Abiding in the Vine

Hi, Nathan W. Bingham here. Before we get to today's episode, I wanted to make you aware of an upcoming travel opportunity with other listeners of Renewing Your Mind and Friends of Ligonier, a Caribbean study cruise that sets sail next February. I'll be there and Dr. Derek Thomas and Pastor Ken Jones will be our teachers as they lead us through the rich theological truths of Galatians 3.

Enjoy eight days of teaching, refreshment, and fellowship when you travel with us on this Caribbean study cruise. This is the instrument that I use in order to make my branches fruitful. We all want to be fruitful branches, don't we?

But that doesn't mean we necessarily want the seasons of pruning that that may involve. There is so much contained in Jesus' description of Himself as the true vine, and that's what Sinclair Ferguson will unpack for us on this Wednesday edition of Renewing Your Mind. The way God the Father often makes us most fruitful, you'll hear Dr. Ferguson explain today, is by the way He cuts away from our lives everything that is extraneous to His central purpose to use us for His glory. This is an important truth when it comes to Christian growth, so please stay with us. Before you hear today's message, don't forget that this week only, when you give a year-end donation of any amount at renewingyourmind.org, we'll unlock this series and study guide in the free Ligonier app, plus send you Dr. Ferguson's Christmas devotional, Love Came Down at Christmas.

So respond today while supplies last. Well, here's Dr. Ferguson on what it means to abide in the vine. Now we've reached the halfway point in these studies and the farewell discourse of our Lord Jesus. And for this, our seventh study, we're turning to the first half of the 15th chapter of the Gospel of John. And that chapter begins with words that I'm pretty sure will be familiar to all of you, a much loved section of John's Gospel, where Jesus teaches the disciples that He is the vine, that the Heavenly Father is the vine dresser, and that they are the branches in the vine.

Let me begin the study by asking a kind of Christian trivial pursuit question. What is the most common way that a Christian is described in the New Testament? What is the most common way a Christian is described in the New Testament?

Strangely enough, it's not as a Christian. There's less than a handful of occasions in the New Testament where believers are actually described as Christians. And when they were first called Christians, it may well have been a title that was used to demean them rather than to praise them. The answer to the question is that the most common way in which believers are described in the New Testament is by the use of an expression that we are in Christ, or we are in Christ Jesus. And this is what Jesus Himself is now beginning to explain to His disciples. You remember at the end of chapter 14 when He'd spoken about the coming ministry of the Holy Spirit, that the fruit of that ministry would be that they would discover that they, His disciples, were in Christ and that Christ was in them. What He was teaching them was that since the Holy Spirit had been with Him from the conception in the womb of the Virgin Mary until His death and right through to His resurrection until He would then send the Holy Spirit into the lives of believers, to have the Holy Spirit indwelling us is having Jesus Himself indwelling us. That's the way Jesus indwells His disciples. And here in John chapter 15, because this was a very mysterious concept to these believers, they knew Jesus in an objective way. They had watched Him. They had seen the power of the Spirit in Him.

But it must have been difficult for them to grasp that the way they would be advantaged by Jesus going was that in a very special, if mysterious sense, Jesus Himself would come to dwell in their hearts. And so this expression that Christ is in us and that we are in Christ becomes the most common way in the New Testament to describe what it means to be a Christian. In fact, it's so common and so important that it's absolutely essential for you and for me as Christians to think about ourselves in this way, that Christ comes to dwell in us and that through faith we come to dwell in Christ so that all the resources and riches of grace in Jesus Christ become ours the moment we become Christians. I sometimes wonder whether most Christians actually think of themselves that way. It's a question worth asking about yourself, isn't it?

Is the most common way in which I think about myself? Or to use the modern language, is my self-image as a Christian to think of myself as somebody who is in Christ and in whom the Lord of glory dwells? Many of us, when we become Christians, actually we think of becoming a Christian as a very small thing. But here the New Testament is teaching us that it is a vast revolutionary reality in our lives. We are taken over by the Lord Jesus and the Lord Jesus through his Spirit comes to dwell in us. We come to be united to him and we live in his presence and by his power. And in order to help his disciples grasp this, Jesus uses this marvelous picture of the vine and the branches. He's really saying to them, I know you're not able to take in what I've just been saying. So here is a picture that will help you.

Here is a starting place that will enable you to grasp what it is I'm talking about. And of course, the notion of the vine was a picture that these disciples would have been familiar with already. The people of God in the Old Testament scriptures were described as the vine of God's planting.

And now Jesus is, as it were, taking us into the heart of that picture and saying, I want you to see how this picture is fulfilled in my relationship with you. I am the vine. You are the branches. You draw your life from your union with me. I am in you and give you life. You are in me and you draw on my resources. And in addition, think about it this way, that the Heavenly Father is the vine dresser who looks after the vine and makes sure that the vine will become gloriously useful. There are four things here that I want to point out from this passage that I think will help us to grasp the teaching of our Lord Jesus. The first is this, that this union with Jesus he's describing as the vine and the branches, in this union, the source of all our fruitfulness is to be found. We are able to deal with wealth and poverty, says the Apostle Paul, only because we are in Christ and have communion with Christ. When he says in Philippians 4, I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me, he doesn't mean I can do anything I want to do.

He means that I've learned to be able to cope with the ups and downs of life because my life is hidden in the Lord Jesus Christ. Notice how Jesus teaches the disciples here in verse 3, that he has made them clean through the word that he has spoken. He has cleansed them in order that he may use them.

He has cleansed them in order that he may begin to cultivate them. And they need to understand that unless they continue to draw on his resources, they can do no spiritual good. These very famous words he says in verse 5, apart from me, you can do nothing. But what does this mean, to abide in Jesus Christ?

Well, that would take many studies and it would need a book, I think, to explain the whole of the New Testament's teaching. Let me just use one great statement Paul makes in Galatians chapter 2, verse 20, that in a nutshell tells us what it means to live in Christ as the source of all our fruitfulness. Remember how he says there, I have been crucified with Christ. I am no longer living for myself. I live by the faith of the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me.

And I live as one in whom Christ dwells. To be united to Christ means to understand that the Son of God loved you and gave himself for you. Just think of that preposition, he gave himself for you.

And because he did this for you and not for himself. When you come to faith, you come to faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Indeed, Paul sometimes uses the preposition into when he speaks about believing in Jesus. Not just that we believe about Jesus or believe on Jesus, but we believe into union with Jesus. And the result of that is that the life that we now live, we live through the power of the Son of God. And Jesus is therefore saying that our union and communion with him is the source of all our spiritual fruitfulness. And it's very important, as I say, that you and I as Christians day by day remind ourselves that we have been given this wonderful new identity.

I am somebody who is in Christ and in whom the Lord of glory is pleased to dwell. Actually, if you think about this, how it would transform the way we treat each other in the church, wouldn't it? If we looked at each other and thought, this is somebody of whom the Lord Jesus is not ashamed.

He has been willing to come and to dwell in her heart, then often we might treat one another with a great deal more grace and love. And there would be real fruitfulness in the life of our fellowship. But then there's a second thing that we need to learn, and that is that our union with Christ will involve the pruning of the Heavenly Father.

And this is part of the genius, isn't it, of this illustration that Jesus uses. I am the vine, you are the branches, and if the branches are going to bear fruit, one of the things the vine dresser who is cultivating the vine and who is looking for fruit, one of the things he will do will be prune the branches. Not in order to destroy them, but in order that they may bear more fruit. Now, if you have vines or perhaps some of you have vineyards for all I know, or if you are a gardener, then you understand this principle of pruning. If you're not a gardener, it seems a very strange thing to do, that you would apparently destroy in order that there might be more fruit. But what you're doing is you're cutting away anything that is diseased and you're building your plant or your vine so that it may bear more and more fruit in the long term. And so, as the vine dresser, I've been in a friend's vineyards and seen all the cuttings lying on the ground, and these expert men have come along and just slashing away because of their skill to the outsider, to the amateur.

It looks as though they are engaged in a project of destruction, but then when you see the fruit, you understand that they are engaged in this wonderful project of creating more fruit. But you see, we are not vine dressers, are we, in the Christian life? Actually, one of the problems we sometimes encounter in our Christian lives is the fact we are the branches.

It's the same picture, isn't it? The vine being pruned. But it makes a world of difference whether you're the one who's pruning or whether you're the branches who are pruned. Branches don't speak, but these branches are living branches. And so, when we are pruned, we ask the question, why are you doing that? Because we are branches, our response to pruning is often to say, oh, that hurts, stop it. And we need to understand this picture that if we're united to Jesus Christ, the way the Father often makes us most fruitful is by the way He cuts away from our lives everything that is extraneous to His central purpose to use us for His glory. To the amateur eye, it seems both wasteful and sore, but not to the Heavenly Father and not to the disciple who understands what it is the Heavenly Father is doing. Some of you will know the name of the famous missionary of the first half of the 20th century, Amy Carmichael.

She spent 55 years in India without a single furlough, never came home on home assignment, and knew a good deal about suffering. And she writes these words about this very passage. She says, what prodigal waste it appears to see scattered on the floor the bright green leaves and the bare stem bleeding in a hundred places from the sharp knife.

But with a tried and trusted husbandman, there is not a random stroke in it all, nothing cut away which it would not have been a loss to keep and gain to lose. Isn't that a helpful picture of what it means to be united to Christ? It means that the vine dresser will use the pruning knife and it may be sore and mysterious, but he never makes a mistake and nothing he does is ever wasted as he makes us more and more fruitful. The third principle that Jesus enunciates is this, our union with Christ is the source of all our fruitfulness. Our union with Christ means that our lives will be pruned by the Heavenly Father and our union with Christ, he says in the third place, will be nourished by his word. In verse three, he says to them, already you are clean because of the word that I have spoken to you. He's worked in our hearts to bring us new life, to cleanse our hearts. He's done the fundamental work in order to make us fruitful in the future. But then he says in verse seven, if you abide in me and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish and it will be done for you.

What's he speaking about here? Well, what does it mean to let Christ dwell in our hearts? It means to let his word dwell richly in our hearts, as the Apostle Paul says.

Just focus on that word richly for a moment. It means to soak in the word of God. It means to leave no room in our lives that are locked to the influence and power of the word of God. And Jesus is saying, this is the instrument that I use in order to make my branches fruitful. How much we need to grasp that in our own time to understand that we will be made more fruitful the more the word of God is inscribed in our lives.

Some of you will know that C.H. Spurgeon, the great Victorian Baptist preacher, once said about John Bunyan, that if you put a needle into him in any part of his body, he would flow bibbling. And you see what he was saying. He was saying the man had absorbed the word of God and the word of God had transformed his life. It's very interesting in this passage that Jesus teaches us that our calling is to obey the word of God.

And I think many of us grasp that. But there's another aspect to his teaching here that if anything is more fundamental. Modern Christians, I think of this notion that the Christian life is largely of our doing. And so we are always looking for counsel and advice to enable us to do the Christian life better. But the biblical perspective is somewhat different from that. The biblical perspective is that first and foremost, we need to let the word of God do its own work in us. Remember that marvelous expression that Paul uses right into the Thessalonians, how they receive the word of God, not as the word of men, but as it really is the word of God, which is at work in you. And the contrast between that and what sometimes overtakes us is we want to make the word of God work.

But we don't understand that what we need chiefly to do is to let the word of God itself work in us. I am often struck by the contrast between the strength of Christians in the past and the weakness of Christians in the present. I think many of us suffer from a kind of spiritual anemia, don't we?

And I read somewhere some time ago, there are apparently 400 different kinds of anemia that it's possible to suffer from. And I think that really is true in the Christian life. But then you look at the average Christian experience and actually in the Evangelical church, it's something like this. You would hear one sermon that lasts no longer than half an hour once a week. And you contrast that with Christians of my youth, most of them would hear three sermons that would last 40 minutes in a week. And then if you contrast that with the experience of people at the time of the Reformation, they would hear nine sermons that lasted 40 minutes every week. And then you say, how is it that so many of these people in the past stood fast for Christ, their lives shone for Christ, and we suffer from this spiritual anemia?

And here is the answer. We have a profound lack of vitamin W in our churches, don't we? We have a profound lack of the Word of God itself doing its own work in us.

We are so self-absorbed that we want to do the work. But unless the Word does the work in us, this is why it's so important for us to sit under the Word of God when it's ministered, to encourage those who teach us and preach us to give us more, not less. To feed us, to look to those who are our shepherds and pastors like sheep and say, feed me, feed me on the best of food, pour it into my soul by the power of the Spirit. I want the Word of Christ to dwell in me richly in order that my fellowship and union with Christ may bear more fruit. So Jesus is expounding these principles, and he comes to the fourth of them, and it's this. If his first principle is that our union with him is the source of our fruitfulness, the second that it will involve the pruning of the Father, the third that it needs to be nourished by the Word, the fourth is that its most important fruit is love. And you see, now what he's saying, we know we should love one another, we should love God, we should love our neighbors, we should love the needy, we should love the lost, but we also know I don't have it in me to do that. And Jesus is saying, yes, but when my Word begins to do its work within you, my Father will be glorified by the way in which you love him and by the way in which you love one another and by the way in which you love the lost.

Some commentators believe that by this time Jesus and the disciples had left the upper room. I don't share that view myself, but it is interesting that if they did and if they passed by for the last time the temple precincts, they would have seen there as Josephus, the historian, records a massive mural of a vine with clusters of grapes the size of a mass. And if that were true, what an illustration this is of the fruitfulness of the Christian life, that clusters of grapes the size of a human being would be seen in my life, my whole life, bearing fruit for the Lord Jesus Christ. And people beginning to understand that this overflow of love was an indication that I was united to the Lord Jesus. And do you notice why Jesus says this in verse 11? It is that his joy might be in you and that your joy might be full.

So may it be so for each and for all of us. That was Sinclair Ferguson teaching on Jesus as the true vine on this Wednesday edition of Renewing Your Mind. Today's message is from Dr. Ferguson's series Lessons from the Upper Room. In the final hours before his death, Jesus spent time with his disciples to quiet their troubled hearts and intercede on their behalf before the Father. You can walk through these moments recorded for us in John's Gospel to find encouragement for your pilgrimage when you request lifetime digital access to the series and study guide with your donation of any amount at renewingyourmind.org or when you call us at 800-435-4343. In addition to access to all 12 messages in this series, we'll send you Dr. Ferguson's Christmas devotional, Love Came Down at Christmas. Drawing on 1 Corinthians 13 and stories from the Gospels, this devotional shows us what love looked like in the life of Christ and challenges us to love like him. Request this resource bundle at renewingyourmind.org or by clicking the link in the podcast show notes. Jesus told his disciples that a little while you will see me no longer and again a little while and you will see me. Looking back, we know that Jesus was speaking of his death and resurrection, but was that obvious to his disciples? Join us tomorrow here on Renewing Your Mind. .