Do you have a favorite project you’re working on gladly? Or are you involved in a project that’s due soon and you’re rushing to meet the deadline? Maybe you’re past the deadline and hoping, even begging, for more time! A project is a design or an idea that we work on. We invest time and effort and resources to bring it from a beginning to an end.
We often label people as “ministry”. This can have the unfortunate result of us approaching them, treating them, thinking of them less as a person and more as a project (a goal, a mission, a vision, a unit of measurement). We see them as impossible to be fixed or completed, apart from us, and our time and effort and resources. But this is not the way Jesus views them, or us.
Jesus loved people; He never fixed projects.
Jesus calls us “a new creation” (1 Corinthians 5:17) – living, breathing, bursting, moving. Paul says that the only thing that counts, and what counts the most, is whether or not we are a “new creation” (Galatians 6:15) – has something happened in us? Jesus makes new people. He forms new hearts within and creates new lives without. As the True Vine, He produces new branches attached to, sustained by, and dependent on Him.
ISRAEL FAILED
When God rescued Israel from slavery in Egypt, His desire was that Israel would be the true vine, bringing life and bearing fruit on the earth. God desired that His people would love, obey and worship Him. As His vine, He did everything He could for them; He couldn’t have done anything else (Isaiah 5:1-4). They were planted “wholly of pure seed” (Jeremiah 2:21). But instead of bearing good fruit, they bore rotten fruit. They turned degenerate and turned away from God towards perversion, disobedience and idolatry (Hosea 10:1-2). Israel failed to be the vine God had saved them to become.
JESUS SUCCEEDED: TRUE VINE
Where Israel failed, Jesus succeeded. As the Son of Man, He would accomplish all God required and desired of Him on behalf of His people. As the Son of God, Jesus replaced and superseded Israel as the locus of God’s people – the center, the source, the fountainhead, THE VINE – where life originates, is found and happens (Psalm 80:14-19; Isaiah 11:1-2; 42:1-2; 53:1-2). “I am the true vine”, Jesus said (John 15:1).
TRUE BRANCHES
Under the Old Covenant of God with Israel, the Spirit of God dwelt with and upon man. But in the New Covenant of God, in and through Jesus Christ, the Spirit of God now dwells within the hearts of the people of God (Ezekiel 36:27; 37:14). The life of God in man is reality. And this life is evidenced in man’s obedience to God, not merely as duty, but truly as delight. As His church, we live relying and depending on God fully. We live attending and obeying God willingly. He is now in us, with us and for us. But He is also over us. He not only has rescued us, but now rules over us. And far from being saddened and oppressed by this, we rejoice! This means…
No one is filled with Jesus who is not emptied of self. There can be no odd mixture of our will and His will. There can be no Spirit-filling with a dash of self-seeking. He did not rescue us from the tower of our sin to free us in the country of our own choosing. He rescued us and said, “This is My country. Do as I command.” His wish is our command; His command is our wish.
No one is loved by Jesus who is not pruned by the Father. Under His rule and authority, we are cared for as branches. We are submitting to The Vine by virtue of abiding in The Vine. The Vinedresser, then, knowing our thoughts before we think them and our words before we speak them, comes and lovingly searches us, cleanses us and prunes us. He, the Vinedresser, is our good and perfect heavenly Father (John 15:1), and like any father who loves his children, He disciplines us (Hebrews 12:3-11), and He prunes us (John 15:2).
No one is obedient to Jesus who is not empowered by the Spirit. We believe wholeheartedly that unless Jesus had called us with life-giving power out of the tomb of death, we could never have raised ourselves from the dead, unbound ourselves from sin, and rolled away the stone that separates us from God and His eternal life. Yet, somehow, once we’re raised to life, we feel that “Christ who lives in me” (Galatians 2:20) is in critical condition, hoping and praying for us to pull through, as if He depended on us! But the breath and strength of our life, the grace and endurance of our salvation, are in Jesus Christ alone! We must stop trying to glorify God in our own strength. Every single, simple act of faith and obedience is the result of the precious Holy Spirit within, purchased with the precious blood of Jesus on a cross.
TRUE FRUIT
As branches abiding in The Vine, fruit is the goal, not growth. We’re pruned to bear more fruit and to be kept from unproductive growth (John 15:2). Growth is not irrefutable evidence of health generally, or fruit particularly. Many Christians and churches appear be growing. There’s a lot happening and there’s a lot being said, but some of the fruit Jesus is seeking, like prayer, faith, obedience, joy, peace, love and witness, is nowhere to be found.
It’s also true that without growth there can be no fruit. And sometimes the growth that leads to fruit is a long, dark, and silent season. Psalm 1:3 says that the one who abides in the Word of God - the one who meditates on the Word of God because their delight is in (found in and proceeds from) the Word of God - this one will bear fruit in his season. In time, with enough time, at the right time, the fruit will come. You’ll not bear fruit year-round, but in due season. Don't try to produce immediately that which in the timing of grace is still growing. Don’t try to produce that which apart from the power and life of The Vine is impossible. And for the same reason, we can’t detest, disdain, discredit or discard those who appear to be slower to change, slower to grow, slower to mature, slower to bear fruit than we are. In time, they will be the ones bearing fruit in season and we will be the ones out of season!
TRUE CONTRAST
When the life of Jesus pulsates through your spiritual veins, it gives life, produces growth and bears fruit. It creates a contrast in your life between sin and grace, ash and beauty, dark and light, dead wood and living branch, fruitlessness and fruitfulness; between prayerlessness and prayerfulness, disobedience and obedience, doubt and faith, despair and joy, anxiety and peace, selfishness and love, indifference and witness to the world. Is this contrast being more clearly defined in you as a fruit-bearing branch?
What more could have been done for us that God has not done in Jesus Christ?
“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 15:5)
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