snipping off branches or flowers,
I don’t feel bad doing it. I know that
ultimately it is going to be for the good of the plant because it will increase
the probability of more roses. I’m not
so sure I like the idea of Jesus pruning ME so that I will bear more
fruit.
And what kind of pruning is He talking about here? Since I am a person and not a plant, I have a
feeling that in order to increase my fruit bearing, pruning could hurt! If Jesus’ goal is to increase the fruit of
righteous living in me, or produce greater love or patience, or encourage me to
obey in big things as well as small, then He just might present me
opportunities to grow that I might not enjoy so much.
Like the time I behaved in a very unChristlike way, bearing
no godly fruit at all and hurting others, and then had to go back and confess
and ask forgiveness. That was a lesson
in the trait of humility I’d just as soon have skipped! I can tell you, that pruning HURT!
Or there was the experience of having all of our closest
family members relocate to opposite parts of the country within a month of one
another at the same time that we moved to another county. It was like cutting off the good leaves so
the new growth could flourish. I had to
learn then that I was relying too much on my family and not enough on the Lord
and it was stunting my growth. That
pruning was not especially fun either, but it surely did result in a great
spiritual growth spurt!
I could also tell of countless relationships, at work and at
church, with people I didn’t especially like or work well with that the Lord
used to produce a greater yield of patience, and love, and kindness. I would rather have taken the easy way and just
avoided those people altogether – but they were God’s pruning tools and they
worked! Result: more fruit.
If you are currently bearing spiritual fruit, then get ready
– pruning will surely follow! Jesus says
so. The question is, will we submit to
the pruning process?
In speaking of the Lord’s discipline, the author of the book
of Hebrews, chapter 12, verse 11 says this:
“No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on however, it produces a harvest of
righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it.”
The Lord’s discipline, or pruning, isn’t pleasant when it is
happening, but later, it produces a greater yield – not just a single plant but
a whole spiritual harvest of righteous living and peace. We only benefit from the pruning if we yield
to it.
The other word that strikes me from these words Jesus spoke
to His disciples is the word “remain”, or “abide” as it’s sometimes also
translated. He said:
“Remain (abide) in me, and I will remain (abide) in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must
remain(abide) in the vine. Neither can
you bear fruit unless you remain (abide) in me.”
When I watered my rose bush this morning I noticed
something. All those perfectly good and
healthy branches I cut off yesterday were shriveled up and dead. There was no way in the world they would ever
produce fruit now that they were cut off from their source of nourishment and
life.
If you’ve read my most recent blogs you know that I was
pretty much feeling that way recently. I
was busy working FOR Jesus, but not really remaining close to Him. Since He’s the source of my abundant spiritual
life and nourishment, and I wasn’t staying close, I was spiritually dry, and
tired. I was having a hard time hearing
Him and an even harder time acting like Him.
And what about the “fruit” I was producing? I’ll bet it was stingy instead of
abundant. A small yield when it could
have been a harvest.
Apart from my out of state birth, and Jim’s stint in the
army, we have lived all of our lives here in New Jersey. A few years ago now when housing prices were
high, we bought a small condo in Florida to be near my mom, so when we visited her
we could stay there. We thought maybe we’d
also retire there at some point. Well,
not long after, the real estate market tanked, and my mom died, and we had
second thoughts. Only now we can’t sell
at the price we paid. We spend so little
time there that native Floridians probably wouldn’t even call us “snow
birds”, those residents who travel south during the winter months to enjoy the
warmth of Florida, and then go back home in the spring. Maybe we’d qualify as “occasional snow birds”.
The condo in Florida is ours. We own it.
However, we don’t abide there, we abide here in New Jersey. Since we spend the majority of our time abiding
here in New Jersey, we enjoy the “fruit” of neighborliness.
We know our neighbors by name. In the winter, we plow some of their
driveways, just because we’re neighbors.
We take in their mail when they’re away, and they take in ours. We occasionally share cakes or ethnic
dishes. We invite one another in. If someone had an emergency, they know they
could call us.
Here in NJ, we have church ties and involvement in ministry. These allow us opportunity to bear spiritual
fruit in service and the fruit of godly character as we live alongside
believers and unbelievers.
Since we don’t abide in Florida, we know few of our
neighbors. We don’t know the renters
from the residents. It’s always a pain
to try and get work done when we’re not there because we have no one to rely on
the way we do here in New Jersey. We
attend a church but it isn’t our church home.
We don’t know the pastor and he doesn’t know us. We don’t participate in ministry or attend
church functions. Since we don’t abide in
Florida, we bear no real “fruit”, the way we do in NJ.
If you and I want to bear real, lasting spiritual fruit,
then we need to have more than just an occasional “snow bird” relationship with
Jesus. We have to abide and remain in
Him. We have to spend more than 5
minutes with Him on the fly. We need to
stay close, to spend time in His Word, listening to Him as He speaks to us
through it. We have to talk to Him in
prayer. We have to understand that
staying plugged in to Him, and remaining there, because He is the source of our
spiritual life and power and fruitfulness is critical to fruitbearing. The further we drift, the less likely we are
to produce spiritual fruit.
Jesus actually says, “Neither
can you bear fruit UNLESS you remain in me.”
So let me ask you, are you just an occasional snow bird as
far as abiding in Jesus in concerned? How
much of your life are you spending abiding in Jesus? Have you settled down and made yourself at
home with Him or are you an infrequent visitor?
How closely are you abiding?
Close enough to hear Him when He speaks through His Word? Close enough to recognize pruning so that you
can submit to it?
Close enough so that you LONG to bear MORE FRUIT, even when
it hurts?
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