It is not your job to produce fruit. Now that I dropped that bombshell in your lap, let’s look at something else and work our way back around to it.
Picking up where we left off, in John 15:3: “You are already clean ….” The word used here for clean, is the same word used for prune in the rest of the passage. It is translated “clean” in John 13:10 when Jesus says “He who has bathed needs only to wash his feet, but is completely clean; and you are clean ….” Jesus is saying that we are already pruned by the word (His “logos” or “message) that He has spoken into us. Pruning is a cleaning process. It cuts away all the wood that may look like the vine, but is really misdirecting the flow of His Spirit (the sap, or life of the Vine) in us. He had already taught the disciples, and us, the basics of what they needed to know to follow Him. But there are times, the pruning shears are needed to pare us back down to the basics and get rid of all the extra wood that tends to grow. So, with the pruning being done, He presents the next step—what we need to do to bear fruit—abiding!
A branch can only bear fruit when it is attached to, or abiding in, the vine, and drawing its life from the vine. It grows out of the vine. It is united with the vine. It simply rests in its connection to the vine. It doesn’t struggle to hold on. The wood of the branch is connected to the vine, and vice versa. It isn’t screwed in. It isn’t tacked on. It isn’t a separate piece that you can just pop on and off. Even if it is grafted, the two have grown together as one plant, and the only way to remove the branch is to cut it off. The life of the vine is flowing through the branch. Because it is receiving the life of the vine, it is able to bear fruit.
It is not the job of the branch to produce fruit. It is not the job of the branch to produce fruit. The passage never tells us to produce fruit. We bear fruit. The vine produces it, we bear it. We cannot even do that apart from the vine. Apart from Him, we can do nothing. That’s less than zero! If you have a zero, you still have an empty circle. Remove that circle and you have nothing! That’s what we can do apart from Jesus—nothing! Some say Jesus is referring to the fruit of the Spirit, like Paul lists in Galatians 5. Others say it is the fruit of evangelism, or maybe the results of any other thing we may do to further the kingdom. If we want to be “successful” and have fruit that lasts, serves a useful purpose, and glorifies God, we must abide in Him and let His Spirit work through us. Anything else is feeble fruit on a woody branch at best, or at worst, dead works.
I recently had to prune some of the trees around our yard. Many still had dead or damaged branches from an ice storm a few years ago. Branches that were broken, but still living, I pruned back to a point beyond the break where they could send out new branches and continue to grow. Branches that were lifeless, but still attached, had to go. You never know when a dead branch will fall. I cut them off completely. To me, that’s a picture of the branch that does not abide in Him in John 15:6. It may still be attached, but it is no longer receiving the life of the Vine. Jesus may have been referring specifically to Judas Iscariot. Dare I say, there are still people like Judas who appear to be followers of Jesus—they have wood that looks like the branch, but they are not drawing their life from Him. They have their own ideas about what the Kingdom is and how to implement it, but they are not abiding in Him to produce fruit through them. They are trying to produce their own fruit rather than resting in Him and bearing His fruit.
We must be drawing our life from Him—His life flowing in us—His Spirit giving life to us. It is us waiting on Him, resting in Him, trusting Him, “faithing” Him. It is being at home in Him and He in us. It is walking in His power and not our own. It is setting our affection on Him, considering Him, thinking of Him, practicing His presence. This is abiding. It’s different ways of saying the same thing.
