LIVING WATERS
For the proclamation of the Gospel and the edification of the Body of Christ
Nothing, Without Him
The problem of Remaining
John 5:1-6.
A friend of Jesus' must know that without Him he is nothing, and he cannot do anything. The relationship between the Father, the Son and the Christian is very well figured in this simile of the vine: The Father is the gardener, Christ it is the vine, and each Christian is one of the vine branches.
The scissors come and go
Strangely enough, this simile begins with two warnings: –He cuts off every branch in me that that does not bear fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful. (John 15:2)
The Reina Valera 1960 version says He will remove and will clean. The Bible of Jerusalem translates this as: cut and clean; whilst the NIV Version says: cut off and prune. These latter translations are preferable.
If we pay attention, these two actions are in the present tense, and both operate in connection with the fruit of the vine branch. The removing is because there is no fruit, and pruning is because there is fruit. These two actions constitute the gardener's present work. Today He removes that vine branch that is not giving fruit, and today He prunes those that are.
So, the first is a warning. Let us fear, because, because the gardener is removing and is pruning. His scissors come and go over our heads; be it for the first or second reason. The gardener won't touch us unjustly, so don't fear for that reason; but yes we fear not producing fruit. The scissors will cut the useless vine branch; but even if a vine branch produces fruit, his scissors will also come upon it from time to time. Pruning is unavoidable.
The vine needs to be pruned every year, because the tendency to fill with leaves is very strong and very lethal for the good fruit. And when the vine is pruned, it cries out.
Spiritually speaking, there are many initiatives of the flesh that don't serve God; they must be removed from among us. But when that happens, it deeply hurts us, because we had calculated many hopes in them.
The pruning also touches new areas every time. After pruning, it appears that the vine branch is so clean that it won't need pruning again, but after walking but a little –returning to the cycle of life – renewed leaves reappear which are necessary to cut away.
The deformity of the human soul and its natural energy are of such a wide span that they require severe cutting from the scissors in order to avoid wasting the prospects of the fruit that the gardener has in each vine branch.
There is an additional problem that usually presents itself in this matter of fruit.
The norm is for the vine to give grapes, and that is what the gardener awaits. However, there are vine branches that are giving different fruit: apples, for example. There are vine branches that are giving rich, beautiful and attractive apples. There may be thousands, they can be packed up and traded. With everything, the Lord Jesus is a Vine, and the gardener waits for fruits with the same nature of his Vine.
A ton of apples is not worth the same as a cluster of good grapes in the gardener's eyes. (See 1 Corinthians 3:13).
Cleaning through the Word
The word is like a sword that cuts that cleans and that purifies. This word is ' rhema ', of which we will speak later on (chap.17). There are vine branches full of impurity because they have not let the word do its work in them.
They are, perhaps, too busy in producing apples, so they don't have time for the word. They are too busy in building houses in Babylon, so they don't have time for the word. They are too busy in piling hay or straw in their barns and wood in their coffers, so they don't have time for the word. (1ª Corinthians 3:12-13).
The Lord said to His disciples: –You are already clean because of the word that I have already spoken to you. (15:3). Why were they clean? They were clean through the word; and His word was not common.
On another opportunity He said: –The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and they are life. (John 6:63)
Here we would like to ask a question to the ministers of the word. Dear apostle, prophet, evangelist or teacher: What place does this word (that is spirit and life) occupy in your preaching? Perhaps you have conveniently believed in renovating your messages, removing Jesus' “old statements”, that “rancid biblical doctrine” in order to introduce, in its place, interesting references to wise philosophers, curious anecdotes, novel interpretations, everything, to the measure and pleasure of the modern man. Have you perhaps estimated those old biblical characters to be too repetitive and obsolete for these times, and largely lacking in interest?
Oh, if this is your situation, beloved, then you yourself are an impure vine branch, and your listeners are even more so!
How could you and they produce fruit - more fruit, much fruit? Only the word like ' rhema ' has power to do this. Only the word that is spirit and life can clean the vine branches and enable them to bring more and much fruit.
To remain
But perhaps the greatest problems are not those that we have seen up to this point. Perhaps the greatest problem that the parable of the vine outlines for us is one of remaining. –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. 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 he can do nothing. (15:4-5)
In order to remain in the vine, it is first necessary to complete a basic requirement: it is necessary to be united with the vine, that is to say, it is necessary to be a vine branch.
This is an impossible requirement for man. Nobody ended up being a vine branch because he proposed it to be so, or because he had overcome certain stages of self-perfection.
For that reason, God Himself has taken charge: He made us branches of His Vine. So, compared with this, the second requirement -the one of remaining - is a minor issue, or it should at least be. It is, simply, continuing to be what the Father made us be, and to remain where He put us.
This is seemingly easy; but in practice it is not. Why? To remain implies, in the first place, to be still, and often in silence.
To request that the flesh be still is to request something impossible. The flesh is impulsive, venturesome, does not “submit to God’s law and nor can it do so” (Roman 8:7). It has many ideas that it wants to carry out -brilliant, grandiose, very deliberate - but none of them serve God. [1]
We find it difficult to remain because we find it easier to move, to reflect, to undertake. We regard remaining as doing nothing. However, it is not the same thing. Remaining is a stillness with much advantage, because you are still in Christ and before his presence. It is only an apparent stillness, because under the surface, God is preparing fruit in your heart that will be produced. And it is also working in your circumstances, and in people that surround you, so that everything is in order when you must act.
While you remain there in silence, the life of the Vine makes its silent operation inside you, so that when spring arrives you can bring forth the flowers and summer fruit.
Therefore, one of the first great things that God demands from a believer is that they be still.
To remain also implies respecting the laws and the cycles of life. All forms of –including the life of a vine - are subject to certain laws and to certain cycles. It is necessary to respect them, because they have been established by God. (Mark 4:26-29). Just as after the night time comes the day, so too spring comes after winter. When God made a covenant with Noah, we are assured that it would be this way while the earth remains. (Genesis 8:22).
In the life of the Vine there are winters and summers. The winters are usually long and the summer delays in arriving. The winters are sterile, silent and cold. They are so long compared with the spring that announces the summer! In those winters, the vine branches feel as if nothing were happening, that everything is a loss of time. Or that perhaps summer will never come.
To avoid this bitter experience, we like to break the cycles of life. We like to release ourselves from winters. We like to harvest without having first sowed, or to sow little and to harvest much. This is a problem.
To remain is to wait with patience. In 15:2 it says that the pruning of the branch will allow it to produce more fruit; but remaining in the vine, will help it even more, because thanks to that it will be able to produce much fruit (15:5).
Separate
–If anyone does not remain in me he is like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned. (15:6).
How is a Christian -who loves the Lord and does want to please him – separated from the vine? Naturally, un-confessed sins are the first reason for the separation between a Christian and their Lord. But this is not the case here. There is a reason here which has not been sufficiently considered and that we must attend to.
To understand it, Paul comes to our help. Speaking to the Galatians, he says: –You who are trying to be justified by the law have been alienated from Christ; you have fallen away from grace. (Galatians 5:4).
Paul teaches here that those that are justified by the law are alienated (or separated) from Christ. What is it to be justified by the law? Is it to keep the Law of Moses? Not necessarily. If this were so, it would not be a concern for us.
To be justified by the law is something subtler, and something to which we are all exposed, even in these times of grace.
To be justified by the law is to fall from grace into works of the flesh. It is to create or to adopt a system of works that, to our point of view, makes us righteous or makes us acceptable before God.
To separate from Christ is to stop placing all our trust in him, and to put it in ourselves, or in something apart from us, but which is not Christ.
For example, if you trust what you pray, or in what you fast; if you trust in your knowledge of the Scriptures, or in the fact of knowing Greek or Hebrew; if you trust in having studied in the best Seminary; if you trust in your behavior as clean, in that you have never grossly sinned; if you trust in your good upbringing, in your character, in your behavior, in your friendships, or in your contacts, then you have fallen from grace into your own works of righteousness, and Christ cannot use you for anything.
Every time that you lean on something that is not Christ, you separate yourself a little further from Him.
The world and the devil permanently tell you: –You can!
But Lord Jesus tells you: –Apart from me, you can do no good thing.
The devil will present you with many occasions so that you can say: –Finally, here there is something that I can do alone, without Christ's help.
If you do this, and that act transforms itself -to your disgrace - into a habit, you are lost as a servant of God.
The devil will want you to seek your own resources. He will cite you the Scriptures, (probably mentioning a beautiful and misunderstood verse such as Philippians 4:13); and if you don't have a clear idea how fateful it is for you and your work to trust in yourself, you will fall into it: then you will have followed the devil’s game and you will have lost the secret of your strength.
May the Lord allow us to remain still, trusting Christ fully, in all things, Amen.
(1) See Matthew 17:4, Mark 10:37, Matthew 26:33, Luke 9:54, 57, 61.