Abiding in the Vine
“I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you,
you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.” - John 15:5
As we talked in a vineyard, I asked my vinedresser friend, Dave, about what he thought Jesus was referring to in this passage. He reached down and grabbed the sturdy part of the vine that goes underground into the roots, his fingers inches apart from touching, “This is the vine,” he said, and then he reached up and gently wrapped his fingers around the two branches hanging on the trellis like limbs, “and these are the branches.”
The vine is the anchoring place that draws up all the nutrients and water. It provides the branches with what they need to grow and to bear fruit. The vine is the life source for the rest of the plant. Christ, the rootstock, is the one in whom we find all life and sustenance to thrive and bear Kingdom fruit.
The kind of relationship Jesus describes here is a deep, intimate union with Christ. It’s akin to what psychologists call “relational attachment.” Jim Wilder and Michel Hendricks describe relational attachment from a neurological perspective in their book, the Other Half of Church, as “a life-giving forever bond with no mechanism in the brain to unglue us.” Does this not sound like what it means to abide or remain in Christ?
Relational attachments are formed on the right side of the brain, which “integrates our life, including our connections to loved ones, our bodies, our surroundings, our emotions, our identities, and our community. Character formation flows out of these connections.” -The Other Half of Church
In other words, for us to be transformed into Christ’s image, we cannot just remain in him in theory. We must experience a tangible, real, and felt experience on the right side of the brain.
I love the way David Benner describes this in his book Surrender to Love,
“What we need is a knowing that is deeper than belief. It must be based on experience….it comes from sitting at the feet of Jesus, gazing into his face and listening to his assurances of love for me. It comes from letting God’s love wash over me, not simply trying to believe it. It comes from soaking in the scriptural assurances of such love, not simply reading them and trying to remember or believe them.”
Bearing the Fruit of Christ’s Image
Just as the branch that abides in the vine naturally produces fruit, so our loving union with Christ will naturally yield fruit in love for others. When we abide in Christ, we are transformed into His image. 2 Corinthians 3:18 (NIV) puts it this way,
“And we all, who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.”
When we spend time beholding Christ, contemplating His love, and being saturated in it, the result is that we become like him. His motives become our motives. Jesus says of this process, “This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples.” - John 15:8
This word for “showing yourselves” is also translated “arise” or “to become.” The fruit is not what we produce, it is who we are becoming as we abide in Christ.
When we abide in Christ, the sap of His love wells up within us and matures into fruitfulness that reveals His character in the world. And this brings the Father glory. When we bear this kind of fruit, we reveal who we are. The term for “Christian,” is derived from the term “little Christs.” Who we love shapes who we are becoming.
Jesus goes on to describe how this happens,
“As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commands and remain in his love. I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” - John 15:9-13
Like the attachment we form with our first caregivers, Jesus invites us into this beautiful trinitarian dance of attachment between the vine, the vinedresser, and the Spirit who is like the elements moving in and between all things. As we enter in as His beloved and join the dance, abiding in Christ’s love, it ripens into the fruit of healthy relational attachments with others.
Our loving union with Christ naturally creates something new in the form of sacrificial love for the other. A kind of love that overflows into the character of Christ through the fruits of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control. Our obedience; therefore, is not something we muster up through striving, it comes as a result of abiding in Christ and allowing His love to overflow through ours.
What if fruitfulness was not an outcome we pursue, but instead a natural result of abiding in Christ?
What if the greatest thing we offer the world is not the influence we have, or the outcomes we achieve, or what we produce and we sell in the marketplace, but something far more valuable?
The fruit of unbreaking, eternal, and sacrificial love that ripens from a deeply intimate relationship with Jesus into love for others.
The kind of fruit that flows from our secure attachment in Christ into secure attachments we form with one another. A community that reveals to the world who Jesus is by the extension of His embrace of us to our embrace of them? This is the fruit of the Kingdom of God. And this is the kind of fruit that will last and multiply for eternity.
Abiding in the Vine Sermon
Recently, I had the opportunity to interview Dave as a part of a sermon I gave on the Vinedresser and the Vine. To watch, click the video below.
