About this sermon
Jesus is the true vine, the faithful Israel, and his Father is the vinedresser. Every branch that abides in him bears fruit, and apart from him his people can do nothing. The fruit of the Spirit comes through faith and never by human effort, and the Father prunes his people so that they bear more. Judas was a branch connected outwardly to Christ that never abided in him, so every hearer must truly rest in Christ.
Sermon transcript
Please remain standing for the reading of God’s word. My sermon text this morning. is from the gospel of John, John chapter 15. I’ll read verses one through 17, although we’ll be focusing more on the opening verses of this passage, but let us hear God’s holy word. Our Lord Jesus giving this private instruction to his disciples as recorded in John’s gospel, John chapter 15, verses one through 17. The Lord Jesus says, I am the true vine, and my Father is the vine dresser. Every branch in me that does not bear fruit, He takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit, He prunes, that it may bear more fruit. Already you are clean because of the word that I have spoken to you. Abide in me and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me.
I am the vine, you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing. If anyone does not abide in Me, he is thrown away like a branch and withers, and the branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned. If you abide in Me and My words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. By this My Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit and so prove to be My disciples. As the Father has loved Me, so have I loved 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, that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be full.
This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing, but I have called you friends. For all that I have heard from my father, I have made known to you. You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide so that whatever you ask the father in my name, he may give it to you. These things I command you. so that you will love one another. The grass withers and the flower fades, but the word of our God endures forever.
Let’s pray for God’s blessing upon the preaching of his word. Our Lord and Father in heaven, we thank you and praise you that you have spoken your word of grace to us in the gospel. We thank you for giving us the holy scriptures. They are indeed a lamp unto our feet, a light unto our path, a guide upon our way. We ask that by your spirit you would take this word today and cause your word to take deep root in our hearts. We pray that this would be spiritual food to us today. We pray that you would be present in the preaching of your word by your Holy Spirit. We ask that you would grant me the grace to speak forth your word. with clarity and assistance by your spirit and in the power of your grace.
And we ask that Jesus would be exalted and present in the proclamation of your word this day. We pray these things in Jesus’ name and all of God’s people said, amen. You may be seated. Dear friends, as you can see, the title of my sermon this morning is Abiding in Christ the Vine. And there’s only three key words for the children to be listening for today. Vine, branch, and abide. Well, my dear Christian friends, I look out at all of you this morning as a congregation of God’s people, and I see a wide variety of ages represented today, from young children all the way to seasoned saints. everything in between. And that is a wonderful thing, because we serve a multi-generational God, indeed an eternal God, who promises to administer His covenant of grace in the line of successive generations, all the way until our Lord will return at His glorious second advent.
Well, friends, just as we are all at different stages of growth and different places in our life journey when it comes to our physical lives, we are all likewise at different stages of spiritual growth and development in our walk with Christ, as our Savior progressively sanctifies us and as we grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. But wherever we might happen to be in our faith journey with Jesus Christ, whether we be relatively new converts to Christ, as Paul describes babes in Christ, or whether we be believers who have been in the Lord and in his church for decades, or whether we are somewhere in between, wherever we happen to be, in our faith journey. It can be helpful and wise for us as followers of Jesus to review periodically the basic foundational doctrines of our common Christian faith.
After all, our faith and life in Christ must be grounded in and nourished by the doctrines of faith that are revealed in the Word of God. And so since this is the case, it is my intention to begin a mini-series of sermons entitled Foundations of the Faith, a sermon series that will be guided by that classic Bible-based creed of the church known to us today as the Apostles’ Creed. But the text of my sermons will not be the Apostles’ Creed as such. This sermon series, while it will be more topical in nature, will seek to ground every sermon in a careful exposition of a variety of passages from God’s inerrant, infallible Word, the Bible. But friends, before we begin, this New Foundations series, I thought as an appropriate segue into that series that it would be good for us to consider a passage which reminds us of the absolute necessity of having a vital living union and abiding faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.
You see, friends, while the basic doctrines of our faith are indeed vitally important for us to understand if we’re going to grow and mature spiritually and have our minds transformed and renewed by the Word of God, at the same time, without a living, abiding, saving union with the resurrected, living Lord Jesus Christ, these foundational doctrines, while absolutely true and grounded in God’s Word, will not do us any spiritual good. doesn’t do any spiritual good to you or to me, to no sound doctrine, if that doctrine doesn’t get into our souls. and nourish and nurture our life in Christ. And so, let us direct our attention, beloved, to our passage for today. Again, a passage taken from John chapter 15. Now, as we consider this passage for today, this passage reminds us that Jesus and his disciples lived in an agricultural and pastoral setting.
In fact, their world was very different from the 21st century world in which we live today. But you know, you don’t have to be a farmer, you don’t have to be an expert in agriculture to understand that a branch cannot live on its own. Whether you’re talking about a branch on a tree or a shoot from a vine, these things cannot live detached from the vine or from the source, the root of their life. These things have to be organically connected through a living union to the source of their life and nourishment. Otherwise, not only will such a branch not produce its leaves or fruit, but it will wilt, it will wither, it will die. As many of you no doubt know from personal experience, if you’ve ever chopped down your own Christmas tree and put it up in your home, you know that if you cut down a tree and put it up in your home as a Christmas tree during the Christmas season, even if you make a fresh cut, and even if you stand it up in a basin of water and continue to add water over time, what is eventually gonna happen to that tree?
Well, that tree will eventually dry out and completely die. The reason being that it has been severed from the root, which had sustained its life. Well, in a similar way, if you cut off a branch from a grapevine, it will not produce any fruits, any grapes, because you have severed it from the source of its ability to produce fruit. And so Jesus uses this very familiar image of a vine and its branches to illustrate the relationship that he sustains to his professing followers. But in doing so, he makes an important distinction. He makes an important distinction between those branches, that is to say, those professing disciples who abide in him on the one hand, and those who do not abide in him. The key point that our Lord Jesus teaches us in this allegory is that we who claim to be followers of Christ must abide in Christ in order that we may bear spiritual fruit.
Spiritual fruit is not the result of human achievement or human works or human merits. Spiritual fruit is the result of abiding in Christ by the grace of God, being nourished from union and communion with the Lord Jesus Christ. By abiding in Christ, by doing so, we glorify God the Father and so prove to be Christ’s disciples as we bear fruit as a result of that abiding in Christ. Well, our text for this Lord’s Day morning includes the very last of our Lord’s I Am sayings as recorded in the Gospel of John. Jesus’ I Am sayings not only assert our Lord’s full deity. After all, one of God’s names in the Old Testament was I Am. So when Jesus says, I am the vine, when he says, I am the door, when he says, I am, he is making an implicit claim to being God.
But these I Am sayings also illustrate, from slightly different angles, Christ’s relationship with his people and with the world in general. Now, with all of this in mind, let’s approach our text for today and consider what we can learn from it. And first of all, it’s important for us to understand that this passage gives us a picture of the vital spiritual union that exists between our Lord Jesus Christ and we, his redeemed people. This is the first main point in your sermon outline, if you’re taking notes. Understand that this passage gives us a picture of the vital spiritual union that exists between our Lord Jesus Christ and his redeemed people. Jesus says in verse 1 of this passage, I am the true vine and my father is the vine dresser. Every branch in me that does not bear fruit he takes away and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes that it may bear more fruit and so forth.
My friends, the importance of this subject, of our union with Christ, can hardly be underestimated. It is so important, or overestimated. It is of supreme importance. You see, union with Christ means the application of Christ’s objective work of salvation in history to us personally. The Holy Spirit is the one who applies the saving work of Christ to God’s people by giving them the gift of saving faith and so uniting them to Christ. It doesn’t do any good for Christ to die for our sins, for example. that we might be forgiven of those sins if that saving work doesn’t get applied to us personally. And the scriptures teach us that we receive that gift of forgiveness and salvation and eternal life by faith, by trust in Christ and Christ alone as Lord and Savior. It is the Holy Spirit who gives us the grace to repent and believe in Christ for our salvation.
And so the Holy Spirit is the key to applying that saving redemptive work of Christ done outside of us in objective space-time history to us personally. Another important clarification to understand as we approach this text, Jesus speaks about our union with him. He is the vine, we are the branches. This is a saving spiritual union that is being spoken of. But this saving union that we believers have with Christ does not in any way destroy the personal distinction between Christ and the Christian. That is to say, in the language of Cornelius Van Til, the creator-creature distinction is not destroyed by this union with Christ. It is not that when we become one with Christ that we somehow become divinized, that we become little gods. Now, Peter, the apostle, I believe in his second epistle, talks about partaking of the divine nature, but that’s sort of Peter’s way of talking about our sanctification, not that we literally become divine, but that we are renewed after the image of the divine nature.
Well, with that in mind, in our passage for today, Christ, as I said, is presented how? He is presented in verse one as the true vine. And how are we, his professing disciples, how are we described? We are described as the branches. As again, verse one, I am the true vine. And then if you skip down to verse five, Jesus says, I am the vine, you are the branches. Now let’s first of all consider what it means for Jesus to be the true or it could be translated the genuine vine. What does it mean for Jesus to be the true vine? And Bible scholars kind of debate this and dispute this. One view is that Jesus means that he is the true vine in the sense that he is the true vine symbolized by the fruit of the vine that we partake of in the cup of the Lord’s Supper.
In the historical context of this passage, this is indeed a possible way of understanding this since Jesus had just instituted the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper on this night in which he was betrayed. And also since in Luke 22, verse 18, Jesus had described the cup of the Last Supper as the fruit of the what? The fruit of the vine. So Jesus has just instituted the Lord’s Supper, he’s talked about the fruit of the vine, and then he says, I am the true vine. And if that’s what he’s pointing to, then what he is saying is that unlike the wine served at the Last Supper, which was just a symbol, Jesus is the true or genuine vine to which the fruit of the vine in the Lord’s Supper points to. That is the point. the blood of the new covenant that he shed for us and that we partake of that through faith union with him.
We partake of the benefits of that. So again, this is one way of understanding Christ’s claim to be the true vine. Another view is that Jesus as the true vine is the true Israel. You may have picked this up during the worship service. We sang a psalm and we also read a scripture passage from the book of the prophet Isaiah where Israel, God’s people, is described as the Lord’s vine. And in the Old Testament, Israel is indeed sometimes pictured as a vine. And just to kind of reinforce that fact, would you turn with me to Psalm 80 Let me just read a few verses from Psalm 80. I know we sang this earlier, but it’s good to review it and read through it. Psalm 80 beginning at verse 8. Notice what the inspired psalmist writes.
He says, You brought a vine out of Egypt. You drove out the nations and planted it. You cleared the ground for it. It took deep root and filled the land. The mountains were covered with its shade, the mighty cedars with its branches. It sent out its branches to the sea and its shoots to the river. Why then have you broken down its walls so that all who pass along the way pluck its fruit? This is speaking of God removing protection from His faithless people so that foreign adversaries come in and oppress the people of God. Verse 13, the boar from the forest ravages it and all that move in the field feed on it. Turn again, O God of hosts, look down from heaven and see, have regard for this vine. the stalk that your right hand planted, and for the son whom you made strong for yourself.
They have turned it, burned it with fire and so forth. They’ve cut it down, may they perish at the rebuke of your face and so forth. So we see clearly in Psalm 80, for example, Israel, God’s people, are described as the Lord’s vine. Or consider Jeremiah, chapter 2, verses 20-22. Jeremiah, chapter 2, verses 20-22. Again, just to give you an overview of this briefly, that this is indeed an Old Testament theme. In Jeremiah, chapter 2, beginning at verse 20, the Holy Spirit, through Jeremiah the prophet, says this, For long ago, I broke your yoke. God is speaking to his people of how he broke their yoke. He delivered them from slavery in Egypt. For long ago, I broke your yoke and burst your bonds, but you said, I will not serve. Yes, on every high hill and under every green tree, you bowed down like a whore.
Speaking of Israel going after foreign deities as a spiritual whoredom on their part. And then look at verse 21. Yet I planted you a what? A choice vine, holy of pure seed. How then have you turned degenerate and become a wild vine? Though you wash yourself with lye and use much soap, the stain of your guilt is still before me, declares the Lord God. Friends, in redemptive history, the nation of Israel served at a national theocratic level. It served as a type, a foreshadowing of Christ. But it serves as a foreshadowing by way of contrast. You see, Israel failed miserably at her calling to be the Lord’s faithful choice vine. Even though God had redeemed them from slavery and even when they fell into sin, God repeatedly, over a lengthy period of time, raised up prophets to send to them and call them back to repentance and covenant fidelity, more often than not, they refused to repent.
They broke the covenant. They came under God’s curse But Jesus Christ, the true Israel, the genuine Israel, succeeded where Israel of old had failed. Israel of old disobeyed and broke God’s covenant, earning God’s curse and exile. But Jesus Christ, the true vine, the genuine vine, the true Israel, perfectly obeyed God’s law and kept the covenant on behalf of God’s elect, thereby earning for his people, his believing people, God’s blessing and a permanent inheritance in the heavenly Canaan, the ultimate promised land. So again, getting back to the question of what does Jesus mean by calling himself the vine? Does Jesus mean that he fulfills the imagery, the symbolism of the fruit of the vine in the Lord’s Supper? Or does he mean that he is the true Israel of God, that he embodies faithful, the true faithful Israel of God?
Well, there is a third option. It’s not an either-or choice. It’s the option that I think is probably more likely, and that is that both are true. Jesus is indeed the real vine to which the communion wine points. But he is also the faithful vine, the true Israel, unlike the faithless vine that Old Covenant Israel proved to be. Our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, was the true and faithful vine whose obedience makes up for all of our disobedience, and who, unlike Adam in the original covenant of works, he kept the covenant of works. Jesus kept the covenant of works perfectly. on our behalf so that we can be justified and saved by His grace and grace alone. But this salvation that is by grace alone is received only by a living, saving faith, a vital union with the Lord Jesus Christ.
And that brings us to how this passage throws light upon the nature of true saving faith. Jesus is indeed the vine. He is the source of our salvation. He is the faithful one. who has atoned for our sins and offers a perfect everlasting righteousness to us. But how do we get connected to that atonement and receive the benefits of that righteousness of Christ? Well, again, the picture is of this true faith by which we are saved is described here by Jesus through the word abide. Jesus says in verse four, abide in me and I in you. in you. And then he gives this allegory, this illustration. He says, as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me. I am the vine and you are the branches.
Whoever abides in me, that is to say, whoever has faith, a living, saving faith in me, And I in him is speaking about his union with us. He it is that bears much fruit. Spiritual fruit, the fruit of the spirit, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control, the fruit of the spirit, the fruit, this spiritual fruit comes by faith and not by works or human effort. And so true faith is described by this word abide. Now, that’s an interesting word. abide. Jesus doesn’t say, pray a sinner’s prayer, come forward at the altar call, make a decision for Christ. True saving faith is not simply a cheap one-time decision for Christ, but rather it is a continuous resting upon, clinging to Christ and Christ alone as your only hope of salvation. It may begin with a decision, but it cannot end there.
To abide, this word abide indicates permanence and steadfastness. So the issue is not can you remember the first time you repented and believed. Some people can. I don’t know about you folks, but I can remember that day when I was a 15-year-old, when I knelt beside my bed. It was in August of, I think, 1982. I knelt beside my bed, having read a gospel account, having read about the good news of Jesus. And I remember calling upon the name of the Lord Jesus for salvation. And I remember the peace that came over my soul as I had received Christ as my Savior. And I got up from that. that place and I went down to the kitchen and I told my mother that I had just accepted Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior. And I asked her, have you ever done that?
Became an immediate evangelist. So for me, it was a very clear cut before and after thing. But for many folks, it’s not. Many folks, especially folks that are raised in faithful Christian homes, they can’t remember a time when they haven’t repented and believed. They’ve always been repentant for their sins. They’ve always trusted and loved the Lord Jesus Christ from their youngest years because they’ve always heard about Christ. But the point is not, can you remember a time when you had some kind of conversion experience? The issue is, are you now converted? Are you now repentant? and believing and do you persevere in that repentance and faith. This is what abiding in Christ is all about. And we learn here that this true faith that abides in Christ is an active thing. This is implied by the imperative command given in verse four where Jesus says, abide in me and I in you.
And we learn also in this passage that this true faith, this faith that abides in, clings to Christ and Christ alone, inevitably produces spiritual fruit. As Jesus says in verse two, every branch in me that does not bear fruit, he takes away. And every branch that does bear fruit, he prunes that it may bear more fruit. And he goes on to say in verse five, I am the vine, you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is Those are humbling words, aren’t they? Jesus says, if you’re not attached to me, if you’re not connected to me, if you have not received me as your Lord and Savior, you can do nothing of spiritual good. That doesn’t mean that unbelievers cannot do anything that is of civic virtue or righteousness.
But we’re not just talking about external righteousness that helps other people. We’re talking about genuine works of righteousness that are pleasing to God, acceptable to God. We can’t do anything apart from union with Him. And it is only in Christ and through the Holy Spirit that we can bear this spiritual fruit. the fruit here. But what is this fruit talking about in particular? Now some have suggested that this fruit that Jesus is referring to is the fruit of evangelism. That is to say, leading people to faith in Christ. And certainly there are places in the New Testament where where spiritual fruit is arguably spoken about that way. I think when Paul talks that way and writes that way in Romans chapter one, how he wants to preach the gospel to them and share in spiritual fruit, I think he’s talking perhaps about the fruit of evangelistic labors among them.
But in the context of this particular passage, the fruit in this context probably does not mean the fruit of evangelism, that is to say, leading people to faith in Christ. Instead, the interpretation that makes the most sense in this particular context is that fruit means the holy and obedient living which results from this saving union with Jesus Christ, the vine. And so, friends, Where there is no spiritual fruit, there is no vital connection with Christ, the true vine. Those who claim to be Christians and yet are entirely lacking in the fruit of the Holy Spirit demonstrate themselves to be unfruitful branches who do not possess true saving faith. Dear listener, what about you? Are you abiding in Christ the Vine? Have you received and rested upon Christ and Christ alone as your very own Lord and Savior?
Are you abiding in Him? And are you bearing the fruits of being vitally connected to Christ? And by the way, one of the fruits of being in union with Christ, of being attached to Christ the Vine, is that you will have a contrite and humble spirit. If you’re a sensitive believer, and your conscience is prone to be hyperactive, then let me counsel you, brother, sister, who struggles, especially if you struggle with assurance. If your sin bothers you and you are contrite for it and grieved by it, that too is a spiritual fruit. And so do not be discouraged. The Christian life is a battle. It is a battle that, in principle, we are the victors in because Christ is victorious for us in our place, in our stead. But do not be discouraged if you continue to struggle with sin.
There’s a sense in which the more we grow in our faith, the more we come to realize just how sinful we really are. The deeper you go into the scriptures, the deeper you go into the faith, the more you realize, wow, God is really infinitely holy and I am really wretched. As Paul says in Romans 7, wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from this body of death? Even the apostle felt himself to be a wretched man. But this too, this is part of the fruit of abiding in Christ, the vine, because the Holy Spirit will convict you of sin and he is at work in you. So do not be discouraged, but make sure that you are connected to Christ. Don’t be arrogant in your sin. Don’t be arrogant in self-righteousness. Christ is your only hope.
And so, let us take to heart, and this is my final point from this passage, beloved, take to heart our Lord’s sober warning. Abide in Christ the vine, lest you suffer the fate of the fruitless branch. Abide in Christ the vine, lest you suffer the fate of the fruitless branch. Now it’s interesting, Jesus talks about two types of branches here. He identifies himself as the true vine, but then in verse two he says, every branch in me that does not bear fruit, he takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit, he prunes. Notice that there are similarities between the fruitful and the fruitless branches. First of all, both are described as branches, right? So, and so both are in some sense in Christ. He says, every branch in me that does not bear fruit, he takes away.
In other words, both have at least, have a close relationship to Christ, at least externally speaking. Well, how then are we to identify, or understand rather, these fruitless branches that Jesus speaks of? Well, some believers, some Christians who believe that it is possible for a true Christian, a true believer, to lose his or her faith and fall away and lose their salvation, such as our Lutheran friends, for example, or our Arminian friends, will look at passages like this and they’ll say, ah, see? You Calvinists, you are foreign people, you’re wrong. It’s possible for a true believer to fall away and lose his or her salvation. Jesus talks about branches in him that do not bear fruit and which are taken away. But I would suggest to you, brothers and sisters, not just suggest to you, I would assert to you, that these fruitless branches that Jesus refers to are not in any way to be understood as a true believer who loses his faith, falls away, and thus loses his or her salvation.
You see, if that’s what Jesus means, if Jesus intended in this teaching to tell us that the fruitless branch represents a true believer who falls away and loses his salvation, well then Jesus would be contradicting his own teaching, even his own clear teachings elsewhere in this very gospel, the gospel of John. For in this gospel, true believers are described as those who are preserved by the Father, who are eternally secure in their salvation. And just to give you a few examples of that, turn to John 5, verse 24. Very briefly, John 5, verse 24. The Lord Jesus says this. Jesus says, truly, truly, in the Greek it’s amen, amen, meaning this is absolutely established certain truth. You need not doubt it. Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life.
He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life. Those who’ve heard his word, his gospel, and have believed upon him for salvation. It says they already have eternal life. If you lose eternal life, it wasn’t eternal to begin with. And he goes on to say, he does not come into judgment. Why? Because he’s already passed from a state of spiritual death into life, eternal life. Or consider what the Lord Jesus teaches in John 6, verse 39. John 6, verse 39, Jesus, it says, He says, and this is the will of Him who sent me, God the Father. What is the will of God the Father? Jesus says, that I should lose nothing of all that He has given me, but raise it up on the last day. Jesus clearly teaches that the Father has given a people to His Son.
He has given a chosen people to his son, and it is the Father’s will that he lose none of them, but raise them up on the last day.” Or consider John 10, verses 27 and 28, as in the midst of our Lord’s teachings, a good shepherd teaching, Jesus says this in John chapter 10 verses 27 and 28. Jesus says, my sheep hear my voice and I know them, meaning I love them with a solid, stable, saving love. My sheep hear my voice, I know them, and what do they do? They follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish. It’s my understanding that the Greek is very strong, as if Jesus is saying, they will never, no, not ever 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.
I am the Father. one. Those who belong to Christ, those who abide in Christ, those who believe upon Christ for their salvation are kept by the Son and by the Father and they are secure in that salvation. So if in our passage for today Jesus is teaching that true believers can disconnect themselves from Christ the vine and lose their salvation, then Jesus would be contradicting the uniform teaching of the Bible, which says that all true believers will produce some spiritual fruit of good works in their lives and are secure in their salvation. But in this passage, Jesus describes these branches as fruitless branches. So then, how are we to understand the fruitless branch? What does the fruitless branch represent? Well, the fruitless branch apparently represents the professing disciple, the professing follower of Jesus, who has a close external connection to Christ and the gospel, perhaps through church membership and participation in the outward means of grace, but who, like Judas Iscariot, lack a spiritual and saving union with the Lord Jesus Christ.
They have an external covenantal union with Christ, but they lack that internal saving union with Christ that connects them vitally and savingly to the Lord Jesus Christ and which produces the spiritual fruit, the fruit of the Spirit in their lives. It’s interesting that earlier, before this passage, John records the betrayal of Judas Iscariot, how Judas goes out into the night and has betrayed Christ Judas had recently gone out to betray Christ. Judas Iscariot represents one of these fruitless branches. So our Lord’s warning to his disciples here is basically, and to all of us who profess to be disciples, he’s saying don’t be a fruitless branch like Judas Iscariot. And so, beloved, let us flee from the fate of the fruitless branch. What is the fate of the fruitless branch? Well, Jesus says in verse two, every branch in me that does not bear fruit, he does what?
He takes away and every branch that does bear fruit, he prunes that it may bear more fruit. So in terms of the fruitless branch, the fruitless branch is taken away or lifted up as it could be translated. Christ takes away these fruitless branches because they do not truly belong to the vine and because they threaten the well-being of the healthy, fruitful branches. But then he goes on to say, if you skip down to verse 6, He is thrown away like a branch and withers, and the branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned.” This is a picture of ultimate rejection. It is a picture of professing followers of Jesus. who nevertheless lack true saving faith in Christ, they have never been born again, they’ve never truly trusted Christ as their very own Lord and Savior, and they’re not abiding in Christ, walking in faith in Him, they are thrown away, and they are gathered up and thrown into the fire.
The imagery of withering, this is a picture of spiritual fruitlessness. It is impossible for those who lack this saving union with Christ to do anything that is truly pleasing to God. As our Lord said in verse five, for apart from me you can do nothing. They are gathered and thrown into the fire. Again, this is a picture, a sobering picture of the final judgment. So this is the only option, if you will. These are the only possibilities. Either you, by the sovereign grace of God, abide in Christ, or if you don’t abide in Christ, that means you’ve rejected Him. You may have an intellectual belief in him like Judas did. You may even have close connections to his people, again, like Judas did. Remember, Judas was an apostle of Jesus Christ. Judas heard Christ’s teachings with his very own ears.
Judas saw Jesus perform miracles, healing the sick and raising the dead and casting out demons and walking on the waters and multiplying the loaves and the fishes. Judas saw all of that with his very own eyes. And when the Lord sent out the twelve disciples to preach the gospel and heal in His name, Judas was one of those. Judas had been sent out to preach the gospel and perform healings by the power of Christ, and yet Judas is described in the New Testament as a son of perdition. Why? Because in his heart He didn’t really trust or love the Lord Jesus. He wanted a Savior who was gonna conquer Rome, and he wanted a position in that political kingdom, but he didn’t have a true saving faith in Christ because he wasn’t abiding in Christ.
He was a branch, but he was not a branch that abided in Christ divine. And so, dear friends, Abide in Christ. Believe upon the Lord Jesus Christ, and you shall be saved. And as we turn our attention in weeks ahead to reviewing some of the great basic doctrines of our common Christian faith, let us remember that that doctrine is meant to nourish and nurture our vital union and communion with the Lord Jesus Christ. Abide in Christ, and you will be saved, and you will also bear fruit. And the Father will prune you that you may bear yet more fruit. Amen. Let us pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you and praise you that Christ is the living Lord, that he is the vine, and that we are the branches. Grant that we would all, each and every one of us, be branches that abide in Christ, the true vine.
In Jesus’ name we pray and all of God’s people said, amen. As we close our time in together, let’s rise and we’ll sing our closing hymn number 448, Union with Thee.
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