Abiding in Christ

Introduction

I have been wanting to get into grafting for awhile now because of the spiritually rich illustration it provides. We have in our back yard a couple of fruit trees that were planted before we moved in. Our biggest tree is a Granny Smith Apple Tree, but we also have a plum tree and a mulberry bush. During the ice storm our plum tree took a hit and most of it is dead although some of the branches are still producing leaves. I am thinking about trying to graft the plum branches into the apple tree this spring; so I bought this grafting kit here. I wanted to use an object lesson to illustrate the truth of our passage tonight, but everything is dead so pretend with me that these are living branches.

This branch over here represents us when we were lost. We were part of a dead tree and only produces rotten fruit, but at the moment of salvation you were cut out of the dead tree (This is what Paul calls being dead to sin) and you were grafted into Christ. This terminology is throughout our text, all Christians are in Christ.

Now in order to graft on branch into another tree a cut has to be made. Jesus was wounded for our transgressions. The good healthy vine is cut so that the dead branch can grafted in. The dead branch also has to be cut from the dead tree. (This is what Paul calls being buried with Christ in his death) The branch from the dead tree is then taken and placed into the live tree, wrapped with this grafting tape. As the two branch remains grafted into the living tree it draws its sustenance from the living tree and can now produce fruit. The lifeblood of the two parts mix so that the life of the branch is sustained by the life of the vine.

(Have one of the kids come up and test the graft) This part isn’t in our text but you see this grafted connection here where the tape is. This connection is very weak right now; so the vinedresser has to come along and prune the branch of fruit for the first three years. It needs a time to heal and draw its strength from the vine. Too much fruit would weight down the graft and cause the branch to fall off the vine. God is the vinedresser and he nurtures and takes care of our spiritual growth. Periodically, the vinedresser prunes the fruit so that the branch can bear more fruit.

As I said in in the beginning all Christians are in Christ, but Jesus is calling us not just to be in Him. He wants us to Abide in Him. The branch if it is going to bear fruit must have an unbroken relationship with the vine. The amount of fruit we produce is dependent on being connected firmly to the vine and drawing strength from it. Sometimes the vine can get diseased and it cuts the branch off from its life source. Sometimes the branch can not be grafted in very tightly so it doesn’t produce as much fruit as it should. This is the illustration Jesus is using to teach about our lives.

In vs 1, Jesus says he is the vine.

In vs 5, Jesus says again that he is the vine and we are the branches.

Christian Jesus desires more in His relationship with you than merely being In Christ, he desires an abiding relationship with you that radically transforms your life and thrives spiritually. Tonight we are going to be talking about Abiding in Christ.

What is Abiding in Christ

First I want to look at what it means to abide in Christ. The word abide literally means to remain, but it is the idea of finding yourself at home in something. The root meaning of this phrase is having the kind of relationship with Christ that you are completely at home, with Christ. At some level all true believes abide in Christ and the evidence of being a believer is bearing fruit, but we cannot escape that this is a command. John MacArthur takes this passage as if it were just statements of fact about the believer, but misses the thrust of the commands for those who are clean to Abide in me in vs 4. Consider also that not all Christians experience the fullness of the fruit that Jesus talks about. There must be something more to abiding in Christ other than merely being saved. Also if this abiding were merely about salvation then we would have a works based and conditional salvation. Being in christ would depend on our obedience to abide in Him. Jesus wants us to have a thriving relationship with Him that bears more fruit. Salvation begins that relationship, but an abiding relationship is necessary if we are going to see fruit.

Jesus says that He is the true vine. There are a lot of counterfeit vines that you could attach yourself to. Some people try to produce fruit in their lives by pulling up their bootstraps and trying harder. Self-effort cannot produce truly God- glorifying lasting fruit in your life. Some people seek after religious performance to transform their spiritual walk, but this is like attaching two dead sticks together. Some people look to programs but again without the life of Jesus they cannot accomplish anything of truly lasting value. Some look to secular psychology to transform their lives, but it as well coming from the wisdom of the world cannot truly transform a person. Only the power of Jesus Christ living and flowing through our veins can produce fruit.

So when we talk about Abiding in Christ I want to ask what is it?

A unbroken communion with Him- Abide Friend, Jesus wants more from you. He wants a deeper relationship with you than you have had so far. He wants a continual unbroken fellowship with each and every one of us. Isn’t it nice to have a friend who its been years since you talked but you could pick it all back up again where you left off; but isn’t it even better to have a close friend who has been there with you time and again. Your communication never stopped. Those dearest and closest relationships are the ones we invest effort in keeping up over the years. Many in our Millennial culture struggle with building real lasting relationships with people, but Jesus longs for that type of relationship with his people. Abiding is a remaining relationship.

An intimate and complete relationship- In Me The next two words show that this relationship is also intended to be an intimate, personal relationship with Jesus Christ. Your relationship with Jesus Christ should be the closest relationship you have. Closer than your wife, your sister, your best friend or even your dog. Our life flows out of that relationship. How close is your relationship with Jesus? When all goes wrong, where do you turn? Can you pour out your heart to Jesus? Can He be the one you lean on? Or is your first call to your mother?

A surrender to his will- if ye keep my commandments- An aspect of this abiding relationship is obedience to Jesus’ commands. This is not so much about the obedience as it is the surrender to his will. The branch that is grafted into the vine does not determine what its going to do. It allows the life of the vine to flow through it and produce growth. It is submitted to the hand of the vinedresser even to determine how much fruit it will grow. Vs 2 indicates that the branch that brings forth fruit is pruned by the vinedresser. That pruning process often involves pain, suffering. You have to cut some of the fruit off and the growths off, so the plant can focus on producing greater fruit. When you go through suffering, do you see that as the hand of God preparing you for greater fruit? 2 Cor 1:3-4 “Blessed be God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies, and the God of all comfort; Who comforteth us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort them which are in any trouble, by the comfort wherewith we ourselves are comforted of God.” It is hard to accept the pruning that God brings into our lives. No one likes to suffer pain or loss. But do we resist, complain, grip, get bitter or do we submit to the pruning hand of God.

A dependence on Him for strength- ye can do nothing- So Abiding in Christ is about a continual, intimate, submissive relationship with Jesus Christ, but fourthly it is a dependent relationship with Jesus Christ. Jesus concludes that without me ye can do nothing. The branch that I cut off of the tree cannot produce fruit if it is not connected to the roots. The vine provides sustenance so that the branch can produce fruit. So much of Christianity is spent in doing, doing, doing as we talked about last Sunday morning; but the strength, the life comes from Jesus. We must depend on Him if we are going to ever accomplish anything fruitful in life. Paul said 2 Cor 3:5 “Not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think any thing as of ourselves; but our sufficiency is of God;”

What Abiding in Christ is not

It is helpful for us to make sure we avoid certain ditches when it comes to this topic. You ever drive down a country road that has deep ditches on each side of the road? You want to make sure you drive down the center of the road or you are going to get stuck and possibly damage your car. When it comes to this topic of abiding in Christ, churches have gone off into various ditches. I don’t want to major on this point because it isn’t necessarily text driven, but it is important to know there errors that are out there.

Sinless perfection- one ditch that some people have fallen into is the belief that if we would just abide in Christ we would experience this second blessing of God’s grace where we are made perfect without sin. This truth is a denial of 1 John 1:8 “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.” and 1 John 1:10 “If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.” The Christian will deal with the presence of sin in his life until the day in which we see Jesus face to face. We can have victory, we can even have periods of victory; but those who lean towards sinless perfection do not have an adequate understanding of sin. sin is not just actions you commit. It is anything I think, say or do that displeases God. These people do not see how pervasive sins influence is in their lives. They don’t see how selfishness drives what we do with our day. They don’t see how pride creeps into our motives. They don’t recognize worry and anxiety as a lack of trust in God. Sin to them is only the external things that we do, but an honest Christian knows that the struggle with internal sin is a continual struggle we will have as God progressively gives us victory over time.

Complete passivity- Another ditch is thinking that we must let go and let God. There is a partial truth here in that we can do nothing without God and abiding does include a dependence on God. But biblical abiding is not complete passivity. Sitting back and waiting for a miracle to work the sin out of your life. We are told in 1 Tim 4:7-8 “But refuse profane and old wives’ fables, and exercise thyself rather unto godliness. For bodily exercise profiteth little: but godliness is profitable unto all things, having promise of the life that now is, and of that which is to come.” In John 15:10 “If ye keep my commandments, ye shall abide in my love; even as I have kept my Father’s commandments, and abide in his love.” Abiding in Christ includes obedience to God’s commands. I love an illustration that Andrew Murray used to describe the abiding relationship:

Think of a father helping his child to climb the side of some steep precipice. The father stands above and has taken the son by the hand to help him on. He points him to the spot on which he will help him to plant his feet as he leaps upward. The leap would be too high and dangerous for the child alone, but the father’s hand is his trust and he leaps to get hold of the point for which his father has taken hold of him. It is the father’s strength that secures him and lifts him up, and so urges him to use his utmost strength.

you see in this illustration, the child cannot make the jump by himself. He is not strong enough, but the father tells him where to go, he trusts his father to help him get there, and his father is going to help him. But the child still does the jumping to the best of his ability expecting that the father is going to get him where he needs to be. There is no victory over sin if you sit back and do nothing to conquer sin in your life in the power of the Holy Spirit. The power of the Spirit only comes as you step out in faith and obedience.

Something you do- Abiding is also on the flip side not something you do. If I can just perform these certain activities that will prove I am abiding in Christ. If I read my bible and pray enough I am automatically abiding right? Wrong. You can abide while reading and praying and in fact they are an essential part to a relationship with Jesus Christ, but you can read and pray without a single though of intimacy, submission and dependence.

What Abiding in Christ produces

A lot could be said to answer this question but I will limit myself to this text here: The answer could be boiled down to one word: fruit. An Abiding Christian produces fruit. But what is that fruit. The word fruit is used in many ways, but fruit is merely what is produced from this Abiding relationship with Jesus. Our text gives us five fruits of abiding in Christ:

answered prayer vs 7 ye shall ask what ye will. The assumption here is that this person is submitted to God’s will, wants God’s will, is living with a clean conscience by confessing and repenting of sin. All those prerequisites for answered prayer that we read about throughout the bible are met in this person because he is abiding in Christ.

love- vs 9- In this section, before in vs 14:15, 21-24 and after vs 12-17 love is a central topic. Abiding in Christ is very much parallel to walking in the Spirit. The very first fruit of the Spirit is love. Abiding in Christ makes us more loving. Jesus loves his enemies, the world and us; so as we abide in Him that love is going to work its way out in our lives. If we fail to love others, there is something wrong with our connection to the vine.

obedience- vs 10. Earlier Jesus had said John 14:15 “If ye love me, keep my commandments.” Abiding in Christ, being submitted to his will and dependent on him is going to produce obedience. There is no such thing as a godly Christian who refuses to obey the commands of God. We fail often through weakness, but it must not be through high handed rebellion to the will of God.

joy- Abiding in Christ also should produce joy. Jesus is our satisfaction. He is our life. Finding our meaning and purpose and enjoying a relationship with Him will produce joy in our lives. You know what often brings us sadness? Unresolved sin in our lives. Sin cuts us off from that abiding relationship. The believer can experience joy knowing that his sins are under the blood and he is living with a clean conscience before God.

service- The final fruit of abiding in Christ is a love that serves one another and lays down our lives for one another. True godly love shows itself by giving of itself for others.

Conclusion

Inevitably when topics like this are talked about there is a lot of information about what it is, but often we fail to tell people how to experience this truth in their lives. I want to give you two things that will help you experience this kind of relationship with Jesus:

Nurture the attitudes of submission, dependence, trust in Jesus.

Passionately pursue a dynamic relationship with Jesus through his word and prayer. Jesus says in vs 7 that if his words abide in us, we are abiding in Christ. Get his words deep into the very fabric of who you are. This is not a casual relationship with the word. This is an intimate relationship as you seek to meet God in His word. Read, meditate, memorize, study, and share his word. Delight in it. The further it gets into your heart, the greater your abiding relationship will be.

It is possibly for a believer to have an abiding, long lasting, fruit bearing relationship with Jesus Christ. God wants more out of your relationship. Do you?