Spiritual Life
We have seen in this chapter that Jesus is using the
imagery of the grape vine to indicate the principle of remaining in fellowship
with Him—abiding in Him. Walking by means of the Spirit is the term that Paul
uses; they are comparable to one another. When Jesus talks about abiding in Him
what He means is to remain in fellowship with Him. Abide is the Greek word MENO [menw] meaning to remain, to stay with, to abide, to
continue, and it indicates being in active, continuous relationship with our
Lord. Secondly, we saw the term “in Me” which differs
from the Pauline term “in Christ; they are not the same. “In Christ” is a
judicial tem referring to our position in Christ which takes place at the
instant of salvation when we are identified with Christ in His death, burial
and resurrection, a doctrine known as positional truth. “In Me”
is used by the apostle John to describe close relationship. So it is a
fellowship term, not a judicial term. Putting all of that together, what we see
in this passage is that growth in the Christian life, which is the unique
spiritual life in this Church Age is uniquely based on
the believer’s day to day relationship with Jesus Christ. Jesus said, “Without
Me you can do nothing.” We must continuously abide in Him. The next thing we
have noticed is that the necessary condition for growth and production in the
Christian life is abiding in Christ. We need to make the observation that in
this John 15 passage we have the command to abide in Christ. This is the
necessary condition for producing fruit. Production in the Christian life is
the result of abiding in Christ. In Galatians chapter 5 we see that the
necessary condition for producing the fruit of the Spirit was walking by means
of the Holy Spirit. That produces fruit. It becomes obvious that in biblical
terminology the concept of abiding in Christ is comparable/synonymous
with walking with God the Holy Spirit. That in itself is instructive of what is
involved in this. It is not only a relationship with the Holy Spirit—defined as
the filling of the Spirit in some passages; walking by the Spirit in others—but
here in John 15 it is abiding in Christ.
There is a claim that abiding really means faith,
believing in Christ as saviour. Assuming that to be true for the
sake of argument, if abiding is equivalent to walking that would mean that
belief in Christ as saviour would have to be equivalent to walking.
Since it is clear that walking by the Spirit is a spiritual life concept and
not a salvation concept it shows that it is false to make abiding equivalent to
belief. This is an important argument to show that abiding cannot mean belief, it has to mean spiritual life fellowship, not
justification faith. We have seen that abiding in Christ is accomplished by
walking by means of God the Holy Spirit. So the Christian life is a unique
life, a supernaturally empowered life, empowered by God the Holy Spirit. We
have seen that failure to abide in Christ means that we are a failure in the
spiritual life, we are useless to Christ, and discarded in divine discipline
and the sin unto death. It doesn’t mean that we lose our salvation but that we
become useless in God’s plan.
In the spiritual life what we have is the Holy Spirit
operating to help us learn doctrine. He stores it in our memory and reminds us
of the doctrine that is there. So when we go through life and have to make a
decision where we can apply doctrine or not apply doctrine, the Holy Spirit
brings to our memory that doctrine stored in our minds. He reminds us. Now we
have a decision to make. It becomes clear what the issues are and we have to
decide whether to apply doctrine or not. In the decision to apply doctrine we
have “opened the gate”, as it were, and what happens on the other side is that
the Holy Spirit takes that doctrinal decision you have made to apply doctrine
and uses that to strengthen your soul. It then produces endurance and develops
toward spiritual maturity so that you can eventually, as you reach maturity,
produce fruit. That is the dynamic. The Holy Spirit helps the believer learn
doctrine, helps understand it, stores it in the memory, brings
it to his consciousness where the appropriate doctrine can be recalled. The
believer makes the decision, and then on the other side, after the decision is
made, the Holy Spirit uses that to strengthen the soul—called edification in
the Scriptures. It produces endurance, maturity, and production in the
spiritual life.
In verses 7-12 we see that there are three benefits to
abiding. The first is that abiding in Christ is necessary for a successful
prayer life. A successful prayer life does not mean that prayers are always
answered the way we want them to be answered. A successful prayer life is
defined as a prayer life that gets your petition heard at the throne of grace.
If you are out of fellowship your prayers aren’t going to be heard, so you are
unsuccessful in making your petition. Verse 7 – “If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, as whatever you wish, and it
shall be done for you.” The “if” is a 3rd class condition,
indicating it is a conditional clause—EAN
MEINETE [e)an meinhte], “If you abide in me, maybe you will and maybe you
will not.” It is up to your volition. This is pure contingency and emphasizes
the importance of the believer’s volition as to his continuation and growth in
the spiritual life. He has to exercise his volition and the Holy Spirit will do
the rest.
Two conditions are given in this verse for answered
prayer. The first is the believer’s fellowship with Christ: “If you abide in me.”
But it is not enough to simply be in fellowship, to confess your sins and be in
fellowship. There is one other condition, and this is knowledge of doctrine.
His Word is to abide in us. Now if to abide means continuous relationship it
means that there is something going on dynamically in the mentality of our soul
in relationship to the Word of God. It is not just a sitting down and passively
learning doctrine in Bible class. There is a learning process that goes on, and
once you have acquired the information, the GNOSIS [gnwsij],
the academic knowledge, then there is meditation and contemplation on the
doctrine, your volition is engaged again so that it become EPIGNOSIS [e)pignwsij] (you believe it), and then you apply it. Your
thinking is renovated, transformed. You exchange the old way of thinking for
the new way of thinking. So the two conditions are fellowship with Christ and
knowledge of doctrine. You have to have some doctrine to be able to know what
to pray for and what not to pray for. The first condition emphasizes being in
fellowship and it reminds us of the passage in the Old Testament: “If I regard
iniquity in my heart the Lord will not hear me.” We must be in fellowship with
Him. We see from this that the believer is to maintain an ongoing relationship
with Jesus Christ if he is going to have his prayers heard. Also, the believer
has to maintain an ongoing relationship with Bible doctrine, with the Word of
God, if he is going to have his prayers heard. If you don’t know what God says,
you don’t know anything about what to pray for. Third, believer is to maintain
an ongoing relationship with God the Holy Spirit—Galatians
The main verb here is the aorist middle imperative, second
person plural of AITEW [a)itew], meaning to ask or to request. The plural He is
talking to is specifically the eleven disciples. He may be talking through them
to all Church Age believers but primarily He is talking to the eleven. He is
telling them that there is a mission that is about to be accomplished and about
to be delegated to them to go out and scatter throughout the world carrying the
gospel. If they are going to be successful in that they have to maintain an
intimate fellowship with the Lord, and this will be revealed in their prayer
life. There is a parallel passage to this in 1 John 5:14-15 and it utilizes the
same verb. The phrase “according to His will” is His revealed will, consistent
with all the mandates, prohibitions, directions and procedures that God has
outlined in the Scriptures. Because we know that we are consistently praying
according to these principles in the Scriptures we know that He hears us. The
issue in applying this particular principle is that we need to understand the
Word of God. The better we understand the Word of God, the more we let the Word
of God dwell in us, the more we will be able to ask consistent with His
revealed will. The only way that we can know His will is to assimilate the
doctrine into our souls so that we are thinking as Christ thinks. That way we can evaluate the circumstances based on doctrine
and then pray accordingly.
Conclusion: To have an effective prayer life we must
stay in fellowship with the Holy Spirit, and we must fill up our souls (saturate
our thinking) with Bible doctrine. The result of that eventually is fruit
production.
The second result of abiding is glorification of God,
John 15:8. This is the goal of the spiritual life. God’s will, plan and purpose
is for Him to be glorified in the angelic conflict. “My Father is glorified by
this, that you bear much fruit.” The main verb here is DOXAZO [doxazw], aorist passive indicative indicating past tense,
but it is a future aorist indicating the certainty of the action in the future.
So it is viewed as a past tense. It means to glorify or to honour someone. We
honour God when we show respect for Him in terms of the angelic conflict by
producing fruit. But we don’t produce the fruit, it is
the Holy Spirit who produces the fruit in us. What we do is focus upon abiding
in Christ, walking by the Spirit, staying in fellowship, learning doctrine;
then eventually it is the Holy Spirit who produces the fruit. It is the fruit
that is the basis for glory.
Notice: Verse 2 talks about fruit, then more fruit.
Here in verse 8 it is “much fruit.” There are three different stages of
Christian adulthood manifested here: those who produce fruit, those who produce
more fruit, and those who produce much fruit. The difference is related to
abiding in Christ, but the goal is to produce fruit. A plant doesn’t produce
fruit until it reaches maturity, so we have to go through that growth stage
from infancy to maturity before fruit appears and begins to be produced. 1
Peter 2:2—Peter caught the message that it in only by feeding the sheep that
growth is produced. That is the focus of the pastor; that was the focus of the
apostolic ministry. It is only through the nourishment of doctrine that we can
grow and mature in the spiritual life.
“… and so prove to be My
disciples” – the verb is the aorist passive of GINOMAI [ginomai], which can mean to become. The NASB translation “prove” is
a translator’s interpretation, maybe because he thought the passage deals with salvation.
A disciple does not necessarily mean a believer but a believer who is advancing
to spiritual maturity. The word for “disciple,” MATHETES [maqhthj] means a learner, a student. This passage should be”
“that you will become disciples.” It is talking about spiritual
maturity, not proof but the fact that you will become a mature disciple through
bearing much fruit—the evidence of discipleship.
Abiding in Christ is necessary to be the beneficiary
of God’s personal love for the believer. God will still exercise impersonal
love toward the carnal believer, but not as he will an advancing believer. You
have to be in fellowship, filled with the Spirit, abiding in Christ, in order
to be a beneficiary of God’s personal love. This is measured through objective
standards. Verses 9, 10: the Scripture gives us a criterion for measuring how
well we love the Lord. “As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you:
continue ye in my love.” Here He is viewing them, not
simply as believers in terms of impersonal love because the Father does not
have impersonal love toward the Son. Why? Because the Son is
perfect righteousness. Impersonal love is that which we exercise toward
someone who may be, at the time, offensive to us, obnoxious to us, not doing
what we want, but we are still going to do what is best for them. It is
unconditional love. The Father does not have that kind of love for the Son
because they are in perfect harmony, perfect fellowship, perfect
intimacy. Here he is viewing the disciples as abiding disciples, at that point.
The pattern is the Son’s relationship to the Father. Jesus Christ has set the
precedent for the spiritual life, so “abiding in My
love,” therefore, indicates relationship. It indicates the relationship of the
believer to our saviour. The standard is given in verse 10. “If [3rd
class condition: maybe yes, maybe no] keep my commandments.” These are all the
mandates and prohibitions given in the Scriptures for the spiritual life of the
believer. How do we know if we love the Lord? It is measured by obedience.
The next thing we notice is that abiding in Christ
continually results in the completion of divine joy, verse 11, “…so that your joy may be made full.” The word “full” is
from PLEROO [plhrow] which indicates in
this context something that is filled up or brought to completion—“so that your
joy may be filled up.” It indicates that there is a progressive nature here to
joy. “These things” refers to doctrine; “that I have spoken to you, that My joy may be in you.” This tells us that joy is not
emotion. The joy that Jesus is talking about is based upon learning certain
principles and looking at life in a certain way, and responding to situations
in life based upon those principles.