Editor’s note: This is a reprinted column from Jack Purcell’s “On the Journey” archives. It originally appeared in The Star in 2013.
I don’t understand why, but it seems that the teaching of “abiding in Christ” is grossly undertaught and underexperienced in the Christian community.
It’s even more perplexing when we think about how simple and vivid an illustration Jesus uses to explain how his disciples are to live.
This is not a teaching by a disciple who was stumbling along the road with Jesus trying to put everything in perspective. This comes from Jesus himself, who had no misgivings about what it was going to take for his followers to survive after his physical departure.
He said in John 15:4-5, “Live in me. Make your home in me just as I do in you. In the same way that a branch can’t bear grapes by itself but only by being joined to the vine, you can’t bear fruit unless you are joined with me. I am the vine you are the branches. When you’re joined with me and I with you, the relation intimate and organic, the har vest is sure to be abundant. Separated, you can’t produce a thing.” (MSG)
In his epistles, Paul talks about walking in the Spirit, but the image of the vine and the branches is so easy to visualize. Jesus’ intent for us is to abide not to struggle.
If we just keep coming back to the word picture that Jesus gives us, it saves an enormous amount of grief.
Think of the grapevine. Suppose a branch is separated from the vine. How much effort and struggle would it take for that branch to produce grapes? It would, of course, all be useless and not a grape would show up.
Why? You don’t have to be a biologist to know that the life comes from the vine and it does not leap across space to infuse life into its branches. The branch must be attached, or abiding in the vine, for the life of the vine to flow through the branch to produce fruit.
Likewise it does not matter how much religious effort goes into something. If we are not abiding in Jesus, he says there is no life and thus no fruit.
So, do you sometimes find yourself struggling in your Christian experience? You don’t feel much like bearing fruit and you don’t experience what you expected from the Christian life.
This is where faith and trust are required. Acknowledge that he is the source of your life of faith and that he lives in you and is always your only source for more abundant living.
Many Christians spend their entire life trying to produce fruit in their own strength and ability. Like a branch lying on the ground straining to produce grapes, it may look good from a distance but is really tasteless because there was never any life in it.
It should be clear that abiding is not acquired by knowing more about Jesus. A friend of mine said, “Abiding is the culmination of His work and is everything, for in abiding we receive the everything, Jesus.”
Get the picture – restful and satisfying.
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