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Author: Stephen Weller
577 words, 3 minutes read time

Who Bears Much Fruit?

Scripture: John 15:4-5

From previous lessons we learned that the purpose of the branch is to produce fruit, but like our salvation apart from Jesus, bearing fruit is impossible. In this lesson we will see the importance of abiding in Jesus Christ if we expect to be fruitful and not be taken away and burned.

^{Jn 15:4} “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. ⁵ 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.

“Abide in me” is to remain in or to continue in a daily, personal relationship with Jesus, which according to some is characterized by trust, prayer, obedience and joy. I see it as being more fundamental than that. The idea of I am in Jesus and he is in me, suggest our coming together in spiritual birth. This is seen in John 17:23 ESV: “I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one.” “They” are the many members of one body Paul refers to in 1 Corinthians 12:12. The many members will one day become perfectly one body with Jesus as the head. The best metaphor I can think of to express this is the human body. We have a head containing a brain which is the control center of our nervous system. With Jesus as the head the Holy Spirit could be seen as the nervous system that will perfectly connect all believers into one perfectly functioning body. In this body there will be perfect communication between members and with Jesus and since the fruit of the Spirit is love, then the entire body will be saturated in and with love. In our fallen world this body is now a lose connection of believers with a certain amount of friction between us, but in the next life the body will become perfectly one.

A born-again condition of Christ in us (Colossians 1:27) and we in Christ (2 Corinthians 5:17) is necessary if the branch is to bear fruit as it cannot bear fruit by itself. A branch must have a born-again experience to be connected to the vine from which life and sustenance flows that produces fruit. This metaphor illustrates the necessity of us being in Jesus Christ and he in us if we are to bear fruit, for apart from him we can do nothing.

“Apart from me you can do nothing” does not mean “nothing at all” because, clearly, we can carry on the normal activities of life. What it does mean is that the Christian can do nothing of eternal value; the inability of producing spiritual fruit.

Conclusion

As a Christian how important is fruit bearing to you? How does producing spiritual fruit set your life apart from the unsaved? How do you think your spiritual fruit production relates to the work assignment you were given in Ephesians 2:10? How do you think this will relate to your reward or loss of reward at the judgment seat of Christ? I am not sure that, in general, Christians have a clear focus on bearing spiritual fruit. It seems that there so many other things that attract our attention.