St Mary's

Today Talk from Julie

28th April 2024

John 15:1-10 NIV - The Vine and the Branches - “I am the - Bible Gateway

1 John 4:7-21 NIV - God’s Love and Ours - Dear friends, - Bible Gateway

“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.”

Jesus is making it clear that this is God’s garden, God’s kingdom and it is God who orders the garden and makes it grow, makes it fruitful and above all gives it life. God himself tends the garden, he tends the vine, pruning and encouraging it to grow.   The vine is Jesus, planted in the garden by God, without him there would be no branches and no fruit.  The life of the vine is the life of God, brought through Jesus to bring fruit.

“I am the vine; you are the branches.”

The gardener is God, the vine is Jesus and we are the branches and the branch’s job is to bear the fruit. 

“No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine.  Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me.”

Any branch that is not attached to the vine does not produce fruit; it is only dead wood, fit to be thrown away.  A person who is not attached to Jesus does not bear fruit and so bring glory to God.

“This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples.”

Jesus’ disciples must be rooted and grounded in him in order to truly live, to be fruitful and to bring glory to God; to receive the kingdom life that he brings, and to show the fruit of that life. 

How do we become disciples rooted and grounded in Jesus?

Well Jesus said: “Remain in me, and I will remain in you.”

To be rooted and grounded in Jesus In order to bear fruit we must remain in Jesus as the branch remains in the vine.  A branch cannot survive separate from the vine and neither can we survive separate from Jesus.

To remain in Jesus is to receive his life in us and to show the fruit of the kingdom in our lives and so to glorify God.  We cannot produce fruit on our own. 

John Ortberg says: “The branch’s job is not to produce fruit.  The branch’s job is to continuously receive live from the vine – to abide.  The fruit is the product of abiding.  The branch is you and me….. The fruit is the external manifestation of what’s going on inside the branch. It’s our behaviour.  It’s the things we do and say all day long.” ( p165 Eternity is Now.)

So in order to produce fruit we must abide – remain – in Jesus so that we can constantly receive the life that he brings. So how do we remain in Jesus?  How do we become fruitful?  We do it by becoming his disciples and learning from him how to live the kingdom life.  To be a disciple of Jesus is to immerse ourselves in Jesus, to imitate him: how he lived, what he did and how he did it.  As John Mark Comer puts it we need to: “Be with Jesus.  Become like him.  Do as he did.”  Then, as a result, as Dallas Willard says, we must live the life that Jesus would live if he were us.

How do we do that?  In Jesus day a Rabbi’s disciples used to literally live with him, live as he did, go where he went, listen to his teaching.  A Rabbi’s disciples learnt from him by being with him constantly, imitating everything he did, even how he did it.  They got to know everything about their Rabbi so that they could become like him in every way.  Jesus himself was a Rabbi and his disciples did the same, they lived with Jesus, went where he went, listened to his teaching – they were with him constantly, imitating everything that he did.  They were with Jesus, they became like him, they did what he did.  They remained in him and he in them.

If we want to remain in Jesus, we too must become his disciples and do the same.  We too must immerse ourselves in Jesus: live with him and learn from him, imitating everything that he did. In other words we must be with Jesus, become like him and do as he did and so live the life he would if he were us.

We do this by seeing what Jesus did and imitating him: he had a close relationship with his Father and he obeyed him, he prayed, he knew the Scriptures, he worked, he rested, he spent time in solitude and silence, he shared fellowship and celebrated, he observed Sabbath rest, he lived in community, he served others, he was gentle and kind, he was compassionate and most of all he loved others:  his Father, his friends, his disciples, his neighbours, his enemies. 

We are called to do the same things that Jesus did: have a close relationship with the Father in prayer and Bible study, spending time in silence and solitude.  We must work for the kingdom but we must also rest, including practicing Sabbath rest.  We must live in community, sharing fellowship and celebrating.  We must serve others unstintingly as Jesus did, being kind, gentle and compassionate.  Most of all we must love others as Jesus loves them.  We must be conduits for the love of God to flow into the world.  That is the fruit that God the gardener is cultivating in us.

As John puts it in his first letter:

Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.  This is how God showed his love among us: he sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him.  This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.  Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.

We are image bearers, made in the image of God as we are told in Genesis 1 “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.”

If we are made in the image of God and God is love then the image that we show to the world is that of love, God’s love; made visible by Jesus in the love that he showed for us in his life, death and resurrection. That love is to be mirrored by us as we imitate Jesus and allow his love to flow through us in the life that we live, in the way that we live, in the things we do and say.

God is love and the life that Jesus lived was the visible evidence of the love of God.  That life is available to us as we remain in Jesus, as we become his disciples, imitating him and learning from him.  To truly be Jesus disciples we must remain in him, following his way of life, his teaching and his commands.  As the branch receives life from the vine, so we receive life from Jesus.

It is not enough for us to receive the life of Jesus, it is essential that we produce fruit as a result of that life.  We do not receive the life of Jesus for our benefit; we do so for the benefit of others because the fruit that we bear is the love of God.  If we remain in Jesus it is the very love of God that will flow through us and the fruit that we bear will be concrete evidence of that love.

In John 15 vs 12 Jesus says: “My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you.”

Receive Jesus love by becoming his disciple and remaining in him, by imitating him and living his way of life.  But don’t keep that love to yourself, bear much fruit and share that love with others, share the very life of Jesus with them.

If you look at a vine, you can see the fruit – the fruit is not hidden it is very visible.  As we remain in Jesus, becoming more and more like him our fruit will become visible and the love of God will be seen by everyone.  Our job is to produce fruit that can be seen and given away, passed on for the benefit of others, made visible so that the life of Jesus is seen and known.

“This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples”

Be with Jesus

Become like him.

Do as he did.

Continually remain in the vine, receiving life and producing fruit.

Amen