The Believer Abiding in Christ
Tom Shrader walks through John 15:1-11, unpacking Jesus's vine-and-branches metaphor to show that abiding in Christ means remaining in constant, dependent communion with Him rather than striving to produce spiritual fruit on one's own. He clarifies that Jesus is not teaching about how one becomes a Christian, but about how a believer lives a productive, fruitful life through union with Christ and preoccupation with God. Drawing on passages from John 10, Romans 8, and Galatians 5, Shrader connects the fruit of the vine to the fruit of the Spirit, and closes by grounding Christian joy in the spiritual reality of God's love rather than in outward circumstance.
“You are not called to produce any fruit; you simply bear fruit that God does in your life.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: John: The Essence of Life (2007)
Recorded: 2007 at East Valley Bible Church
Duration: 50 min
Themes: abiding in christ, spiritual fruit, joy, dependence on god, communion with god, fruitfulness, love, remaining in christ, feeling spiritually dry, new believer, struggling with self-reliance, young adult, feeling unfruitful, seeking deeper faith, discouraged christian, striving in own strength
Scripture: John 15:1-11, John 10:24-29, John 14:13, John 14:15, John 14:21, John 13:34, John 1:9, John 6:32, Romans 8:35-39, 2 Corinthians 5:17, Ephesians 2:10, Matthew 6:24-33, Galatians 5, 1 Peter 1:23, 1 John 5:14, Psalm 66:18, James 4:3, Mark 11:24, Luke 18:1
Theological Themes: union with christ, sanctification, fruit of the spirit, abiding, becoming holy, spiritual growth, divine love, vine and branches
Full Transcript
Introduction to John 15:1–11
Turn in your Bibles, please, to John chapter 15. We are going to look today at the first eleven verses. I want to spend some time on the front end getting the context set up, and then we will work our way through the passage. Let's read it together, get it fresh in our minds, and then do some introductory work.
Jesus is speaking. John 15, verses 1–11: "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 bears fruit He prunes it, so that it may bear more fruit. You are already clean because of the word which I have spoken to you. Abide in me and I in you. Because the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, so neither can you unless you abide in me. I am the vine and you are the branches. He who abides in me and I in him, he bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing. If anyone does not abide in me, he is thrown away as a branch and dries up. And they gather them and cast them into the fire and they are burned. If you abide in me and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish and it will be done for you. My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples. Just as the Father has loved me, I also love 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, so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be made full."
The Key Thought: Abiding in Christ
A couple of observations as we start. The key thought of this passage is there in verse 4: "Abide in me and I in you." A.W. Pink, speaking of verses 4 and 5, writes this: "Now in all study of the Word, this should be the starting point, the acknowledgement of our real oneness with Christ and our cleanness in Him by His Word." The main thought is us abiding in Him and Him abiding in us — that apart from Him we cannot bear fruit, but if we abide in Him we will bear fruit.
Verse 5 states it most forcefully: apart from Him we can do absolutely nothing. Verse 6 states it from the negative side — if one does not abide in Him, he is thrown away as a branch, dries up, and is cast into the fire. So the key thought in this passage is Jesus as the vine, we as the branches, and Jesus producing fruit in our lives as we abide in Him.
The key word in these eleven verses is "abide." It appears nine times. It carries the idea of dwelling, resting, or remaining in. Jesus is not talking here primarily about salvation — when Jesus talks about salvation, He does not say "abide in me," He says "come to me." He is speaking to people who have already come to Him. He is not talking about how we might find salvation or eternal life; He is talking about how we now live a productive life in Him.
What It Means to Abide
The word "abide" carries the idea of recognizing the work of Christ on the cross. Being in Christ means being the recipient of His grace, His love, and His mercy. Based on Christ's finished work on the cross, we can now abide in Him and have fellowship with Him.
Some years ago I was preparing a talk on fellowship — specifically, one-another fellowship — and I turned to the sermons of Charles Spurgeon on that topic. There were a great many of them, and not one spoke of horizontal relationship. Not one sermon addressed our fellowship with one another. The entire emphasis of every sermon on fellowship was the idea of our fellowship, oneness, and unity with God through Christ. That is what this word "abide" means.
Abiding demonstrates our dependency on Him — that we are residing in Him. Apart from Him, what can we do? Absolutely nothing. We are utterly dependent upon Him to produce anything in our lives.
Preoccupied with God
Another way to capture this idea of abiding is to say that we become preoccupied with God — that He becomes preeminent in our thought process. As we are driving to work and our mind begins to drift, though it may land on other things, it regularly comes back to God: who He is, His love for us, His forgiveness, His grace, and His mercy. That preoccupation supersedes everything else in our lives. It is more dominant in our thinking than work, school, athletics, exercise, funding retirement, or finding a boyfriend, girlfriend, or spouse.
It does not mean we have no other thoughts. The other day I discovered some very disturbing news: the number one prospect for high school football in the state of Iowa for the class of 2008 had decided to go to Nebraska. That is not good news. So I am not saying we never think about other things — but the point is, nothing gets bigger than this. Our minds are to be preoccupied with God above all else. That is the idea of abiding.
Today's message is going to be somewhat philosophical and cerebral. We are going to come at the same truth over and over again from slightly different angles, because it is essential that we truly grasp what it means to abide in Christ.
Abiding in Christ: Union, Dependence, and Preoccupation
The core of what it means to abide in Him is this idea of union with Him, dependence upon Him, and preoccupation with Him. I was once teaching something about life and prioritizing things in order, and I said, let me give you an example of my own life. My number one priority should be God and my relationship with Him, then Susan and my relationship with her, then my girls and my relationship with them — and now I would add their husbands and their kids — and then church and work and so on down the list.
A man came up afterward and said, "I think you do a disservice when you teach it that way." I told him I was coachable and asked what he thought. He said he was afraid that when you place God at number one and then list everything else beneath it, you create the impression that God is separate from everything else — that once you're done with the "God thing," you move on to the Susan thing, the kids thing, the church thing. He said he didn't think that was right.
His point was that it's not that God is at number one on a list — it's that God is number one within number one, number one within number two, number one within number three. In my relationship at work, God is number one. That is a wonderful insight: that God is preeminent in everything we do, that we are preoccupied with Him and who He is. So our key thought is that we are to abide in Him and He in us, and the key word is abide.
Familiar Territory: Repetition as Emphasis
Before we get started, there is some familiar territory worth noting. In chapter 15, verse 7, Jesus says, "If you abide in Me and My words abide in you, ask whatever you wish and it will be done for you." That sounds very similar to chapter 14, verse 13: "Whatever you ask in My name, I will do for you." In verse 10, He says, "If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love." Compare that to chapter 14, verse 15: "If you love Me, you will keep My commandments." And again in verse 21, He says that whoever keeps His commandments is the one who loves Him.
Then in verse 12 of chapter 15 — which we will get to next time — He says, "This is My commandment, that you love one another just as I loved you." That is virtually identical to chapter 13, verse 34: "A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, even as I love you, that you also love one another." When we see that kind of repetition, I think God is making absolutely certain that we get the point. So we should not shy away from this familiar territory. If as we go through this you find yourself thinking, "This sounds really familiar," the answer is yes — you heard it about three weeks ago.
Setting the Scene: From the Upper Room to the Vineyard
Let's go back to chapter 14, the last two verses. Verse 30: "I will not speak much more with you, for the ruler of the world is coming, and he has nothing in Me; but so that the world may know that I love the Father, I do exactly as the Father commanded Me." And then comes the phrase, "Get up, let us go from here."
John chapters 14 through 17 are known as the Upper Room Discourse. There is some disagreement among commentators here, but it seems reasonable that at this point they got up and left, and began walking. They were likely heading toward Gethsemane, and it would not be at all unlikely for them to be walking by or through vineyards along the way. Jesus, as He does regularly throughout His earthly ministry, takes something right at hand — bread, fish, water — and turns it into a teaching moment. So He takes the image of the vine, the branches, and the grapes, and uses it to communicate a powerful truth.
The True Vine: Not How to Become a Christian, But How to Live as One
This point is really important. In this discussion, Jesus is not telling us what it means to become a Christian or how one becomes a Christian. He is talking about how one lives a productive Christian life. Not how we come into the family of God, but now that we are in the family of God, how do we live in such a way that God is pleased?
In verse 1, Jesus says He is the vine — but He adds the word "true." He does not simply say "I am the vine." He says "I am the true vine." Not necessarily as a contrast to something false, but as a contrast to pictures that had come before. In chapter 1, verse 9 of John's Gospel, He says He is the true light. In chapter 6, verse 32, He says He is the true bread, and that if you eat from Him you will never hunger again. Just as God fed the nation of Israel in the wilderness through manna — a picture of how God would provide for and care for His people — Jesus is saying: I am that true bread. Just as John the Baptist came and people asked whether he was the Messiah, and he said no, he was just a glimmer, a light pointing toward the real thing — Jesus is the true light. He is the one who comes and shows us the truth. He is the truth.
The Vine Dresser
The Father is the vine dresser. I should be honest with you: I do not know a thing about farming, raising sheep or cattle, or agriculture in general — other than that I like to eat. Generally I like to eat things that had parents. I am not a big fruit and vegetable person. So I have had to read up on this from people who actually know what they are talking about. The word translated "vine dresser" can also be rendered "cultivator" or even "gardener," though we do not typically think of that word in connection with a vineyard — even though it would be appropriate.
The Vine, the Dresser, and the Branches
The vine dresser is the one who comes along and protects the vine, cleans it, and cares for it. My grandmother had in her backyard a wonderful cherry tree, a great apple tree, and a magnificent garden. You would go and pick the corn, chuck it, and bring it in, and she would cook it up. You would take the peas and shell them, along with the green beans and the carrots — she had all of it. Off to the side, down by the garage, there was a grapevine with grapes on it, and underneath it was rhubarb. You would pick the rhubarb, bring it in, cut it, and give it to her, and the next time you saw it, it was in the form of a pie — and it was really good.
From spending time down there, I noticed that things would happen to the grapevine. You would get insects, you would see cobwebs, and you would see moss getting in there. Periodically you had to go in and literally clean it off. You had to clean the vine, cut it back, prune it. That is what the vine dresser did — to protect the vine, to watch it, to make sure it was in the best possible conditions to succeed. By succeed, we mean to bear fruit. The vine dresser was faithful to that task and did what was necessary for it.
So Jesus gives us the background: "I am the true vine, and My Father is the vine dresser." Then in verse 5 He says we are the branches. The "we" here — I should be careful — He is speaking to the eleven. At this point Judas is gone. So Jesus is the vine, the Father is the vine dresser, and you, me, we, us — we are the branches.
What John 15:2 and 15:6 Do Not Mean
Verses 2 and 6 present a little bit of a challenge to interpret. It may be easier to tell you what they do not mean than to tell you exactly what they do mean. Verse 2 says, "Every branch in Me that does not bear fruit, He takes away, and every branch that bears fruit, He prunes so that it may bear more fruit." Then verse 6 says, "If anyone does not abide in Me, he is thrown away. As the branch dries up, they gather them, they cast them into the fire, and they are burned."
What Jesus is not teaching here is that there are people who are Christians, who ultimately do not respond or bear fruit, and are therefore lost. He is not teaching that I can be in the family of God one minute and out the next. How do we know that? Because the balance of Scripture would be contrary to that interpretation.
Eternal Security in John 10
Turn to the left to John chapter 10. In verse 24, the Jews gathered around Him and said, "How long will you keep us in suspense? If you are the Christ, if you are the Messiah, tell us plainly." He responds, and among the points He makes is this one bearing on eternal security and the question of whether I can lose my salvation. He says, "I told you, you do not believe." Why? Verse 26: "You are not My sheep." Verse 27: "My sheep hear My voice, I know them," and the way He knows they are His sheep is that they follow Him.
Then He says, "I give eternal life to them, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of My hand. My Father who has given them to Me is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father's hand." So we ask the question — and it is not designed to be a trick question, but to give us some illumination — when does eternal life end? The answer is never. If He has given us eternal life, can we lose that life? No.
Paul writes this way in Romans chapter 8: "What can separate us from the love of Christ?" — that is, Christ's love for us. He then lists a whole series of things: tribulation, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, peril, sword. His conclusion is, "In all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing will be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord." Can you lose your salvation? No. Jesus is clearly not teaching that in John 15.
Some of the most unhappy Christians I meet are the ones who do not believe in eternal security. There is no joy there. They are in the kingdom, out of the kingdom, in the kingdom, out of the kingdom, all within the course of one service, really. That all flows from a misunderstanding of how we got into this relationship to begin with. We got into this relationship based on God's grace, His love, and His mercy — not on anything we did.
Possible Interpretations of the Unfruitful Branch
Back to John 15. Some would say that what Jesus is teaching here is that there are people who appear to be Christians, just as I am told that on a vine there are what are called sucker sprouts or sucker branches that look very much like they are going to produce grapes. You get all excited about them, and they do not. So He could be talking about that. Judas had already left the group by this point, though that teaching could perhaps be illustrated by him — everyone sitting around with Judas would likely have thought he was one of the true believing disciples, and obviously he was not.
Or Jesus could simply be teaching here that there is a time when, as verse 2 says, every branch that does not bear fruit He takes away. Some of the translations —
The Work of the Vinedresser
The word "lifts up" carries the idea of taking a branch and lifting it up, cutting off the unproductive parts and cleaning it — getting rid of the insects and all the elements that go with it — so that it can be productive again. Then there is the idea of pruning. Pruning isn't cutting off; it's cutting back. Outside my office window there is a large bush. It grows, and then when they cut it back, it grows quickly again, and this time of year they cut the thing down entirely. The first year they did that I thought it would never grow back, but not only does it grow back — it grows back quicker and healthier. That is the pruning process.
Ray Stedman writes: "Pruning is a drastic process. Jesus is clearly teaching here that this is what the Father will do in our lives to make us bear more fruit. He'll drastically cut back our lives in the cleansing process. In a vineyard, pruning also removes dirt and cobwebs and dried leaves and fungus that are collected." According to our Lord, in the believer this is done by "the word that I have spoken to you." Peter writes in 1 Peter chapter 1 verse 23, "For you've been born again, not of the seed which is perishable, but imperishable, that is through the living and enduring word of God." God prunes us through His word.
Stedman continues: "Most of us have had some of this experience. Sorrow, disappointment, failure, a sense of weakness, or some passing experience of life has left us shocked and hurt and feeling cast off and rejected. Yet here we are encouraged to remind ourselves that this is the work of a loving Father." He does this so that we may bear — look at the phrase in verse 2 — not just fruit, but *more* fruit. And in verse 5, He wants us to bear *much* fruit. He will take us through this pruning process, and He will take us to the word of God.
What Is the Fruit?
A fair question in putting this together is: what exactly is the fruit? If I am to be a fruit inspector in my own life, what am I looking for? What was interesting to me in my study is that commentator after commentator after commentator suggested that the fruit here is the fruit we find in Galatians chapter 5 — the fruit of the Spirit. The reason I love that is because it is exactly what we spent eleven weeks talking about. Jesus is not talking about some specific religious activity here. He is talking about love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control. He is talking about a life that is transformed through the indwelling Holy Spirit.
Abiding Versus Being in Christ
Verse 4: "Abide in Me, and I in you." Jesus never commands us to *be* in Him — you have to listen closely here. He does exhort us to *abide* in Him. These are very similar phrases, but they are drastically different. The idea of being in Christ refers to our salvation. So 2 Corinthians chapter 5 verse 17: "If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature." Ephesians chapter 2 verse 10: "For we are His workmanship created in Christ Jesus." We are never commanded to be in Christ; we are commanded to abide in Christ.
The word "abide" carries with it the idea of living, residing, dwelling, remaining. Dr. Campbell writes: "The word abide calls us to vigilance lest any time the experiential realization of our union with Christ would be interrupted." He is not suggesting that our union with Christ is destroyed. What he is talking about is the experience of that union — the word I would use is our *communion* with Him.
Serving One Master
Turn to Matthew chapter 6. Jesus is speaking again, this time in the Sermon on the Mount. Matthew chapter 6 verse 24: "No one can serve two masters; hate one, love the other." He is talking about us. He is talking about God. You cannot serve both God and the world. And this is always important to keep in mind: you are never the lord — you are always the servant, always serving someone or something.
Then He gives an illustration: "For this reason I say to you, do not worry about your life, what you are going to eat or what you will drink, or your body, what you will put on it. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air. They do not sow nor reap nor gather into barns, yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not worth much more than they?" That is a rhetorical question, and only in recent times would anyone want to debate it. You are, just for your own peace of mind, worth much more than a bird.
"Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to your life?" That may be a life verse for some of you. You can worry and worry and worry — it is not going to make things any better, it is not going to change anything, and it is not going to extend your life. "And why are you worried about clothing? Look at the lilies of the field. They do not toil nor spin, yet I say to you, not even Solomon in all his glory could clothe himself like one of these. But if God clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow thrown into the fire, will He not much more clothe you, you of little faith?" Do not worry then, saying, what —
Seeking First His Kingdom
"Will we eat, or what will we drink, or what will we wear?" In Matthew 6:32, Jesus says, "For the Gentiles eagerly seek all these things, for your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things." When you start to worry about these things of life — not just those three of food, clothing, and covering, but all these things — when they have replaced God in your priority list of thinking, you are thinking like a lost person. But that brings us directly to what it means to abide in Christ. Matthew 6:33 gives us the answer: "Seek first His kingdom and His righteousness." My mind is driven not by my need, what I want, and what I think, but by what God wants for me.
A.W. Pink writes this: "To abide in Christ signifies the constant occupation of the heart with Him. A daily active faith in Him which, so to speak, maintains the dependency of the branch upon the vine and the circulation of life and fatness of the vine in the branches." Jesus says in John 15: I want you to abide in Me. I am the vine, you are the branches. Just as the branch is a part of the vine, you are a part of Me. Stay close to Me, follow Me, do what the Word says, abide in Me — seek communion with Me above everything else.
You Bear Fruit; You Do Not Produce It
So consider this: if you are dry spiritually or barren today, if there is an emptiness there, the answer is that you are not abiding in Him. Here is where this gets particularly interesting. When people find themselves dry and barren, what most will do at that point is go and try to produce a bunch of fruit. If I am dry, my instinct is to intensify my activity. But you do not produce fruit. The vine produces the fruit. You simply bear it. It is simply hanging on you. You did not do anything to get it there.
Remember the bumper sticker we wanted to print up a few years ago? "Fruit happens." You are never going to walk by a vineyard and hear those grapes straining to produce themselves. It just happens. That is the whole point. My human instinct is to want to produce fruit, to want to do something. But what He is saying is this: I want you to be immersed with thoughts of Me. I want you to be swept away with who I am. I want you to abide in Me. I am the vine. You are the branches. He who abides in Me and I in him, he will bear much fruit. But apart from Me, there is not anything you are going to be able to do.
Dr. John Gill writes this: "No wonder we fail so often. Without me, you can do nothing — nothing that is of spiritual good. No, not anything at all. Not a little thing or a great thing, an easy thing or a difficult thing. You cannot think a good thought or speak a good word or do a good action. Neither can you begin one, nor when one has begun can you continue it or perfect it." You are impotent in this whole process. You are the branch. He produces the fruit. Your privilege, your responsibility, and your calling is to abide in Him — to remain in Him, to be in right relationship with Him.
The Word as the Tool of Abiding
He tells us one of the great tools in that relationship in verse 7: "If you abide in Me and My words abide in you." When I am preoccupied with thoughts of God and who He is, I am driven to His Word. And when I get to His Word, I am shown how it can guide me, direct me, lead me, and discipline me — and take a world that looks very confusing and help me see that God is not stumped as He looks at the United States of America in April of 2007. The world is black and white to Him because He sees it clearly as black and white. There is right and wrong, good and bad, evil, things we should strive for, and things we should avoid. How do I know that? I know it when I abide in Him, when I abide in His Word, when that union with Him is rich and vibrant.
Why the Early Fire Fades
So many people say, "When I first came to Christ, I was on fire for the Lord." What happened in there? It would seem that you ought to be more on fire now than when this thing started. You may have had something like an infatuation-type love for Him at the beginning, but now you have walked with Him. You have seen Him work. You have seen that when you fail in sin and when things are beyond your control, He moves in and sustains and orchestrates. Why would anyone have less passion for Him now than then?
There are two reasons. First, we begin to pull away from Him — we stop doing the things we should be doing: remaining in His Word, praying, talking with Him, listening to Him. Then what happens is sin. When sin comes in, we inevitably begin to pull away and break fellowship. You have seen it. You have had friends who suddenly disappear for a while, and when you ask what is going on, they say they just got busy. But the more you press and probe, you discover there is sin in their life. They do not want to look at you because they feel guilty, because you represent Christ to them.
I see that all the time. Someone will tell me they stopped coming to the weekday study. In the best sense of the word, I am not working on a commission basis — I am not concerned about attendance for its own sake, only for your sake. But then they explain what happened, and inevitably they say they got a little bit away from it, and then sin crept in. And when sin gets in there, though the union can never be broken — I am always in Christ, positionally saved, a Christian — the vibrancy of my communion with Him begins to erode.
Abiding, Prayer, and the Transformed Heart
Works do not earn this relationship — they flow out of it. They come as a result of being in right relationship with Christ, flowing from His love for us and our love for Him. This is crucial to grasp. Look again at 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 looked at this when we examined chapter 14, verse 13 — this is not a blank check, and Scripture provides some qualifiers — but it is still deeply instructive. What He is saying is that if you are abiding in Him and asking, it is going to happen.
So if you find yourself at a point where things seem bare, where things seem dry, where you are praying but those prayers seem to be bouncing around and not reaching the throne room of God, here is a short checklist worth working through. First, from 1 John 5:14 — you may be praying contrary to the will of God: "If we ask anything according to His will." Second, you may be hiding sin in your heart — Psalm 66:18 says, "If I regard wickedness in my heart, the Lord will not hear me." Third, you may be praying self-centered rather than God-centered — James 4:3 says, "You ask and do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, so that you may spend it on your pleasures." Fourth, you may not believe — Mark 11:24 says, "All things for which you pray and ask, believe that you will receive them, and they will be granted to you." Fifth, God may be teaching you through a slow answer to prayer — Luke 18:1 says, "At all times you ought to pray and not lose heart."
God is saying that if you are in right relationship with Him, abiding in Him, His word — as verse 7 says, "if you abide in Me and My words abide in you" — becomes your direction and your guide. His words build your faith and transform your life. This week I ran into a man I used to spend time with years ago, and as we talked about old days and the things we did, I found myself thinking: I do not do that anymore. What happened? God's word transforms your heart.
I think some of this is really simple. It is as simple as this: love God with all your heart, and then do whatever you want to do. That is really what this is about. Some people get a little uneasy hearing that, but here is what you have to understand — when you love God with all your heart, He changes your wants. He changes what you desire. He changes the desires of your heart and how you begin to think.
Some of you could not possibly have imagined, five or ten or fifteen years ago, that you would give up a Sunday morning to sit in a church, give money to it, and then spend time during the week serving in other places. What happened? God changed your heart. As I love Him, I want to serve Him. The best calls are when someone says, "I just want to serve — wherever you need me." That is the heart you want. Why would someone say that? Because they love Him. And why do they love Him? Because He first loved them.
Bearing Fruit as a Disciple
Verse 8 says, "My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit, and so prove to be My disciples." It is not that because you bear fruit you become His disciple — it is because you are His disciple that you bear fruit. It is not that you go through all of this and then someone declares you saved at a kind of commencement ceremony. It is because you are a disciple that your life begins to bear fruit.
Abiding in His Love
"Just as the Father has loved Me, I have loved you; abide in My love." God loved Jesus, and Jesus is saying: just as the Father has loved Me, I love you. Back when I was in junior year of high school, a jewelry store — and these were certainly all over our area of the Midwest — had these little red buttons that said, "I am loved." Some of you will remember those. None of the guys would wear them, but the girls would wear these "I am loved" buttons. What I never fully realized then, and am beginning to understand now as an older man, is how much I need to know that — perhaps even more than I ever did.
Ray Stedman writes this short paragraph: "The way to feel worthwhile is to realize that God loves you. You belong to Him. Jesus loves you. The Father loves you. You are dear and precious to Him. His whole work with us is to try to help us discover that He loves you." The picture of that, over and over again, is Jesus on the cross — "For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son."
A.W. Pink writes: "To abide in His love then is to be occupied with it, to count upon it, to be persuaded that nothing shall ever be able to separate us from it. Dwelling upon our poor fluctuating love for Him makes us miserable, but having the heart fixed upon His wondrous love — that love which passes all understanding — will fill us with praise and thanksgiving. To abide in Christ is to abide in His love. Our growth proceeds from His love to love."
You love Him. Why? Because He first loved you. This is all from Him.
Abiding in Christ's Love
He does not say "reside in Him" as a command, because that coming and that being placed in Him is a result of His work in our life. We love Him because He first loved us. And because He loved us, verse 10 tells us, we will keep His commandments. If you keep His commandments, you will abide in His love, just as He kept the Father's commandments and abides in His love.
Jesus offers an illustration that will play out just a few hours after He speaks these words. He will be in the garden with the reality of the crucifixion right upon Him — so intense that He is sweating drops of blood. He says, "Father, if there's any other way, I'm for that. If there's a plan B, or C, or D, or F, or Q, or Z, if there's any other plan." Jesus understands the intensity of this moment and somehow understands that He is going to experience, for the very first time, separation from the Father.
He says, "I don't want that. I don't want to be separated from You. I want to be with You. Is there any other way?" But then comes the resolution: "Father, not my will, but Your will be done." What Jesus is saying is this: just as He demonstrated His love for the Father by obeying Him, as a result of your love for Him, your desire will likewise be to obey Him — even when it is not convenient, and even when all the circumstances seem to pull you in another direction.
The Fullness of Joy
Then comes the payoff, the summary, in verse 11: "These things I have spoken to you so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be made more full." That word "joy" appears over seventy times in the New Testament, and it always signifies a feeling of happiness based on spiritual realities. Joy is the deep-down sense of well-being that abides in the heart of the person who knows all is well between himself and the Lord.
What are "these things" He has spoken? In the most immediate context, it is this idea of abiding — I abide in you, you abide in Me, I am the vine, you are the branches. You are not called to produce any fruit; you simply bear fruit that God produces in your life. If you love Him, you will obey His commandments. And He says all these things so that your joy might be complete — that deep-down sense of well-being that abides in the heart of a person who knows all is well between himself and his Lord.
This is a happiness based on spiritual realities. It is why the author of Hebrews speaks of the joy set before Jesus as He went to the cross. How could that be joyful? Because Jesus is squarely in the will of God, exactly where He is meant to be. That is the spiritual reality for us as well. We are not alone. He does not leave us or forsake us.
The Heart of the Matter
If someone were to ask you this week what was said, here is the summary: we are to bask in the love of Christ — in His love for us — and we are to abide, to reside, to remain in Him. We are to be preoccupied with thoughts of God and who He is, so that our life is transformed and God begins to bear fruit in our life. We love Him, and even that love is based on His love for us first.
Closing Prayer
Father, take this reality and let it be predominant in our lives. Let us be preoccupied with You. God, make our joy full. Let that deep-down sense of well-being be present in our hearts because we know things are right between You and us. May this happiness not be circumstantial, but relational — based on the spiritual reality that You love us, that we can abide in You, and that because we love You we keep Your commandments.
Let our lives never be about us, not even about our own activity. This is not even about fruit we produce — it is about fruit You produce. This is about a vibrant relationship with You. Father, if we are here today and we are barren, hurting, and willing to admit it, help us understand that the answer is not to work harder. The answer is to abide, to rest, to understand who You are. Then You do these wonderful things in our lives. We begin to bear fruit, and then more fruit, and then much fruit. We keep Your commandment, and our lives are filled — in fact, characterized — by love and by joy. Father, please do that work in our lives. We ask it of You in Jesus' name, Amen.