Dear Friends,

I have been meditating much in recent days on chapters 14 to 17 of St. John, and in this letter I would like to share some thoughts from John 15 and verses 1 to 17. It is obvious I cannot deal with every thing in these verses, so this letter will only contain some thoughts, which I hope will be helpful and encouraging.

We need to remember first of all that chapters 14 to 17 of St. John's Gospel hang together. The purpose Jesus has in them is to comfort his disciples concerning his leaving of them, and to tell them about the blessings of Pentecost - the sending to them of the Holy Spirit - which he would arrange for the Father to send them.

We need to remember that all these words are addressed to the disciples, and therefore now to all true believers.

Another very important principle in the understanding of the Bible is this, that if an interpretation or exposition suggests in any way that our salvation is dependent on human effort, or that we can lose heaven if we fail to keep certain standards, then that explanation of the meaning of Scripture is flawed. Our Salvation is all and only by the merits and work of Jesus Christ. This salvation is received only by faith. Nor must faith be made into a work, it is simply the means by which we know the blessings of salvation.

I have made these remarks because of the difficulties which verses 2 and 6 of John 15 present. They must be understood within the parameters stated above, or else our understanding is flawed.

This allegory which Jesus uses of himself as the Vine and the Christian as a branch in the vine is peculiarly vivid. It expresses in picture form how the blessing of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit is realised by us. The Spirit flows from Jesus - the Vine - into us, because Jesus sends the Holy Spirit to take his place with us. Then just as the branch is nourished, kept alive and bears fruit by the sap from the vine, so we as Christians are nourished, kept alive and bear fruit spiritually by the life that flows from Jesus by the Spirit.

So we can understand that not only is our entrance into salvation - that is in this picture the branch being grafted into the vine - a work of God, but so is our continuation in salvation and our perseverance to glory. All our life and growth is provided by the Vine - by Jesus Christ.

This is what Jesus is saying when he talks about 'abiding', or 'remaining', or 'staying' in the Vine. Each of these words express the meaning of the Greek, and you can use the one which is clearest for you.

What Jesus is saying is this that our fruit bearing and joy as Christians comes from the life that comes through the Spirit from him. So we must never stop believing in him as our Saviour, righteousness and Lord, and placing ourselves into his care and resting in this faith.

There is no suggestion that abiding is work which then merits Jesus allowing spiritual fruit to grow in us, or that if we do not abide, somehow we lose our place in the vine and therefore our salvation. Abiding is not a work we do to merit anything, but rather expresses the way we dwell in the presence of Jesus and are filled with his life.

So what does it mean to abide in Jesus. Jesus says in verse 4 "Abide in me and I in you" and then in verse 5 he says that if we abide in him and he in us, we will bring forth much fruit. Then in verse 9 we read "as the Father has loved me, so I have loved you. Abide in my love". Then in verse 10 we read "If you keep my commandments, you shall abide in my love; even as I have kept my Father's commandments and abide in his love." Jesus goes on and says, "This is my command that you love one another as I have loved you". Putting all this together we understand that 'Abiding in Jesus' is to live in the sense of his love for us.

We live in the sense of his justifying love, that he has loved us so much that he has won our salvation completely and is pledged to keep us in that salvation. That he did this because he loved us and wanted fellowship with us. That this is a continuing love which never ceases or diminishes, and that where ever else we may see love withdrawn by human relationships, Jesus love and God's love never is. That his love is special so that he will never let us go and is working to fit us for his presence in glory.

Such abiding in his love fills our hearts with love for Jesus, and causes us to want to love others as he loves us. So we bear fruit because we reflect God and that we are born of God.

The Spirit is given so that we may be conscious of Jesus love. We all know how the Spirit draws our affections towards Jesus. Abiding is to respond to this work of the Spirit within us. The various means of grace, Bible reading, prayer (private and together), worship in church, Holy Communion, etc. is the way we practically live in the presence of Jesus more and more; though every moment of each day we are with Jesus because the Spirit dwells within us.

But what of verse 2 of John 15. Doesn't it seem to say that God looks at the Christian and if the Christian does not come up to a certain standard he loses his place in the family of Christ. No! not at all! If a branch of a vine is fruitless there are two things that can be done. One is to cut it off. Removing unfruitful branches is a common garden practise. It's purpose is to make the vine healthy, and is not particularly concerned with individual branches. The other is that the unfruitful branch can be given special attention to make it fruitful. The Greek word translated in the NIV as 'cut off' here in the first part of verse 2 can mean either of these two meanings.

The cutting off or removing option must be rejected, because it makes salvation depend in part on our own effort, and contradicts the Gospel of free grace. So the option of the meaning being 'raise, take up, lift or draw up' must be the meaning. This is peculiarly comforting. It shows God as such a loving, gracious and caring God, giving special gracious attention to those whose Christian life is proving so difficult, and to those Christians who are more weak than most.

In the second part of verse 2, the purging or pruning is not punishment, but the various experiences God allows us to go through, which often are hard to bear, but produce the peaceable fruits of righteousness. This shows how we can safely leave people in Christ's care. We would often take pain away before it is wise to do so. Jesus knows in love what is best for his beloved people.

Then lastly what about verse 6. It rather seems to suggest that unless we bear fruit by our effort of abiding, we are lost. This understanding must be wrong because it turns "abiding" in Jesus into a work which gains merit, which if we don't 'work' in this way we lose salvation.

Jesus is making a statement about the Christians relationship with Christ. Every Christian belongs to Christ and is part of the family of God, but we all know that some Christians seem to flourish, while others, though still believers, seem to show little of spiritual life. The reason is simply in that if we do not avail ourselves of the privilege of fellowship with Christ, we hinder the life of Jesus flowing in us. The result is that we are weak and spiritually impotent. The spiritual life within us withers. We do not cease to be the beloved of the Lord. In fact as I have explained from verse 2, Jesus gives us special attention, but we are not fruitful Christians.

In fact, as the second part of the verse tells us, the fruits we would have produced are lost. This is the meaning of what is translated in the NIV as "such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned". In fact this translation by the NIV is most misleading. In the first part of verse 6, Jesus is speaking of a single branch. In the second part of the verse it is still the single branch he is talking about, but the word branch is not used. The translation is really like this "and they gather them (plural - so it can't be the branch and must be the fruit the branch should have produced), and cast them (the fruit) into the fire and they are burned"

The meaning is something like St. Paul speaks of in 1 Corinthians 3:12-15. Salvation is not lost but our usefulness is greatly impaired.

The whole purpose of Jesus in these verses is to encourage us and motivate us to cultivate communion with him, i.e. abide in him, because we have no life outside of him, and we can't live in the Christian life a moment without him. He wants us to know the joy of fruitfulness which he produces and will produce in us.

Your servant for Christ's sake,