John 15:1-17 | Abide in Me
Let’s open the Bible now to John 15:1-17. We’re in the middle of Jesus’s Farewell Discourse, where Jesus instructs his disciples on how to live in this world. We’re listening in on those conversations now because they are for us just as they were for his original hearers.
John 15:1-17
15 “I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser. 2 Every branch in me that does not bear fruit he takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes, that it may bear more fruit. 3 Already you are clean because of the word that I have spoken to you. 4 Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. 5 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. 6 If anyone does not abide in me he is thrown away like a branch and withers; and the branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned. 7 If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. 8 By this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples. 9 As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love. 10 If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love. 11 These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full.
12 “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. 13 Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends. 14 You are my friends if you do what I command you. 15 No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you. 16 You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you. 17 These things I command you, so that you will love one another.
Introduction
John’s gospel includes seven “I am” sayings of Jesus. “I am the bread of life” (6:35). “I am the light of the world” (8:12). “I am the door” (10:7). “I am the good shepherd” (10:11,14). “I am the resurrection and the life” (11:25). “I am the way and the truth and the life” (14:6). And, lastly, “I am the true vine” (15:1).
One reason Jesus defines himself that way is because he’s affirming that he’s the God of the Old Testament who has come to save his people.
But he also wants us to know that he is everything we need. He’s a complete savior. He feeds and nourishes us. He enlightens and illuminates us. He lets us in and welcomes us. He cares for and tends to us. He restores and redeems us. He leads and saves us. He sustains and grows us. Jesus is all the savior any of us will ever need.
Our passage today confirms who Jesus is for us and what Jesus can do in us. It explains what it means to be a Christian. It’s not about what we do for God but about what God does for us.
We see the seventh and final of Jesus’s “I am” sayings. “I am the true vine.” For 11 verses, he explains what that means. Then, in verse 12, he seems to jump to a different subject, but the common thread of fruit-bearing appears again in verse 16, indicating that these two paragraphs are one unit.
In verses 1-11, we see Jesus, the true vine. In verses 12-17, we see Jesus, the true friend. We need both, and he is both. He’s the vine who will grow us and sustain us, and he’s the friend who will be with us and for us, bearing fruit in us and through us, for his glory and our joy. So, let’s look at each one of these truths—Jesus, the true vine, and Jesus, the true friend.
Jesus, the True Vine (15:1-11)
Verse 1. “I am the true vine.”
What does Jesus mean? Well, in the Old Testament, a vine is a recurring metaphor for Israel. Israel was God’s vine. But Israel proved to be a bad one. They wouldn’t open their heart to God and let him do his gracious work in them. They wanted to be a nation like all the others, and so God’s purpose for them to be the conduit through which his grace would stretch out to the whole world did not bear fruit.
But, of course, God planned for this, and his plan included the sending of the Son, Jesus, who, in the fullness of time, came and became what Israel was supposed to be. He was the true vine that bore good fruit. Through him and in him, the world would find the grace of God pulsating into all his branches, through all his people, through all his churches, ushering in the kingdom of God that will never fail to have good grapes.
So when Jesus says, “I am the true vine,” the emphasis is on the word true. He’s the true vine because he is the true Israel.
But Jesus says something more in verse 1. This is the only “I am” saying with an additional assertion. “And my Father is the vinedresser.” We not only have the true vine, but we also have a Gardener who cultivates his vineyard in two ways, as Jesus says in verse 2. “Every branch in me that does not bear fruit he takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes, that it may bear more fruit.”
A good gardener walks through the vineyard to find branches that produce no fruit. They’re just taking strength away from the good vines, so he cuts them off. They’re worthless but costly. Then, he finds the branches with fruit and prunes them to make them even more fruitful. God designed gardening to work this way. Pruning promotes growth.
Now, this metaphor works on two levels. It is true of the church as a whole and of individual believers. Every branch that does not bear fruit in the church—unbelievers—he takes away. Judas is an example of a branch that was cut off.
But it is also true that God cuts off branches in believers. He removes the dead weight. He takes his knife and lops off big, bad things and prunes good branches. The Greek meaning of pruning in verse 2 is hard to translate into English. The idea is that God cleans his people. We see the word clean in verse 3, “Already you are clean because of the word that I have spoken to you.”
By nature of your conversion to Christ, you are, in a sense, already pruned. But the work is ongoing. It has to be. One of the ways God continually prunes is through the Word. We know this experientially, don’t we? Think of the times when you’ve read the Bible and come across something that cuts against your desires, and you let that word change you and you started to rethink your life. That’s God pruning and cleansing with the Word.
Yet we also know experientially that, though we may be already clean, it sure seems as if God has a lot of work to do in us, doesn’t it? There is an old adage in novel writing that says you must always keep your hero in trouble. Well, some of us feel like that’s our life. Our lives are not easy, and we suffer so many trials. Some of us encounter such trouble because we’re sinful and rebellious. But others of us face it seemingly just because it’s our lot in life. But what if that was because God is deeply at work in us? The trouble we feel is his pruning. He’s a good Gardener. He knows what he’s doing. He’s skilled. He’s a professional. If you ever see a plant after a good gardener has gotten a hold of it, it looks like a disaster, it looks like it’s in trouble, but come back later and you can see the beautiful, fruitful result. Our lives are like that in God’s hands.
Now, that can sound harsh, like God is being mean. But is he? If he’s really God, doesn’t he know best? Talk to anyone who’s been a Christian for a while and they can bear witness that God can be trusted with his shears. They can tell you that God only cuts what would be a loss to keep and what ends up a gain to lose.
This is where we get deep inside Christianity. Other religions set the rules and step back and say, “Get to work.” In Christianity, God comes down to you in Christ and connects you to himself by his Spirit and says gently and seriously, “Let me get to work in you.” You are not left alone to figure out your spiritual life. You are tended to and gardened by your gracious and merciful God. All he asks of you is what Jesus commands in verse 4, “Abide in me, and I in you.”
The word abide is a great word. It means to remain or to stay or to make your home. Isn’t this amazing? Of all the things Jesus could demand, he asks only that we abide with him, to make our home with him. Who of us can’t do that?
But it’s not easy to do, of course. You know those charging stations you see in airports and other public places? They’re great, right? It’s a great amenity when your iPhone is dying and you need a quick recharge. Well, we can treat Jesus like that—like a charging station. We’re thankful to have him when we need him, but he’s a stop along the way. We don’t stay connected to him. He’s merely an amenity. And as a result, our spiritual life doesn’t really work.
Abiding with Jesus is treating him as more than a charging station. He’s offering a life of full power all the time. He’s offering all of himself for all of our needs. And he’s offering it on terms of grace, without any prerequisite, without us bringing anything to the table. He’s offering a constant flow of his everlasting, empowering grace, moment by moment, for the entirety of our lives. We plug into that life source by abiding with him. How can we say no to that offer?
Jesus knows this is hard for us, but he’s so gracious to us. He tells us what we need to know, and when we fail, he forgives us. When we grow bad branches, he cuts them off. When we’re not as fruitful as we could be, he prunes us. He’s making us into who we most deeply desire to be in him. Who wouldn’t want to live in that kind of environment? That’s Christianity. It’s Jesus working in you to make you like himself, the only perfect human to ever live.
Abiding in Jesus is the home we’ve been looking for all our lives, and this wonderful place of endless fruitfulness is ours by grace. In fact, it’s the only true home at all. Everything else is only a mirage, a fake, a con. Even the greatest this world can offer apart from Christ is only a puddle on the shore of God’s great ocean. One wave, and it amounts to nothing. Why not instead dive into the deep places of abiding with Christ?
Our problem all too often is that we think we can get the same peace and assurance by other means. Abiding with Christ doesn’t sound like enough. It sounds too easy. So we get busy, and we end up busy but barren. In verse 4, Jesus says, “The branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me.” And in verse 5, he says, “Apart from me you can do nothing.”
We are not self-made Christians. We are grace-made Christians, Christ-made Christians. We are not planted nor grown by ourselves, and we don’t bear fruit on our own.
Now, what fruit is Jesus talking about anyway? We see a few aspects of what it might be in the passage.
There is the fruit of effective prayer, verse 7. “If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.”
There is the ability to keep his commandments, verse 10. “If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love.”
There is the experience of his joy, verse 11. “These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full.”
There is love for one another, verse 12. “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.”
And there is the fruit of our witness and the winning of the world to Christ, verse 16. “You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide.”
Some say the fruit is obedience. Others say it’s evangelism. I think both are right. It’s much bigger than one single thing. It’s a whole life change. Think of how Paul describes the fruit of the Spirit in Galatians 5: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. It’s an entirely new heart. It’s Christ-likeness.
Now, we can’t do any of this in ourselves, can we? We can try, but we just fail. No wonder he says we can do nothing apart from him. Our self-made fruit might look impressive, but it’s like fake fruit on a coffee table. One bite, and it proves itself as nothing. You can fake it with others, but you can’t fool God. Even churches can fall into this trap of faking it. A church can look outwardly like they’re doing the Lord’s work. But if that church does not abide with Christ, it will be like the Church of Sardis in Revelation 3, to whom Jesus said, “I know your works. You have the reputation of being alive, but you are dead.” We can’t fool God.
Francis Schaeffer said something that is never far from my mind. “We must do the Lord’s work in the Lord’s way.” Anything done in our own strength, though it may look like a wild success, is a massive failure. Anything done in abiding with Christ, though it may look like an absolute disaster, is a massive success. Let’s be people and a church abiding with Christ, doing the Lord’s work in the Lord’s way. Maybe that’s not impressive, and that might be hard in this world we live in. Our reputation might be of being dead, but if we’re abiding with Christ, we are really alive. Is that ok with us?
The alternative is a life we don’t want to live. Jesus says in verse 6, “If anyone does not abide in me he is thrown away like a branch and withers; and the branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned.” Fruitless branches are cut off and burned. But abiding with him guarantees fruitfulness—not because we “figured it out” but because we are connected to the life source itself—to the true vine. Abiding with Christ is the only way to true success.
One more thing before we move on. Look at verse 9. What is the foundation of all this? Where does this come from? Why would God prune us at all? Jesus says, “As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love.” Jesus loves us with the same love as the Father loves him. There is no deeper, truer love than that. The foundation of God’s gardening work is his deep love for us. Jesus is asking us to make our home there, in his love. Why would we not be willing to do that? Even if it hurts sometimes, and we don’t understand it all, knowing what we know, can we not trust him? When has Jesus proven untrue? When has he not come through? What in him is untested? When did he prove untrustworthy?
So, that’s Jesus, the vine. Now, Jesus, the friend.
Jesus, the True Friend (15:12-17)
John 15:12 is a verse that, if we took it to heart, would transform our age, as it would every age. “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.”
The true vine is also our true friend. Abiding in Christ grants more than growth. His love brings us inside the sacred circle of friendship.
And his love changes us into lovers, too. “Love one another as I have loved you.” How does he love us? Verse 13 tells us. “Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.” That wasn’t just a nice saying to Jesus. It would soon become his reality.
Knowing the hell of the cross, Jesus told you, his friend, “I’ll do that for you.” Jesus loves you to death. He loves you sacrificially. He left heaven to come and live the perfect life you couldn’t live and die the guilty death you deserve to die so that you could have new life in him and bear spiritual fruit if you simply accept his offer. On the cross, he was, as it were, cut off so that you wouldn’t have to be. Now, in him, you’re only pruned.
So when we get to verse 14 and read, “You are my friends if you do what I command you,” we can receive that the way he means it. He’s not telling us how to make him our friend. He’s telling us what proves we are his friends. When you see fruit on a branch, you don’t wonder if it’s connected to the vine. You know it is. The fruit is proof. Our obedience proves that we are—not makes us into—his friends.
Verse 15 gives even more insight into what friendship with Jesus means. “No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you.”
There is a difference between a servant and a friend. A servant—the meaning there is really a slave—is told what to do but never told why. He is not invited into the conversation. Jesus could treat us that way, but he doesn’t. Instead, he invites us into the conversation. He reveals to us the plan, the mystery of the gospel. He tells us where this world is headed, where he is headed, where we are headed with him. Jesus lets us in on his plans and his purposes, just like a friend would.
This ought to melt our hearts with gratitude, but it can also have the opposite effect if we are not careful. We can puff up with pride. We can attach more importance to ourselves than we should, as if we deserve this knowledge, as if we are better than others because of it. So, to make sure we don’t get too high and mighty on our own self-importance, Jesus reminds us in verse 16, “You did not choose me, but I chose you.” Our standing as friends of Jesus Christ is not based on anything we have done, are doing, or will do in the future. It is not even based on our reaching out to him to make him our friend. It is based on his sovereign, electing grace. We did not choose him. He chose us.
And he chose us for a purpose. This is so dignifying. Jesus did not choose you for a life of mediocrity. He did not choose you to just get by. He chose you for glory. It’s so easy for us to think of ourselves too highly, but it’s also easy for us to think of ourselves too lowly. The gospel is the answer to both. We’re not so great that we don’t need saving, and we’re not so bad that we can’t be saved. We haven’t done anything so great to deserve his attention, and we haven’t done anything so poorly to disqualify ourselves from his mission.
If you tend to see yourself as too low, as I often do, you need to know that Jesus chose you to be his friend. You are not basically a problem to him. You are a divine strategy. Your life matters to him and he aims to use you for his glory in this broken world. Verse 16 says as much. “I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you.”
In other words, Jesus chose you because he has chosen others, too, and your friend Jesus is asking you to go out into his world and invite others into friendship with him. And to give us even more confidence, he tells us that whatever we ask the Father in his name, he will give to us. People can and have taken that the wrong way. The context is key. Jesus isn’t saying we can ask for whatever we want, generally, but for whatever we need in Christ, specifically. As we abide with him and go out to bear fruit for him through a life devoted to him, and we run into a need that only he can meet, we can ask the Father in Jesus’s name, and he will provide. That’s the kind of friend we have in Jesus. He is a true one. One that stands by us, always.
So, when Jesus says in verse 17, “These things I command you, so that you will love one another,” we know the place from which he says this has the power of his love behind it. It’s a love as deep as the cross and as glorious as the resurrection. Our love is based on his love, and his love is as big as it gets. Why not abide there for our whole lives? I can’t think of a better place.
Conclusion
I want to end with a story that shows what abiding in Christ looks like.
Corrie Ten Boom lived in Nazi-occupied land during World War II. She and her family were sent to a concentration camp for hiding Jews in their home. Her father was killed. Her sister, Betsie, died in the camp. Corrie survived. One day after the war, she spoke on forgiveness at a church, and afterward, a former guard at the concentration camp came forward to greet her. Here’s what she said about that day.
It was in a church in Munich that I saw him, a balding heavyset man in a gray overcoat, a brown felt hat clutched between his hands…
It was 1947 and I had come from Holland to defeated Germany with the message that God forgives.
“When we confess our sins,” I said, “God casts them into the deepest ocean, gone forever.”
The solemn faces stared back at me, not quite daring to believe. There were never questions after a talk in Germany in 1947. People stood up in silence, in silence collected their wraps, in silence left the room.
And that’s when I saw him, working his way forward against the others. One moment I saw the overcoat and the brown hat; the next, a blue uniform and a visored cap with its skull and crossbones.
It came back with a rush: the huge room with its harsh overhead lights, the pathetic pile of dresses and shoes in the center of the floor, the shame of walking naked past this man. I could see my sister’s frail form ahead of me, ribs sharp beneath the parchment skin…
Now he was in front of me, hand thrust out: “A fine message, fräulein! How good it is to know that, as you say, all our sins are at the bottom of the sea!”
And I, who had spoken so glibly of forgiveness, fumbled in my pocketbook rather than take that hand. He would not remember me, of course–how could he remember one prisoner among those thousands of women?
But I remembered him and the leather crop swinging from his belt. It was the first time since my release that I had been face to face with one of my captors and my blood seemed to freeze.
“You mentioned Ravensbrück in your talk,” he was saying. “I was a guard in there.” No, he did not remember me.
And I stood there–I whose sins had every day to be forgiven–and could not. Betsie had died in that place–could he erase her slow terrible death simply for the asking?
It could not have been many seconds that he stood there, hand held out, but to me it seemed hours as I wrestled with the most difficult thing I had ever had to do.
For I had to do it–I knew that. The message that God forgives has a prior condition: that we forgive those who have injured us. “If you do not forgive men their trespasses,” Jesus says, “neither will your Father in heaven forgive your trespasses.”
And still I stood there with the coldness clutching my heart. But forgiveness is not an emotion–I knew that too. Forgiveness is an act of the will, and the will can function regardless of the temperature of the heart.
“Jesus, help me!” I prayed silently. “I can lift my hand. I can do that much. You supply the feeling.”
“But since that time,” he went on, “I have become a Christian. I know that God has forgiven me for the cruel things I did there, but I would like to hear it from your lips as well. Fräulein”–again the hand came out–“will you forgive me?”
And so woodenly, mechanically, I thrust my hand into the one stretched out to me. And as I did, an incredible thing took place. The current started in my shoulder, raced down my arm, sprang into our joined hands. And then this healing warmth seemed to flood my whole being, bringing tears to my eyes.
“I forgive you, brother!” I cried. “With all my heart!”
For a long moment we grasped each other’s hands, the former guard and the former prisoner. I had never known God’s love so intensely as I did then.
And having thus learned to forgive in this hardest of situations, I never again had difficulty in forgiving: I wish I could say it! I wish I could say that merciful and charitable thoughts just naturally flowed from me from then on. But they didn’t.
If there’s one thing I’ve learned at 80 years of age, it’s that I can’t store up good feelings and behavior–but only draw them fresh from God each day.
That’s what abiding in Christ looks like. Corrie Ten Boom was already clean by the washing of the word, but she was pruned that day to do something she never imagined possible, to bear the fruit of forgiveness to a man who didn’t deserve it, just as she didn’t deserve her Father’s forgiveness. That’s the kind of Gardener God is. Isn’t he good?
Let’s pray.
