9. A Fruitful Life
9
A Fruitful Life
I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in Him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing.
John 15:5
Please read John 15:1–17. Our Lord’s words to His disciples are ominous: “for without Me you can do nothing” (v. 5). After all, those men were to take His place after He returned to the Father, and they wanted to succeed. In the Sermon on the Mount He had warned them that flavorless salt was “good for nothing” (Matt. 5:13), and they had heard Him say that “the Son can do nothing of Himself” (John 5:19). It was in the upper room that He explained to them how to succeed in Christian service, and the principles He laid down still apply today.1
If We Want to Experience Real Life, We Must Be Fruitful
The disciples were quite familiar with the metaphor Jesus used, because vines, grapes, and wine were vitally important to the Jewish way of life. A cup of wine and a piece of bread would be a laborer’s lunch, and wine was usually on the table at other meals. Christianity is not just a religious way of life; it is life—and where there is life, there should be fruit. Jesus once cursed a fig tree that had no fruit and nothing but leaves (Matt. 21:19).
The Lord has left His people here on earth that they might “be fruitful and multiply” by bringing others to faith in Christ. Paul was anxious to visit Rome so that he “might have some fruit” among the Gentiles (Rom. 1:13). Paul was an evangelist, and the burden of his heart was the winning of the lost, both Jews and Gentiles. “Woe is me if I do not preach the gospel!” (1 Cor. 9:16). Is the church today burdened to reach the lost?
Godly living is another kind of fruit we should bear. Paul admonished the Romans to “have . . . fruit to holiness” (Rom. 6:22), and he urged the believers in Corinth to continue “perfecting holiness in the fear of God” (2 Cor. 7:1). The Pharisees had an artificial holiness, a brittle piety that had nothing to do with the life of God. The Holy Spirit dwells within each believer, and as we walk in the Spirit, we are able to bear the fruit of the Spirit which is “love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control” (Gal. 5:22–23). Hebrews 12:11 speaks of “the peaceable fruit of righteousness.”
Generosity is a kind of spiritual fruit that every believer should bear. The Jewish believers in Palestine were in dire straits, and to assist them, Paul took up a special offering from the Gentile churches he had founded. He referred to the offering as “this fruit” (Rom. 15:28), for it flowed out of the spiritual life of the churches. When the ushers take up the Sunday offering, they are harvesting the fruit of the spiritual lives of the worshipers. The offering is “fruit,” not “loot.” It does not come from shallow sentiment or human pressure but from love.
When we truly praise the Lord because the Spirit is at work in our lives, this is spiritual fruit. Hebrews 13:15 calls it “the sacrifice of praise . . . the fruit of our lips, giving thanks to His name.” Worship leaders devise all sorts of techniques to encourage congregations to praise the Lord, but the fault lies in the human heart. The life of God is not at work in the hearts of the people and they cannot produce the fruit of praise. The same diagnosis applies to the lack of service given in many churches. Paul called the results of his own service for the Lord “fruit from my labor” (Phil. 1:22).
Professed Christians who are not bearing fruit are either counterfeits or are not depending on the Holy Spirit, and they are not experiencing real life!
If We Want to Be Fruitful, We Must Abide in Jesus Christ
You can manufacture golf balls or automobiles, but you cannot manufacture fruit, because fruit comes from life. Fruit has in it the seeds for more fruit. In Christian circles, we hear a great deal about “results,” but “results” are not the same as fruit. An accountant can get results from a computer or a housewife from a dishwasher, but that’s not the same as seeing fruit from the working of the Holy Spirit. Paul admonishes us to “work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you both to will and to do for His good pleasure” (Phil. 2:12–13). God works in and we work out. Jesus told His disciples that He works in us through the Scriptures (John 15:3, 7), our obedience (vv. 10, 14), our love for one another (vv. 12–13), and prayer (vv. 7, 16).
Abiding in Christ is both a privilege and a responsibility. Our union with Christ (sonship) was accomplished when we trusted Him as Savior and Lord, but our communion (fellowship) is a moment by moment and day by day experience. It means yielding to the Spirit of God, feeding on the Word of God, worshiping the Lord, and serving where He leads us. Sometimes our deepest fellowship occurs when circumstances are difficult and the skies are dark. The vines bear the best grapes when they have been carefully pruned, and God has to cut away from us those things that rob us of both quality and quantity in our fruit-bearing (vv. 1–2). The Father is closest to us when He is trimming us. The process is painful, but without it we cannot be fruitful.
How do we know when we are abiding? For one thing, we are bearing fruit and bringing glory to His name. Our hidden resources in Christ are enabling us to mature and minister in ways that amaze us. We have love and joy in our hearts and give praise and thanksgiving to the Father as we do our work. We see God answering prayer and we sense His presence with us even in the darkest hours. We find joy in making sacrifices as we serve others. In short, we become more like Jesus and seek to share Him with the lost.
Unbelief and deliberate sin break our fellowship with the Lord. When that happens, we become impatient, selfish, demanding, critical, and unfruitful—and we know it! That’s when we must get alone with the Lord in heart and mind, confess our sins, and get back into communion with the Master. Recalling biblical promises and claiming them is great medicine for the soul. To allow ourselves to remain out of fellowship is to invite the chastening hand of God to discipline us, because the Father loves us too much to let us break our fellowship, cripple our walk, and destroy our fruit (Heb. 12:1–17). We must pray with King David, “Restore to me the joy of Your salvation” (Ps. 51:12).
If We Want to Abide in Christ, We Must Obey Him
The Lord has written into His creation certain principles and laws that must be obeyed if we want to succeed. Did these laws not exist, science would collapse and the machinery of life would stand still. Airplanes fly because they are built to obey the laws of aerodynamics; automobiles move because the motor obeys the laws of internal combustion; medicines heal because they work along with the principles of digestion, circulation, and so forth in the human body. But what is true in the world of science is also true in the spiritual world. “If you keep My commandments,” said Jesus, “you will abide in My love” (John 15:10). “You are My friends if you do whatever I command you” (v. 14). To jump from a skyscraper and defy the law of gravity is suicide, and to disobey the laws of God is to rob ourselves of the power, wisdom, and joy He wants us to have.
Our attitude toward the will of God must be one of joyful, loving obedience. This is what the Son said to the Father: “I delight to do Your will, O my God, and Your law is within my heart” (Ps. 40:8; see Heb. 10:5–9). If I picture God’s will as a restrictive bit and bridle (Ps. 32:9) or as uncomfortable bonds (2:3), I will never enter into the joys and victories of His will. Remember, the will of God comes from the heart of God and is an expression of His personal love for us (33:11). Pruning is not a comfortable experience, but we submit to it because we love Him and want to please Him. The useless foliage in our lives is only hindering the production of fruit that glorifies God.
Some Christians harbor wrong ideas about the will of God. They think God’s will applies only to “important things,” like choosing a career or finding a life’s mate; but God’s will applies to all aspects of life. This doesn’t mean we must pray about what tie we wear or what color car we buy, for our sanctified common sense assists us here. Proverbs 3:5–6 tells us not to lean on our own understanding, but we aren’t told to abandon it! God created us in His image to be reasonable creatures, and knowledge and wisdom always work together.
If We Want to Obey Him, We Must Love Him
Without love, obedience can become a heavy burden that grinds us down; but with love, we gladly do the will of God. “For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments. And His commandments are not burdensome” (1 John 5:3). Jesus said, “If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love” (John 15:10), and as we abide in His love, we keep His commandments! The account of Jacob’s love for Rachel comes to mind (Gen. 29:20). If we obey the Lord only to escape chastening, or to get a reward, we are not experiencing the Christian life at the highest. Our service is punishment, not enrichment, and the joy of the Lord is not enabling us to labor. Love is the highest motive for sacrifice and service (John 15:13), and “love never fails” (1 Cor. 13:8).
What is Christian love? It is treating others the way Jesus treats us. Love is not a feeling that comes and goes. Love is an act of the will; it is deliberately living as Jesus lived, depending on the power of the Spirit to enable us. Love is the fulfillment of the law of God (Rom. 15:8–10) and delivers us from the sort of mechanical, legalistic lifestyle the Pharisees practiced. Love is a way of life, not a gimmick we turn on and off like a computer. The first fruit of the Spirit is love (Gal. 5:22), because it is in the deep, rich soil of love that the other fruit will grow. Read 1 Corinthians 13 and Galatians 5:22–23 and see how they parallel each other. Sometimes the Lord sends trials to help “fertilize” our garden of love, and we must let Him have His way. Joseph named one of his sons Manasseh, which means “one who forgets,” and said, “God has made me forget all my toil and all my father’s house.” His other son he named Ephraim, which means “fruitfulness” (Gen. 41:51–53). Because of his faith and his love for the Lord, Joseph ignored the trials he experienced and had a fruitful ministry in Egypt—and the Lord worked everything out!
If We Want to Love Jesus More, We Must Get to Know Him Better
You can now see the sequence involved in the fruitful Christian life.
The better we know Jesus, the more we will love Him.
The more we love Him, the more we will obey Him.
The more we obey Him, the deeper we will abide in Him.
The deeper we abide in Him, the more fruit we will bear.
The more fruit we bear, the more we will experience real life in abundance.
The better we get to know some people, the more difficult it may be for us to like them, but the better we get to know Jesus, the more we will love Him, even though He is light years ahead of us in every way. He is willing to fellowship with us! Jesus touched the lepers, ate with unclean sinners, welcomed the outcasts, and finally died on the cross for undeserving lost sinners. We are imperfect, but He is perfect. We are selfish, but He unselfishly gives of Himself and all that He owns, which is everything. God’s goal for our lives is that we be “conformed to the image of His Son” (Rom. 8:29). This does not mean that we exert every effort to imitate Christ, but that we yield to Him and allow the Spirit to transform us to become more and more like Him. We experience incarnation, not imitation: “Christ lives in me” (Gal. 2:20).
The work of the Holy Spirit in the world today is twofold: to convict lost people of their need for a Savior, and to transform saved people to be more like the Savior that the world needs. The two ministries go together, for the more the church is like Jesus, the more the lost world will see Jesus and want to know Him. We are the salt of the earth, and salt makes people thirsty. We are the light of the world, and light helps people see things as they really are (Matt. 5:13–16). The Lord reaches the lost by means of what His people are and what they do.
How do we get to know Jesus better? By spending time with Him daily in the Scriptures and in prayer, by fellowshipping with Him and His people regularly in worship and service, by observing the creation around us and praising Him, and by listening with our hearts to the cries for help and responding to them as God guides us. Sometimes we need to get away alone and devote uninterrupted time to communion with the Lord. When we get too busy and too involved, we are prone to become distracted and unproductive, and that’s when our Lord tells us it’s time to come apart and rest awhile (Mark 6:31). Whenever John Wesley’s mother felt overwhelmed as she cared for her large family, she sat down, pulled her apron over her head, and meditated and prayed. This put things back together again. I’ve learned that taking occasional “blessing breaks” is a source of strength and peace from the Lord. Delayed at the crossing by a slow train? Standing in the check-out line while a customer searches for an elusive credit card? Waiting in a restaurant for a late friend? Let’s not get impatient and complain! Let’s quiet our hearts before the Lord and draw upon His grace. We waste time when we do unimportant things, but we invest time in eternity when we pause to pray and meditate.
To know Jesus better means to love Jesus more, and this results in our loving sin and the sinful world system less. It means loving God’s people more and yearning for the lost to come to the Savior. We will love the Word of God more and constantly find Jesus on its pages.
To know Jesus better means gradually becoming more like Him, even though we may not always recognize it. We may occasionally be misunderstood by our family and friends, but never mind—Jesus was also misunderstood, and so were the apostles.
Jesus understands us and we are growing in our knowledge of Him, and that’s all that really matters.
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1. Some of the material in this chapter has been adapted from my book 5 Secrets of Living (Wheaton, IL: Tyndale, 1978).