Abide In Christ

This week I was asked to contemplate this question: “How do we give Godly counsel?”

John 15:5 says “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.”

John chapter fifteen contains so much information, but I’ve been chewing on three key words in relation to our question.  The three words are Fruit, Abide, and Christ.

1. Fruit: What is the fruit we bear? 

I have heard one school of thought stating that the fruits in John 15 are people we lead to Christ. In other words, those of this school believe that if we are abiding in Christ then we will be bearing much fruit in the form of leading people to Christ. I agree that believers undoubtedly have a responsibility to share the gospel with the lost (Matthew 28:19). We should always be ready to tell people the reason for the hope that is in us (1 Peter 3:15). But we are not promised that our faithful sharing will ever result in our participating in someone coming to Christ. 1 Corinthians 3:6-7 says, ^“I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. So, neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth.” In John 15 Christ is instructing us to abide in Him and giving us the promise of fruit if we do.  So, I don’t believe the fruit we bear in John 15 can be referring to souls we lead to Christ.  Looking at Jesus’s word picture here in John 15 He says He is the vine and we (believers) are the branches.  So even if we are blessed to participate in people coming to Christ, those new believers would not be fruit we’ve born, but fellow branches of the vine of Christ. 

So, what is John referring to when he mentions fruit? Using Scripture to interpret Scripture, Paul uses a similar word picture in Galatians. He talks about the fruit that comes as a result of the Spirit of God living within us. He says the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control (Galatians 5:22-23).
The author of Hebrews also refers to the fruit produced in believers, the peaceful fruit of righteousness that comes when we are trained by God’s discipline. “For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it” (Hebrews 12:11).  So, in just these few passages we see that the fruits we bear are the evidences of Christ’s Spirit in us, the result of being trained by God’s discipline of us, and the produce of our abiding in Him.

2. Abide: What does it mean to abide?

John 15:5 tells us there is an action we are to take; we are to do something– we are to abide.  Does “abide in Me” refer to the point at which we came to Christ?  Is it something we do once and then it is done? No. The Greek word for abide is meno. It literally means to remain, dwell, continue, tarry, and endure.  It is a verb, which means it is an action. According to blueletterbible.org, abide is an active subjunctive verb which means it is something actively done in the present and future.  So, it is not something done or completed in the past.  It is something actively done on a continual day by day, hour by hour, breath by breath basis.  And it is an action He is instructing each individual believer to do; not one which can be done for us by a pastor, a Sunday school teacher, or a spouse, but one which we must do ourselves.  So, when Jesus says to abide, He is telling us to actively, continually, remain in, dwell in, continue in, tarry in, endure in–In who? In Christ…

3. Christ:

Christ is the epitome of all this. It is Christ we abide in, and through Christ we bear fruit. But how do we obey the instruction to abide in Christ? The first chapter of John says, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God (John 1:1).  And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen His glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14). Christ is the Word.  We abide in Christ by spending time in the Word. Pray, read the Bible, study the Bible, memorize the Bible, let the Word of Christ dwell in you richly (Colossian 3:16).  “If you abide in My word, you are truly My disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free” (John 8:31-32).

The original question I was asked to contemplate was this: How do we give Godly counsel? And my answer is this: we give Godly counsel through prayer and by first diligently laying the groundwork of studying and memorizing the Bible so that when the time comes, and someone asks for counsel, we are ready with the truths of God’s Word.  We give Godly counsel the same way we do everything else– by abiding in Christ for apart from Christ you can do nothing (John 15:5).

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*All Bible quotations are taken from the ESV unless otherwise stated.

*”Bible Search And Study Tools – Blue Letter Bible”. Blueletterbible.Org, 2022, https://www.blueletterbible.org/.