Abiding in Jesus, Living in Him (2)

 

“I am the true vine, and My Father is the vinedresser.” John 15:1.

 

Our passage is John 15:1 – 8, along with 15:9 – 11. I realize this is a strange way to present the passage. Why not say, “Our passage is John 15:1 – 11”? It is because I want us to see 15:1 – 8 in depth, as a deep pool of water; and then to see how it flows into verses 9 – 11, which in turn flow into verse 12 and beyond. Also, let’s please keep in mind that 15:1 flows from what precedes it – we are in one river, one main current.

 

I hope that we will read this passage again and again and again; that we will ponder it, meditate upon it and within it, and visualize our Lord Jesus speaking the words of this passage to us. Can we see ourselves in the Upper Room, seeing Jesus and hearing Him speak these words? Can we sense Him with us today, wherever we may physically be, speaking these words to us? Jesus says that He will always be with us, do we believe this? (Mt. 28:20; Jn. 14:17 – 23).

 

We are going to ponder this passage as a unit, first looking at the forest and then the trees – this is the way we ought to learn to read, preach, and teach, asking ourselves, “What is the image here? What is the message? What is Jesus saying to us? How are we to respond in obedience to Him? If we come away from any passage, having only considered individual words or sentences or verses, and have failed to see Jesus and the main message and image He is giving us of Himself and His Word, then we have abjectly come short of the glory and understanding our Father has for us. If we have only pondered individual trees in a forest and have not seen the forest, then we have not really understood the individual trees, for the individual trees are only fully understood in the context of the entire forest.

 

If we do not understand all the verses and passages in the forest, we can still live; if we do not understand the forest, if we do not “see” Jesus, if we do not see the primary Image the Bible is portraying to us…then we will fall short in our inheritance in Christ…we will live as babes and children…playing with things that do not matter.

 

Let me give you two examples of what I mean within our passage, one positive and one negative. On the positive side, the passage begins with, “I am the true vine.” Then we have “in Me” (v. 2), “abide in Me” twice (v. 4), “I am the vine…abides in Me” (v. 5), “abide in Me” (v. 7), “abide in My love” (v. 9), “abide in My love” (v. 10). Our abiding in Christ, the Vine, is clearly the central image of this passage – see verses 4 and 5. This is the forest we want to see, the image we want to permeate our souls, the central current of the river.

 

Also, note that the image of abiding is already with us in the Upper Room – see John 14:23. We want to keep in mind the entire forest of the Upper Room, we want to remember where the river has already taken us so that we can better appreciate where we are in John 15: 1 – 11. We want to experience the Upper Room holistically in Christ.

 

The negative example is, “Every branch in Me that does not bear fruit, He takes away…If anyone does not abide in Me, he is thrown away as a branch…” (verses 2 and 6). These verses are trees in the forest, but they are not the forest; abiding in the Vine is the forest, it is the main current of the river of life. Therefore, we will focus on abiding in the Vine, we will meditate on the forest of our union with Jesus Christ, and then, once we have hopefully seen the beauty of abiding in the Vine as our sole source of life, we’ll ponder verse 2a and verse 6.

 

I have been in small groups and Sunday school classes that have gotten so hung up on verses such as John 15:6 that they have never seen the point of the passage – and hence year after year, Sunday after Sunday, their Christian lives remain pretty much the same…on the outside of the Temple looking in…if that…always babes, always children (1 Cor. 3:1 – 2; Heb. 5:11 – 6:3).

 

The Book is all about Jesus Christ, only that which is grounded in Jesus Christ, “in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” (Col. 2:3), matters. When we engage in speculation and seek to satisfy our curiosity we are like puppy dogs chasing their tails…this is cute in puppy dogs, not so cute in professing Christians.

 

As we read John 15:1 – 11, may I ask please, “What is the nature of our life in Christ? What is the nature of our relationship with Jesus Christ?”

 

What is your response? How do you describe it, based on our passage, based on the words of Jesus?

How would you describe the nature of our life in Christ to a group of children? I ask this, because I've learned that children are my toughest audience - I can't fake it with children and they force me to know what I'm saying.