Jesus is preparing us for his death. What we have in
Chapters 13 to 16 is one long conversation between Jesus and his disciples
about what life will be like after he is gone. They don’t fully understand everything
he says at this point. Jesus says he is going away. He says where he is going they
can’t follow. At this point, the disciples are emotional – they are confused –
but step by step, Jesus is preparing them for what lies ahead.
Of course, we know that Jesus will rise again after three
days; and yes, we know that even now Christ reigns in heaven at God’s right
hand. But it is significant that Jesus chooses this moment with his friends –
just before he leaves, just before the cross – to explain what it means for
them to remain in him. He could have said this after. But no, his words make the most sense here.
“Remain in me.”
It is remaining in Jesus in between the times. For them it
was the time between the cross and the resurrection. For us, it might be between
this Sunday and next weekend. The in-between times are the times when we are tempted,
when we will be intimidated; when we are alone and Jesus seems far away. Jesus
says to us during such times: “Remain in me, and I will remain in you.”
This is more than loyalty. This is intimacy with Jesus that
is tangible and real – that keeps us faithful to him and abiding in him. And
what we find in in John 15 is a clear command to pursue such intimacy, to
maintain such a connection with Jesus.
1. Remain in me
Jesus begins with his own connection with the Father.
I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener.
John
15:1
More than Father and Son, God is a gardener and Jesus is the
vine. This gardener is constantly cutting away at the branches of the vine.
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.
John
15:2
That sounds painful. Can’t God leave me alone to be fruitful
on my own? All I need are the raw ingredients (from Jesus, of course) but I
want to do this on my own. Jesus reminds us that God is a gardener who snips
away at every area of our lives. Snip
here. Snip, snip there. God only does
this to fruitful branches to make them even more fruitful.
That’s still painful, isn’t it? Yet Jesus says pruning can
be reassuring.
You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you.
John
15:3
Here is where the footnotes help us out. “The Greek (word) for prunes also means
cleans.” It is making a connection between pruning and cleansing – one done
by God in verse 2; the other done by Jesus’ word in verse 3 – a connection between
our salvation and sanctification.
In other words, pruning is not punishment. If Christ died to
take all your punishment on the cross, therefore, there is now no more
condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus (Romans 8:1). Pruning can’t be
punishment because there is no punishment left for those in Christ.
But if you are in Christ, you will be pruned. God will use every
painful circumstance, every painful situation to make you more and more like
Jesus. According to verse 3, he will keep pruning you because you have already
been pruned (or cleansed; same Greek word) in Jesus Christ. God sanctifies all
whom Jesus saves. He wants us to be fruitful.
“Endure hardship as discipline,” might sounds like something
my Mum in Malaysia would say, but it’s actually from Hebrews Chapter 12, verse
7: “God is treating you as sons.” Jesus is saying the same thing: Don’t fall
away. The hardest thing you could experience as a Christian is nothing less
than the pruning of God’s love. It means he loves you as a daughter. It means
he loves you as a son.
It is this specific context of pruning in which Jesus says,
“Remain in me.”
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.
John
15:4
Many read this as Jesus’ call to endurance in the face of
suffering. “Remain in me,” sounds like, “Endure hardship.” (In Cantonese, it’s “Teng Chui” or in Malay, “Tahan”). Later, Jesus warns that the
world will hate them (John 15:18), persecute them (John 15:20), even kill them
thinking they are doing a service to God (John 16:2). But that’s describing the
world’s hatred resulting in hardship. The difference is, here, Jesus is talking
about the Father’s love that leads us to fruitfulness.
Friends, the greatest temptation to fall away is never
hardship; it is in hardship that we learn dependence and humility. No, the
greatest temptation to fall away from Christ is our self-sufficiency. It’s
saying, “I can do this on my own. I don’t need to be pruned or cleansed.”
It’s when you understand that God wants you to holy, but you
respond, “I don’t want to be holy.” It’s when you understand that God wants you
to be fruitful, but you respond, “I don’t need the pressure.” It’s when you
finally get that God loves you, that he will never leave you in your sin; he
will keep turning you back to Jesus, but you respond, “I don’t want to change.”
That’s when we will be tempted to think life will be easier if we just took a
break from God. That’s when we will be tempted to think we might be more
effective, more fruitful if we just tried things our own way.
Self-sufficiency is the basis of self-deception. “No branch
can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear
fruit unless you remain in me.”
Older translations have “Abide in me.” That’s because
“remain” and “abide” are residential terms (Greek: “meno,” meaning to dwell,
where we get “mansion”). It’s where you live. It’s your address – where you
hang out and do your laundry – though it’s rare these days for people to live
in one spot. We move from place to place – for study, for work, for holiday. Some
of us do that with churches and relationships. We are mobile.
But Colossians 2:6 calls us to plant ourselves in Christ. To
stay put. “Just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live in him,
rooted and built up in him.” It is a picture of a tree, planted in one spot,
taking root and growing in fruitfulness. It is the call to abide in Christ. To remain
in him.
2. Remain in my
words
This picture of God as the gardener as Jesus as the vine is
not new. Have a look at Psalm 80:
You brought a vine out of Egypt;
You drove out the nations and planted it.
You cleared the ground for it,
And it took root and filled the land.
Psalm
80:8-9
In the Old Testament, the vine of God equates to the people
of God. It’s not something new – not to Jews or anyone who knew their bibles
(see Isaiah 5). That’s why Jesus tells a parable about vineyards and everyone
gets that he’s talking about them (and why they get offended in Matthew 20 and
21). Here in Psalm 80, the vine is transplanted out of slavery into a place God
prepares for his people. It’s talking about Israel. It’s talking about them.
But now Jesus says, “I am the true vine,” in verse 1. And in verse 5, he turns to his disciples
saying, “You are the branches.” What is he saying? Jesus is the true Israel and
his disciples are God’s true people. If you are connected to Jesus, you get in.
If you are disconnected from him, you get kicked out.
I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in
him, he will bear much fruit, apart from me, you can do nothing. If anyone does
not remain in me, he is like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such
branches are picked up, thrown in the fire and burned.
John
15:5-6
If ever there was a more chilling picture of death; it is verse
6: to be discarded, dried up, picked up, thrown into fire and burned. It is a
picture of death, judgement, rejection, condemnation; it is a picture of Hell. And
yet, the point is: the branch was dead the moment it detached itself from the
vine.
It’s like the fresh food section at Sainsburys. You look for
the juiciest fruit and the freshest veg but what you are looking at are dead
things. They were dead the moment they were plucked. They were dead the moment
they were detached from the source of life. That’s Jesus’ point. Dead things
don’t look dead. Disconnecting from Jesus might not seem a big deal now but it
is. You are detaching yourself from the source of life.
Ephesians 2 says we were dead in the sins in which we used
to live. Death is not a destination but a direction in life. When we walk away
from God, when we live as if we were God, the bible calls us the walking dead
(Some of us are thinking: zombies, others are thinking: condemned criminals.
The walking dead are those who are unresponsive to God, whose senses are dead
to his love). The same passage from Ephesians goes on to tell us how God made
us alive in Christ while we were still dead in our sins. He raised us up with
him and seated us with him in the heavenly realms. Finally, he created good
works for us as Christians to walk in. We have a new direction in life, no
longer living for ourselves but living in obedience to his will.
If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish,
and it will be given you. This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much
fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples.
John
15:7-8
Life in Jesus comes from obedience to Jesus. To have Jesus’
words remain in us means more than memorising bible verses. It is talking about
obedience to his commands. It is walking according to his will. This is why we
can ask whatever we wish and it will be given us. We are praying in accordance with
God’s will.
Having said that, it is his word that enables us to know his
will. Earlier, we saw how Jesus cleansed his disciples through the word spoken to them (verse 3). In verse 25,
Jesus says, “All this I have spoken
while still with you.” That is, Jesus’ commands were entrusted to his disciples
as his spoken word, passed down to us
in his written word, the bible.
So to have Jesus’ words remain in us does mean more than memorising
the words of the bible because it means obeying words of the bible (in which
case, memorising helps!). Revelation 1:3 says, “Blessed is the one who reads
the words of this prophecy, and blessed are those who hear it and take to heart
what is written in it, because the time is near.” The blessing is for those who
take his words to heart, for those who obey his commands.
3. Remain in my
love
As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love.
If you obey my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have obeyed by
Father’s commands and remain in his love. I have told you this so that my joy
may be in you and that your joy may be complete.
John
15:9-11
What does it mean to remain in Christ, the true vine? What
does it mean to pursue intimacy with God? To experience the reality of his
love?
The answer is: Obedience. Verse 10: If you obey my commands,
you will remain in my love. What it means to remain, to have his word remain
and to remain in his love is simply to obey his commands.
Jesus connects obedience with love (verse 10); obedience
with joy (verse 11). Yet if we are honest, obedience disconnects us from God.
Being told to do stuff doesn’t sound loving. Obedience does not overwhelm me
with emotion. Some of us were searching for that mystical connection, that
experience that lifts our spirits to the heavens. Some of us would rather
retreat to the mountains to meditate and be alone with God. That’s what we
thought it meant to remain in him, to remain in his love.
But no, Jesus says it’s obedience. Why? Because obedience to
his Father’s commands is why Jesus died on the cross. Obedience is the key to
understanding his love.
My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love
has no-one than this; that he lay down his life for his friends. You are my
friends if you do what I command. I no longer call you servants, because a
servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you
friends, for everything that I learned from the Father I have made known to
you.
John
15:12-15
The command is to love like Jesus, to love our brothers and
sisters in Jesus and to love sacrificially as Jesus loved us: “Greater love has
no-one than this: that he lay down his life for his friends”. Distilling down
further, Jesus is telling us to love in such a way that it points others to his
love. It is love that points to the gospel as the ultimate display of God’s
love for us in Christ.
Twice, Jesus says to us, “As I have loved you… as I have
loved you.” The first time he says this in verse 9, he is demonstrating the
Father’s love. “As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you.” The second
time in verse 12, we are demonstrating Jesus’ love. “Love each other as I have
loved you.” This is an upward, directing love. It is love that points to a
greater love – the greatest love, in fact, according to verse 13 – that Christ
demonstrated on the cross.
Two implications of this command. Firstly, it’s helpful. My
love for my brothers and sisters will always, always be a subset of Christ’s
love for them. It doesn’t mean I can get away with being stingy with my love.
It’s not an excuse for being choosy with whom I love. But what makes this so
helpful is the fact that I’m always pointing back to his love, his sacrifice
and his obedience on the cross.
But secondly, it’s humbling. Jesus calls us his friends. It’s
one thing to be humbled by a boss who puts you in your place by ordering you
around and keeps in the dark about the details but this is different kind of
humbling. Jesus commands us to do nothing that he himself has not already done.
Jesus lets us in on the Father’s business, indeed, everything he learned from
his Father he makes known to us as his friends. Meaning: Jesus wants us to be just
like him, to work alongside him and to enjoy the same benefits he has received from
obeying his Fathers commands.
You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you to go and bear
fruit – fruit that will last. Then the Father will give you whatever you ask in
my name. This is my command: Love one another.
John
15:16-17
Abide with me
“Abide with me” is a hymn commonly sung by soldiers in the
trenches during the First World War. Looking at the lyrics, you can understand
why. It’s a prayer for God to be near us, to stay with us in times of darkness
and helplessness.
Abide
with me; fast falls the eventide;
The
darkness deepens; Lord with me abide.
When
other helpers fail and comforts flee,
Help
of the helpless, O abide with me.
Friends, what we have in John 15 is Jesus saying these words
to us. The Lord was just moments away from facing his own darkness and Hell. In
his last few moments with his friends, he says to them, “Remain in me.” The
difference is he says this not for his own comfort but for ours. Jesus’ main
concern is that we remain in him.
If you are in the trenches now, you need to know that Jesus
is right there with you. He hasn’t moved away. He is and has always been by
your side. The question is: Are you abiding in him? Is his word living inside
of you? And are you abiding in his love?
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.
John 15:4
John 15:4
