Hebrews
Lesson 66
September 7, 2006
NKJ Psalm 119:11 Your word I have hidden in my heart, That I might not
sin against You!
We have been studying in Hebrews 6:7-8 a particular
illustration. To understand this illustration I am going to some other
passages in Scripture that relate to this whole agricultural imagery that is
being used here to teach about the Christian life. So let’s just orient
ourselves a little bit by going back to this context. Then we will go to
our passage for this evening which is in John 15.
NKJ Hebrews 6:7 For the earth which drinks in the rain that often
comes upon it, and bears herbs useful for those by whom it is cultivated,
receives blessing from God;
NKJ Hebrews 6:8 but if it bears thorns and briars, it is rejected and near to being cursed,
whose end is to be burned.
This is an illustration of judgment that the writer of
Hebrews goes to at the end of the warning section there in Hebrews 6:4-6
talking about the seriousness that faces the believer who goes into spiritual
regression. They can deteriorate spiritually to the point that, unless God
permits, it is impossible for them to recover. Therein lays the road not
to a loss of salvation, but to a loss of privilege, position, loss of reward at
the Judgment Seat of Christ, loss of blessing both in time and in
eternity. It is important to understand this. All of this imagery is
here because you find similar types of illustrations in the Scriptures that
deal with the fact that believers are designed to grow, mature and produce
fruit in terms of service to God.
So we looked at those symbols. We said that the earth
represents the believer. It is out of the believer that you either produce
that which is profitable for people (the herbs of the field) or that which is
unprofitable (briars or thorns). The rain comes and is provided. That
is the provision that God gives every believer. We all have equal
opportunity in terms of having the Word of God and the Spirit of God who dwells
within us.
Then we have the production of divine good represented
by the herbs and good human, evil, and sin represented by thorns and thistles.
The one who does the cultivating, the one who cares
and is concerned about the production of fruit is in this sense ultimately God
the Father who is comparable to the vinedresser – the one who is the
vineyard keeper in John 15 which is where we are going. The other thing
that we looked at last time as we are doing this is we began to look at some
other passages in order to understand this. The judgment that is being
talked about in Hebrews 6 is not the judgment at the Great White Throne. It is
not the judgment at the end of the tribulation. It is the Judgment Seat of
Christ for believers. There is an evaluation based on the word dokimazo that is found in the text.
When we look at Hebrews 6:8, it uses this word
rejected. If it bears thorns and briars, it is rejected. The English word
rejected is a word that is loaded with a lot of baggage that came from the
translator. He makes it sound like this person ultimately isn’t saved whether
it is the position of the Arminians that they lose salvation or the position of
the Lordship salvation crowd that they weren’t saved to begin with. It is
the idea that they are not saved. That word dokimos
really should be translated disqualified as it is in other passages. It
is adokimos and it means unapproved,
unqualified, unworthy, spurious and worthless. So when we recognize that
the focus here is on disqualification or that which is discredited it gives us
a different sense of the meaning of the passage. Then we are going to
these other passages according to a principle of interpretation.
The fancy word for interpretation is
hermeneutics. According to a basic principle of hermeneutics, you have
what is called the principle of analogy. Do y’all know what that is? I
just ran across this. I was reading a book on hermeneutics about 4 years
ago. This is a time-honored principle. I had never heard it called
that before. It is comparing scripture with scripture. You just have to
go look at other Scripture. It is called the analogy of scripture. You
look at other Scripture and compare. Apparently that is a very time
honored theological phrase that is used there.
So we looked at I Corinthians 9:27 where this same
word is also used - adokimos - with
regard to the Apostle Paul.
Paul says….
NKJ 1 Corinthians
9:27 But I discipline my body and bring it into subjection, lest, when I have
preached to others, I myself should become disqualified.
He is using in this whole illustration as we have seen
the last two weeks - the imagery of a race running in the Olympic event that
would take place in the Greek games. So he is saying after everything you could
do, something that would disqualify yourself from running in the race or
gaining the victory, it doesn’t mean a loss of salvation. Paul would not
lose his salvation, but he could disqualify himself in terms of rewards.
He says he has to daily discipline himself which I
think is a rather pusillanimous translation for the Greek word hupopiazo which is used in a boxing
context of beating someone bloody. It is the idea of a strong, dominating
activity.
He is saying, “I beat my body.”
Some translations translate it that way – I beat
my body into submission. It is a very strong term. Every time I look
at that I am always reminded of the illegitimate use of the principle of
analogy - the illegitimate use of comparing scripture with scripture. You
always have to be careful.
You can come to this passage where it says, “I beat my
body into submission”. Then you go over to Ephesians 5 and Paul tells
husbands that they are to love their wives like their own body! So you
have to be careful how you compare Scripture with Scripture. Here it is
simply that he is emphasizing how rigorous his self-discipline must be to make
sure that he does not disqualify himself in the process of spiritual growth.
That brings us over to John 15 because we are looking
not at the negative (what you do to get disqualified), but at the positive
- how does the believer grow? How does the believer become
qualified? How does a believer produce fruit? What are the mechanics of the
earth producing the herbs? The rain comes on all of us but how does this
take place? God provides the Spirit. God provides the Word of
God. How does the growth take place?
So let’s review the first 6 verses.
NKJ John 15:1 "I am the true vine, and My Father is the
vinedresser. 2 "Every branch in Me that does not bear fruit He
takes away; and every branch that
bears fruit He prunes, that it may bear more fruit. 3 "You are
already clean because of the word which I have spoken to you. 4 "Abide
in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it
abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in Me. 5 "I
am the vine, you are the branches. He
who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do
nothing. 6 "If anyone does not abide in Me, he is cast out as a
branch and is withered; and they gather them and throw them into the fire, and they are burned.
As I pointed out last time what we see here is another
agricultural illustration or analogy. These agricultural illustrations or
analogies tend to be tough for modern 21st century industrialized
urban dwellers to relate to. Perhaps if you have a little tomato plant
growing somewhere you can understand some of this. These are very
important. From the study that I have done on this it is probably true
that many of the theologians who have worked with this and come to certain
conclusions were not very educated in the entire area of viticulture. I
appreciate a work that was done a number of years ago by Gary Derickson who is
now up in Oregon. In fact he works with Wayne House up there. Gary got his
masters in some kind of agriculture and viticulture which is the science and
study of raising grapes. Then he went to Dallas Seminary. So he was
able to combine his previous training in viticulture with the study of the Word
and did some tremendous work on the background for John 15. Many of us are
reliant upon his work because it was so beneficial. It really helped to
understand this particular process.
In the first verse we realize that there are three
types of branches that are in the passage. There is the non-fruit bearing
branch. There is the fruit-bearing branch in the second part of verse
2. Then down in verse 6 there is a non-abiding branch. Now there are
those who come along and they think that the non-fruit bearing branch, as well
as the non-abiding branch, are both unbelievers. They would take the word
that I translated lifted up (many versions KJ, NKJ, and NIV translate this as takes away or
cuts off) and take that to indicate that there is either a loss of salvation or
that they never were truly saved. That is the basic problem that we have
in terms of understanding and interpreting the imagery in John 15:1-6.
Last time I pointed out several things that you should
be aware of to understand the imagery. I have revamped it and added a few
things. If you have got those notes I am going to go through those again. I
have 8 observations here.
Peter
says, “No Lord, You are not going to wash my feet.”
The Lord
said, “Yes, if you don’t let me wash your feet then you don’t have any
inheritance, any role or any portion with Me.”
The
technical word there is meros
indicating an inheritance portion.
Peter said, “Well Lord, wash all of me.”
The Lord said, “No, you are already clean.”
The key
word there – it is the same word we are going to see in verse 3 - already
cleaned indicating everybody there was already saved.
He says, “All of you are clean except one.”
Of
course that is Judas. Then there is the episode where He hands the sop to
Judas and Judas leaves. Eleven remain. Those 11 are all believers. From
that point on (the middle of chapter 13) Jesus is addressing 11
believers. I think that is very important to the understanding of this
passage. Jesus isn’t talking to a mixed group of unbelievers and
believers. He is not talking to a group of unbelievers. The focus is
not helping them understand how to be saved, how to be justified. They are
already saved and justified. He is talking to them about how to maintain a
relationship with Him once He leaves. That is the whole focus of the
middle of John 13 through the high priestly prayer in John 17. He is
giving them Church Age truth. He is going to be going to the cross the
next day. He talks about His relationship with the Father. He talks about
the Father sending another Comforter. He talks about the Holy Spirit
coming. The Holy Spirit will lead them into all truth and guide them and
direct them. Here He talks about their future relationship with Him. So
the Father has already been mentioned 23 times. In this context the Father
is presented in terms of one who is particularly, intimately involved with them
and has a personal caring relationship for them. It is not some sort of
abstract deity out there in the outer reaches of the universe somewhere.
He said,
“Okay, I have got to illustrate certain principles so I am going to create an
animal or a plant that is going to have certain characteristics so that I can
use that to illustrate doctrinal principles.”
So the
vine is useless for anything other than what it produces. You can’t use it
for firewood. You can’t use it in building furniture. You can’t go
out and build a home out of it. It is pretty much useless except for what
it produces for the benefit of the vinedresser.
NKJ Ephesians 2:8 For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of
yourselves; it is the gift of God,
NKJ Ephesians 2:9 not of works, lest anyone should boast.
Close
the Bible. But the next verse starts off with the explanatory word in the
Greek gar meaning to explain why this
has happened, why we have this salvation by grace through faith.
NKJ Ephesians 2:10 For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works,
which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.
There is
the same idea where we see this picture of God as a worker, a
vinedresser. We are His workmanship.
To sit
in Bible class and take notes for the rest of our lives? No.
NKJ 1 John 1:10 If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar, and His word is
not in us.
Now I
know this may be asking too much for everybody tonight to hold on to one phrase
there but we will get back to it next week. That is the concept of walking
in them. We are immediately talking about the Christian life. The word
walk in the Scripture, the Greek word peripateo
is used as a metaphor for living - that step-by-step, day-to-day course of
life that we have. So we are created for a purpose. We are
regenerated for a purpose and that is that God has prepared good works, service
that we should walk in them.
You get
into these discussions sometimes with people who say, “I don’t
know. So-and-so wasn’t saved. I didn’t see any fruit in his
life.”
Wait a
minute. What do you mean by fruit? Only a mature plant produces
fruit. Only a mature Christian produces fruit. We just mess up our
terminology. Immature plants are supposed to grow first. You go
through a lengthy stage of growth. It produces the basic stem growth. Leaves
come out and the branches. It takes time before there is any fruit
production. If something along the way stifles the growth, then you never
get to fruit production.
So many
people think, “Well, I didn’t see any fruit.”
They don’t
know what fruit is either. There is a lot of confusion on just exactly
what fruit is. We will get to that when we get to Galatians 5. It
has to do with character. It takes time for there to be a transformation
of character. That is the fruit of the Spirit – Galatians 5:21-22.
That is some introductory material that we went over
last time.
Now we get into verse one and we read…
NKJ John 15:1 "I am the true vine, and My Father is the
vinedresser.
Jesus tells us what the symbols represent. Now that is
important in Scripture because when it comes to interpretation God doesn’t
expect us to go into our closet and contemplate our naval to figure out what
the symbols mean. The Scriptures always interpret themselves.
Jesus is the vine. The Father is the
vinedresser.
NKJ John 15:2 "Every branch in Me that does not bear fruit He
takes away; and every branch that
bears fruit He prunes, that it may bear more fruit.
This is where we get into the discussion I pointed out
last time over interpretation. I will briefly run through the
options.
Option
#1
Some people will say that unfruitful means that this
is not a true believer because they weren’t genuinely saved. I pointed out
last time that category of a professing believer is non-existent in the
Scripture. You have professing Christians, but that is different. I
really want to emphasize this and make sure that you understand the
difference. I can say that I am a Christian because I go to the Metho-Baptist-Presbyterian
Church, but that doesn’t mean I am really saved. That is making a profession
of being a Christian. That is different from saying that I am a believer
in the Lord Jesus Christ. I have just professed faith in Christ. When you
read the literature on this it is easy (or if you get into discussions with
somebody) if you don’t define these terms to slip and slide. It gets
messy. They go from one side to the other. Everybody believes that there
are professing Christians. As soon as they start talking about professing
Christians, the next thing that you know what they are really talking about is
a professing believer. A professing believer is someone who is saved.
Option
#2
The branches that are taken away represent believers
that lose their salvation. Of course we know that is not true.
Option
#3
The unfruitful branches are Christians who will
experience divine discipline in time (both positively and negatively) and lose
rewards in eternity. When we look at the unfruitful Christian in verse 1
(the branch in Me that does not bear fruit) what we will see is that this can
be an immature believer who hasn’t matured yet to the point that he is
producing fruit. That is where understanding viticulture of the day helps
understand the principle.
Another exegetical point is that John uses this phrase
“in Me” in a different way than Paul uses the phrase “in Christ.” I went
through this last time. “In Me” is used some 16 times in the New
Testament. When it involves persons in the Godhead it always speaks about
their intimate relationship. It is not just a positional reality. “In
Me” indicates fellowship.
Now what we have in these verses starting in verse 2,
Jesus says “in every branch in Me”.
You notice that there is something left out
there. Let me read these to you and you listen to what I say – every
time you hear “in Me” in this passage.
Vs. 2 Every branch in Me.
Vs. 4 Abide in Me and I in you...unless you
abide in Me.
Vs. 5 He who abides in Me
Vs 6 Anyone who does not abide in Me
Vs 7 Abide in Me...My words abide in you
So every time we have the phrase “in Me” with the
exception of verse 2, what else is there? Did you hear it? The verb
abide. Every place. Six times you have “in Me” in the passage. Only
one of them does not have abide. In that first usage abide is
ellipsized. Here is a good word for you. It is elided. Don’t you
love that? I just love learning a new word. Ellipsis is when a word
is left out. That’s a noun. Ellipsized is not the correct term. It
is elided. At least you have learned something when you leave here
tonight.
So the word that is elided in verse 2 is
abide. “Every branch abiding in Me.” It is understood from the
context that at the very beginning when He says, Every branch in Me, he is
talking about every branch abiding in Me. It is just that it is left
out. You find this many times in literature and in language. It is
understood from the context that he is talking about a branch that is
abiding. So the concept of “in Me” throughout this section is a term that
is related to and emphasizes fellowship. We see this in other passages in
the same context in John.
NKJ John 16:33 "These things I have spoken to you, that in Me
you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation; but be of good
cheer, I have overcome the world."
The believer only has peace when he is in fellowship
with God. When he is not in fellowship with God, he doesn’t have that
peace. We see this in our chart. We have positional reality in Christ when
we are baptized by the Spirit.
Then we have an ongoing relationship with Jesus. When
we disobey Him when we sin then we are out of fellowship and we are walking in
darkness. We are not walking in the light anymore. Then we confess
our sin and of course we are back in fellowship. The principle is to maintain
that ongoing walking by the Spirit, which we are going to see here is tantamount
to abiding in the Spirit. How do we know that? Let me give you a
preview of where we are going here. Look down to verse 5.
NKJ John 15:5 "I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much
fruit; for without Me you can do nothing.
Does what? Bears much fruit. So what is the sole
and necessary condition for producing fruit in John 15:5, the one thing that
you have to have to produce fruit? It is “abiding in Me.” If you
don’t abide, you don’t produce fruit. So you have two types of believers
– abiding believers who produce fruit and then what we will see in verse
6 is the branch that doesn’t abide, that doesn’t produce fruit. Of course you
all know that the key passage that talks about fruit production is over in
Galatians 5 – the fruit of the Spirit. What is the sole and
necessary condition in Galatians 5:16-25 for fruit production? Walking by
the Spirit. If Paul says you have to walk by the Spirit in order to
produce fruit and you can’t produce fruit unless you are walking by the Spirit
and Jesus says you have to “abide in Me” in order to produce fruit and if you
don’t “abide in Me” you don’t produce fruit - what is the relationship between
walking by the Spirit and abiding in Christ? They are the same thing. They
are looking at it from the role of the Spirit in Galatians 5 and the role of
Jesus, the Second Person of the Trinity in the spiritual life in John 15. But
they are tantamount to the same thing. If you are walking by the Spirit,
you are abiding in Christ.
We go to Ephesians 5 from about verse 3 down to verse
7. There is a textual problem there. In the NASB and NIV and some others it says walking in
the light but in the majority text it says walking in the Spirit. If you
walk in the light or walk in the Spirit depending on how you take that (we will
look at that later) you produce what? Truth and righteousness. It is
the fruit of the Spirit again.
You go down a few more verses later in Ephesians 5 and
you come to verse 18 and it says...
NKJ Ephesians 5:18 And do not be drunk with wine, in which is
dissipation; but be filled with the Spirit,
You see what I am doing here is connecting dots by
comparing Scriptures. We are looking at this concept of fruit production
from Hebrews 6. We are going to tie all of these things together to show
that the indispensable reality in fruit production is having that ongoing
fellowship with the Godhead. When we are in right relationship with the
Godhead (abiding in Christ and walking by the Spirit and applying the Word),
then the result is that fruit is produced in our lives. That fruit is
defined in Galatians 5:21-23 as love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness,
gentleness. All of this is character. The character Christ that is
being produced in us as our mentality is being transformed - Romans 12:2. That
pulls all of these different things together. That is where we are headed.
In John 15:2 we read…
NKJ John 15:2 "Every branch in Me that does not bear fruit He
takes away; and every branch that
bears fruit He prunes, that it may bear more fruit.
The Greek word here is the word airo. It is a present active indicative. It represents
the action at that particular time. The vinedresser lifts it up. Of course
we have a controversy over this whether airo
should be understood as lifting up or as some people take it as cutting away or
taking away. In the Gospel of John the word airo is used 24 times. In 10 of the 24 times it means to lift
up. The other 14 times it means to cut away. So it could be either one. It
is used in conjunction here with another verb, kathairo. Do you see the similarity in the two words, airo and kathairo? Kathairo
is the word translated pruning dealing with the branch that bears fruit. So,
“every branch that does not bear fruit – airo.
“Every branch that does bear fruit – kathairo. Kathairo is the root airo plus
the Greek preposition kata attached
to it which intensifies it. What is interesting is that kathairo is related to the katharizo which is where we get our
English word cauterized, and it means to purify or to cleanse.
That is the word that we find in I John 1:9.
NKJ 1 John 1:9 If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to
forgive us our sins and to cleanse us
from all unrighteousness.
Do you see how I am connecting the dots here? Everybody
is looking real intense – like you are lost. I am tying things
together here. It is stringing it all together. That is showing the comparison
of Scripture with Scripture.
What Jesus says here is that every branch abiding “in
Me” that does not bear fruit He either takes it away or lifts it up. RK
Harrison argues that technically airo
that we find here in this passage comes from the root that means to lift and
does not come from a similar verb aireo,
which means to take away. He argues that this was the word used in an
agriculture context. Kathairo
definitely was. There is clear indication in contemporary first century
literature that when the laborers who went out into the field and pruned the
branches the word that was used in the agriculture literature was kathairo. But Jesus is also using
it because it is a play on words and sounds like airo. It also relates to the whole concept of cleansing and
purification that has to take place in the believer’s life in order for fruit
to be produced. There has to be ongoing forgiveness of sins. He is
being very economical in his use of words. It is doing triple duty.
Now Pliny the Elder (I have mentioned him before) was
a Roman naturalist. We only have one work that survives of his writings
and that is his book on natural science. In that book he gives us a description
of what was the typical practice of pruning in the ancient world. He
says…
Thus
there are two kinds of main branches; the shoot which comes out of the hard
timber and promises wood for the next year is called a leafy shoot.
What he is describing here is the main trunk of the
vine. It is going to put out a branch. This promises that next year
(this year it is not producing any fruit) if it is allowed to grow it will
thicken up and it will produce for next year. So it has that promise of
production for next year. It is too young to produce fruit this year.
or else
when it is above the scar
The scar would be caused because the Romans introduced
the concept of taking the grape vine and tying it up to a trellis. Before
that the Jews would sort of let it trail along the ground or they would prop it
up with a rock. The Romans introduced the idea of using a trellis to tie
up the branches of the vine up so that there would be greater air-flow, the
dew would evaporate more quickly, there would be less loss and rotting of the
fruit.
It is a
fruit-bearing shoot, whereas the other kind of shoot that springs from a
year-old branch is always a fruit-bearer. There is also left underneath
the cross-bar a shoot called the keeper- this is a young branch not longer than
three buds, which will provide wood next year if the vines luxurious growth has
used itself up. Another shoot next to it the size of a wart and called the
pilferer is also left in case the keeper shoot should fail.
So what he is saying here is describing the fact that
there are two or three different kinds of branches depending on their location
on the basic stem that would come out and were left. They weren’t cut
off. They were lifted up and supported so that they would grow and be
stronger and next year they would produce fruit.
One other point - that kind of pruning took place in
the spring. What time of year is it? It is the spring. One of
the things that Derickson points out is that there were two different times of
the year when a vine would be pruned. There is a major pruning that takes
place in the fall as the plant is going dormant for the winter and then there
was this other kind of pruning that sort of cleaned things up for fruit
production during the summer. They would cut up the suckers that were
basically pulling away a lot of energy away from the plant and not allowing that
energy to go into the fruit. So what this is talking about is that every
one who is not in Me does not bear fruit, he lifts up. That is what they
would do. They would come along and cut off these suckers and lift up or
support these branches that would not produce fruit this year but they would
for the next year. That is analogous to the young immature believer who
hasn’t grown enough to produce fruit. So this is the process showing how
God comes along and encourages the young believer and as it were props them up
and encourages them so that as they continue to grow then down the road they will
be able to produce fruit. It is completely inconsistent to think that this
is either the loss of salvation or one that wasn’t truly saved because Jesus
clearly says the branch is in Him. No matter what else you do you have
that the branch is “in Him.” So this indicates the young believer.
Then the next phrase is “every branch that bears
fruit.” So we have a branch that doesn’t bear fruit but is abiding. Then
we have a branch that bears fruit - He prunes it. This is a word that is
used for cutting back the suckers and other little leaves and stuff that will
take energy from the fruit that is already there. He uses the word kathairo for pruning. Now if you
look in your Bibles down to verse 3, there is a play on words there. In
verse 3 you have the noun “you are already clean” - katharos.
Now this is a word that is really packed with meaning
because this is the same word that Jesus used back in John 13:10 where Jesus
says to Peter...
NKJ John 13:10 Jesus said to him, "He who is bathed needs only
to wash his feet, but is completely
clean; and you are clean, but not all of you."
You all (second person plural) are clean, but not all
of you. Why weren’t they all clean? It was not because they hadn’t
taken a bath, but because Judas had not been expelled from their midst
yet. So he is talking about the fact that they are all clean.
This is synonymous with saying, “You are all
believers; you are all positionally cleansed.”
We go back to John 15:2 we find this word used (the
verb form) that every branch He prunes that’s talking about that ongoing
cleansing when we confess our sins that ongoing cleansing that allows fruit to
continue to be produced as we grow so that every branch that bear fruit He
prunes so that it may bear more fruit. So you have different levels of
fruit production. You have every branch that bears fruit. It is going
to be pruned so that it may bear more fruit. Then later on we are going to
run into the branch that bears much fruit. So every believer is going to
differ in the amount of fruit that is produced. Some are going to produce more
fruit. Some are going to produce much fruit. It kind of reminds you
of the parable of the soils in Matthew and in Luke where the soil that produces
at the end - some 10-fold, some 20-fold, and some 100 fold. So you have
different levels of production in the believer’s life.
Then we come to verse 4. Now we get the
mandate. He has given us the analogy in verses 1 and 2 and now he gives a
mandate and addresses the disciples directly with a second person plural
imperative – abide in Me. It is a present imperative indicating
on-going abiding. This is what is to characterize a believer’s life as
standard operating procedure.
NKJ John 15:4 "Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot
bear fruit of itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you
abide in Me.
Now let me add something. One of the things that
happens when you read especially the lordship literature is they want abide to
be semantically equivalent to the word faith – that the one who abides is
the one who believes in Jesus. He is saved. They make it
positional. But if it is positional all you have to do is test your
hypothesis by doing a little word substitution.
Believe in Me and I believe in you.
Why would Jesus want to believe in me? This
doesn’t even make sense. You can’t substitute faith for abiding and have
any of this make sense.
Believe in me and I believe in you as the branch
cannot bear fruit of itself unless it believes in the vine.
Or later on when we get down verse 7. “If you
believe in Me, and My words believe in you.”
It doesn’t make sense to take “abiding” as a synonym
for belief. So it is relational. Jesus said that we are to have an
intimate abiding in Him.
This isn’t positional. This isn’t abstract. This
is talking about having a rich deep ongoing personal rapport with the Lord
Jesus Christ and it is reciprocal. “Abide in Me and I in you.” It is a
two-way road here. It is not simply I am gong to be in fellowship with the
Lord. That is another aspect of this. This is talking about the fact
that there is a vine analogy. There is stuff going on between the branch
and the vine. It is a reciprocal relationship.
So Jesus says…
NKJ John 15:4 "Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot
bear fruit of itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you
abide in Me.
Now this is important. The branch cannot bear
fruit on its own. The spiritual life is a supernatural life that goes far
beyond morality. This is one of the hardest things for a lot of Christians
to catch. The Christian life isn’t about being good and being moral. It’s
not about being immoral either. It is about walking by means of the
Spirit. He is the one who produces the real Christian virtue and integrity
in the individual’s life. It is not a matter of going out and pulling
yourself up by your moral boot straps and you have been a drunk or a drug
addict or you have been immoral or you have been a liar and now you are going
to turn over a new leaf because you have been saved and you are going to live
better. It isn’t going to work. Paul tried it in Romans 7. He
couldn’t get anywhere until he realized the dynamic of living by the Holy
Spirit in Romans 8. Jesus is pointing out here that you can’t do it on
your own. The branch has to have that direct nourishing relationship with
the vine.
NKJ John 15:4 "Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot
bear fruit of itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you
abide in Me.
Unless we are abiding in Christ there is no Christian
life; there is no fruit production, there is no growth, there is no
nourishment. Nothing happens. Then he goes on to explain this a
little more. He is going to go back to the basic principle.
NKJ John 15:5 "I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much
fruit; for without Me you can do nothing.
That is the sole and exclusive condition here for
producing fruit. What is producing fruit? It is the manifestation of
the character of Christ from a mature plant, from a mature believer. Then
in verse 6 he uses a third class conditional if. Remember the Greek has
different ways of expressing “if”. If and it is probably so. That is a
first class condition. If and it is probably not so. That is a second
class condition. It and it could be either way. That is a true
hypothetical.
NKJ John 15:6 "If anyone does not abide in Me, he is cast out
as a branch and is withered; and they gather them and throw them into the fire, and they are burned.
You may or you may not. It emphasizes the
individual’s volition of the believer. It is up to you whether or not you
are going to abide in Christ.
This is judgment. This is divine
discipline. This is what happens in the fall pruning process. In the
fall after the fruit has been produced then the workers come out and cut off
the branches that are old, the branches that didn’t bear fruit. They trim
up the plants to prepare it for that dormancy period. After they have
cleaned everything up they pile it up and they burn it in the field. That
is what Jesus is talking about. It is the imagery of what was actually
happening in the field. They would take all of the dead branches and
stumps and rotten branches and everything else and pile it up. They would
burn it.
Remember I used a quote from Pliny in relationship to
Hebrews 6: 7-8 where it talks about burning there as a sign of judgment. He
said that after the harvest everything in the field would be burned. There are
certain chemicals that come from burning, that come from the ashes of the fire
that then go back and provide nourishment for the soil. It cleanses the
soil so that next year it can produce even more fruit. So this is part of
that process. It is not to be understood when he says that they are
gathered and thrown into the fire and burned that this is the Lake of
Fire. It is simply talking about judgment or discipline on the unfruitful
believer for failing to be fruitful.
Then in verse 7 he says…
NKJ John 15:7 "If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you,
you will ask what you desire, and it shall be done for you.
Third class condition again.
It impacts your prayer life. It is the same
principle that you have over in Psalm 66:18.
NKJ Psalm 66:18 If I regard iniquity in my heart, The Lord will not
hear.
If you don’t regard iniquity in your heart - if you
are in fellowship then the Lord will hear you. That is what Jesus is saying in
verse 7 – if you are in fellowship with Him then there is genuine
communication in prayer.
As we come to verse 7 he uses this word abide which
has been the key word all the way through this section. It is used 10
times in 6 verses.
Fruit was used 6 times in 6 verses. So what is he
talking about? It is really easy to figure out just from the proportion of
the words used there. It is abiding for the purpose of fruit production.
Then he concludes in verse 8 saying….
NKJ John 15:8 "By this My Father is glorified, that you bear
much fruit; so you will be My disciples.
A disciple is something that goes beyond just being a
believer. A lot of people get confused on that. They think that the
qualifications for being a disciple are the same as for getting into heaven but
Jesus makes a distinction between what is required to get into heaven (in other
words what is required to be saved which is trusting in Christ) and what is
required to go beyond that which is discipleship. Discipleship has
conditions upon it. You have to do things. Jesus said in Luke…
NKJ Luke 9:23 Then He said to them
all, "If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and
take up his cross daily, and follow Me.
That is not talking about getting saved; it is talking
about being a disciple.
The word disciple from the Greek word methetes means to be a learner, someone
who wants to acquire knowledge and skill in the knowledge, someone who wants to
go beyond simply being in the family. He wants to be a mature productive
member of the family and glorify God. It is related to bearing much
fruit. It is not related to the branch that does not bear fruit.
So when we come to this chapter, we can plug what we
learned into Hebrews 6, Let’s wrap this up.
NKJ Hebrews 6:7 For the earth which drinks in the rain that often
comes upon it, and bears herbs useful for those by whom it is cultivated,
receives blessing from God;
NKJ Hebrews 6:8 but if it bears thorns and briars, it is rejected and near to being cursed,
whose end is to be burned.
That is the same concept of bearing fruit whether it
is bearing fruit, more fruit or much fruit. It is the concept of bearing
fruit as a result of abiding. The whole concept of drinking in the rain
that comes upon it is that concept of abiding. The contrast is to the soil
that bears thorns and briars. That’s the branch that is not abiding and
doesn’t produce fruit. Here it is producing thorns and briars and is
disqualified and near to being cursed. It is showing it that it is on the verge
of receiving divine judgment whose end it to be burned. That is simply the
agricultural reality that such soil would be burned in order to clear it off
and prepare it for production. It is not talking about judgment. It is
part of the illustration.
So now that we have looked at John 15, we have a good
understanding of what those dynamics are to produce spiritual fruit. We
have to abide in Christ. It is connected to not only to abiding in Him but
letting “My words abide in you”. So it is not just a matter of saying I am
going to have a good relationship with Jesus and I am going to be in fellowship
with the Lord, but the other part of the equation is I have to let His words
have that ongoing relationship and impact in me. It is not about getting into
fellowship; it is about staying there. That is what abide means. Meno means to stay, remain, to stay
someplace. It is not just about getting in fellowship. All 1 John 1:9 is,
is a grace recovery tool.
It gets up back to the place where production can take
place. It doesn’t produce anything. This is one of the problems I
think people get into.
They think, “As long as I confess my sin.”
I had somebody tell me not long ago…
“Well, I just keep short accounts with God. I
keep confessing my sins.”
I looked at this guy’s life and he just keeps
committing the same sins over and over again. He never changes anything in
his life. He thinks that everything is going to be fine because he keeps
confessing it. There is no application. There is no abiding. He
is just like a yo-yo bouncing in and out all day long. You think because
at the end of the day you confess your sin you can go through the same process
and live the same life and do it all the same way tomorrow, but you aren’t
going to get anywhere. If you always do what you always did, you will
always get what you’ve always got. You aren’t going to get anywhere in the
Christian life except bounce back and forth in and out of fellowship. It’s
not about getting in fellowship. John 15 tells us it is about staying in
fellowship. And Galatians is going to tell us that it is about walking by
the Spirit. We will get there next week.