Abide in me and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abide in the vine, thus neither [can] ye unless ye abide in me.
The Lord pictures Himself as a vine and His disciples as its branches. Two things need explaining: what it means to abide in Him, and why a branch's own effort produces nothing.
The word behind "abide" is not a special religious term. It runs through John's Gospel and is translated in several ways, all pointing to the same plain idea of staying put.
The word 'abide' is used by John very frequently. It is rendered in different ways. Sometimes it is 'remain' and at other times it is 'continue', but all having the same basic meaning.
Put into everyday language, the command asks for nearness and reliance — the same word used elsewhere of sticking close to the Lord with settled purpose.
Fruitfulness is promoted by abiding in Christ. What does it really mean to do this? It may be more easily understood if we say, "Keep close to the Lord! Draw all your resources from Him." In the book of Acts 11:23 one of the Lord's servants, Barnabas by name, urged the believers "to remain faithful to the Lord with steadfast purpose." The word "remain faithful" [older versions: "cleave"] is the same word as "abide" in the original.
The verse joins a command to a promise, and the order matters.
First, we see what alone is enough for the fruit required. It is what the very nature of a branch implies — to abide in the vine. Apart from Christ we can do nothing. If the branch does not abide in the vine, the vine — the vine-sap — cannot abide in the branch. That is why the Lord's words come in this order: "Abide in Me, and I in you." "Abide in Me" — that is the command, the responsibility; "and I in you" — that will be the assured result.
A branch does no work. It stays attached, and life flows in. The same holds for the disciple, and it holds when life turns hard.
Here the Lord insists on more. We must depend on Him and be close to Him. This is to abide in Christ… He, and He only, is the dwelling-place for the soul in this world of traps and danger, in this desert where there is no water. Make Him the resource, make Him the object. Then the sap, as it were, flows without hindrance, and the branch bears fruit. Without Him no teaching works, and all religious excitement fails. Bring Him in, trust Him, and He sustains the heart, and fruit-bearing follows — no matter what the difficulty, the pain, the shame, the opposition or the slander.
Does the word "unless" mean a believer's salvation hangs by a thread?
No — that is not the meaning of these words. What they teach is that the only possible way of fruit-bearing is to abide in Christ, as a branch abides in the vine. And the one evidence of abiding in Christ is fruit-bearing… It is not a question of a branch abiding in Christ today and not tomorrow. It is a question of two sorts of branches: the fruit-bearing branches and the non-fruit-bearing branches. It is a question of what claims to be for the Lord on earth, and in that sense everyone who claims His name is a branch. But if there is no living union with Him there will be no fruit, and such a branch will in the end be cast out, as Judas was.
Scripture also uses a different picture: the Church as one body joined to Christ its Head.
Heavenly grace forms that one body by the one Spirit, united to the glorified Head. There we do not hear of tearing, wounding, or cutting off… Responsibility on earth under divine government is another thing. The Vine and its branches teach that, not the unfailing heavenly relationship of the Church.
So where does abiding start? With the question of what fills your thoughts.
Is it your fruit-bearing or Christ? If it is your fruit-bearing, it is self-occupation, and as a result the fruit will be poor in both quantity and quality. But if you have learnt what He means when He says, "Apart from ME you can do nothing," and so have turned wholly to Him — the Source of your life, strength and energy — fruit will not be lacking. You abide in Him when you realise that you can't do without Him, and when you know that all you need is in Him. Two words cover it. He is INDISPENSABLE to you, and He is ALL-SUFFICIENT.
What makes abiding a habit rather than a mood?
You will abide in Him HABITUALLY when you know His love as greater than all other loves, Himself better than the brightest and best below… The secret of constant abiding in Him is simply the knowledge of His love.
- Stay — To abide is to keep close to the Lord and draw all your resources from Him.
- Order — "Abide in Me" is the command and our responsibility; "and I in you" is the assured result that follows.
- Sap — A branch bears nothing by effort. It stays attached, life flows in, and fruit comes even under opposition.
- Fruit, not safety — The vine teaches fruit and responsibility on earth, not the fear of being lost. The body joined to its Head speaks of a heavenly relationship that never fails.
- Love — Constant abiding grows from knowing His love. Watching your own fruit only shrinks the harvest.
I am the vine, ye [are] the branches. He that abides in me and I in him, *he* bears much fruit; for without me ye can do nothing.
Jesus uses a picture from a vineyard to show His disciples where fruit for God comes from. Everything depends on staying joined to Him. It raises two questions the commentators keep returning to. What is this "fruit," and what does it mean to abide?
The disciples already knew a vine — their own nation. Commentators read this verse as Christ taking its place.
The disciples were used to thinking of Israel as the vine the Lord had planted. He brought it out of Egypt and planted it in the land He had chosen... Here the Lord sets Israel aside altogether and puts Himself in the place of that fruitless vine. Christ is the True Vine, and His Father is the gardener who tends it. This is not His work in heaven as Advocate (John 13). Nor is it His coming as our Hope, to place us with Himself in the Father's house (John 14). It is His relation to His own people on earth, for bearing fruit. Christ is all.
Writers warn against mixing this picture up with another one — the church as a body joined to Christ its Head. The two teach different things.
The relation of head and body serves quite another purpose in Scripture, and we must keep the two completely separate... There it is the church seen as the object of Christ's unfailing love, until He presents it to Himself in glory. Responsibility on earth, under God's rule, is another thing. The Vine and its branches teach that responsibility, not the unfailing heavenly relationship of the Church.
If "much fruit" meant sermons, converts or visible activity, the verse would belong to a talented few. Commentators point somewhere else.
Fruit is the character of Christ reproduced in the lives of His disciples. We read in Galatians 5:22 that "the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control." These are the very qualities that marked Christ in His life here on earth... Fruit, then, is not preaching and teaching, or different forms of service. In this passage it is not even souls won for Christ through preaching. It is the beautiful qualities of Christ seen in the people who are won. Yet a person can be very active in Christian service and still show little of the character of Christ.
That definition changes who can bear fruit.
If service and work were fruit, then only those with gift and ability could bear it. But if fruit is the character of Christ, then every believer can bear fruit, from the oldest to the youngest — and it is a privilege to do so.
The verse joins two things — our abiding in Him, and His abiding in us. Writers note that one follows the other.
All the resources of the Father are in the Son, and we can only draw on those resources as we abide in Him. The Son's abiding in us is the consequence of our abiding in Him.
Another writer spells out what abiding leans on, and what pulls against it.
To abide in Him supposes not merely distrust of ourselves, but clinging to Him and counting on Him. Every influence around us is against this; every natural feeling no less so... We need Him, and we cannot do without Him for the smallest things any more than the greatest. But there is more — He also draws us by His own excellence.
The last words of the verse leave no exceptions. Commentators show how little separation it takes to prove them true.
Take any branch in the whole vine, however impressive or wide-spreading it looks. Cut it off from the main stem by no more than the thickness of a sheet of gold leaf, and it cannot produce the smallest atom of fruit. We must keep a living sense of our union with Christ. That means abiding in Him by faith in a practical way — day by day, hour by hour, moment by moment. Only then can we bear fruit that God accepts.
There is also a warning against turning fruit itself into the goal.
Fruit is not produced by making fruit an object, or by thinking about fruit; it is the outcome of having Christ as an object, of thinking of Him. Christ comes before fruit.
- Vine. Israel was God's vine on earth and bore nothing. Christ now stands in that place, with the Father as the gardener.
- Branch. This picture is about responsibility and fruit on earth. That is not the same as the church's unfailing union with Christ in glory.
- Fruit. Not gift, service or results, but the character of Christ formed in us. That puts fruit within reach of every believer, young or old.
- Abiding. Clinging to Him and counting on Him; His abiding in us follows ours in Him, never the reverse.
- Nothing. Separation as thin as gold leaf ends all fruit — so the aim is never fruit itself, but Christ, from whom the fruit comes.
Unless any one abide in me he is cast out as the branch, and is dried up; and they gather them and cast them into the fire, and they are burned.
Jesus has just said that a branch bears no fruit on its own; now He turns to the branch that does not stay joined to Him. The picture ends in fire, which raises an old question: can a truly saved person end there?
The vine pictures a link with Christ on earth. That link may be real, or it may be only a claim.
The Lord's words here say little about Christianity in its heavenly relations. This is not about relationship with Christ in heaven, as members of His body by the Holy Spirit — a vital relationship that cannot be broken. It is about relationship with Christ on earth, through the profession of discipleship. That profession may be real, or it may be only a claim. So the Lord speaks of two kinds of branches: those that have life and prove it by bearing fruit, and those that have no life, which are thrown out and burned.
Scripture uses another picture for the believer's tie to Christ. It works differently, and the two must not be mixed.
It hardly needs saying that the relation of head and body serves quite another purpose in Scripture. It must be kept completely separate. Heavenly grace forms that one body by the one Spirit, united to the glorified Head. There we never hear of tearing, wounding, or cutting off. It is the church seen as the object of Christ's unfailing love, until He presents it to Himself in glory. Responsibility on earth under God's government is another thing. That, not the unfailing heavenly relationship of the church, is what the Vine and its branches teach.
The Lord had been saying "you" to the eleven disciples in front of Him. Here He switches to "anyone" — "a man" in older translations — and the switch matters.
He has been addressing the Eleven as true branches of the vine, and He will address them that way again. But in the word of warning He changes from "you" to "a man"... Should a real believer then fear that this might be his own end? The wording of verse 6 clearly shows that none of the Eleven were in view. Suppose the Lord had said, "If you do not abide in Me." Then there might be some excuse for the serious mistake that a real believer could be lost after all — a child of God today, a lost soul tomorrow. But the Lord's language was guarded.
Notice who handles the dead branch. It passes out of the Father's own hands.
In the picture the Lord uses, the vinedresser does not deal with the dead branch Himself. Others deal with it. So the Father does not deal with the fruitless and therefore lifeless professing Christian. Under the government of God, those who carry out His judgment deal with him. And here the branch is not "taken away" but "thrown away," "withers," "thrown into the fire," and "burned."
Why does the branch dry up? Its supply has stopped.
Withering follows, because the sap of the divine Spirit is withdrawn. That sap flows to believers through their vital union with their great Head. Note the contrast. A branch in Him is fruitful and productive. Thrown out as unfruitful, it then withered by itself.
One seat at the table was empty as Jesus spoke. Commentators point to the man who had left it.
There was an empty place at the table. Judas, the twelfth, had just left. He was already on his way to the high priest's palace, working out how many pieces of silver he would sell Jesus for — and Jesus knows it.
Two schools of thought pull this verse in opposite directions, and both bend it.
Since Christ is the only source of fruit, to abandon Him is fatal. So it was with Judas... The Calvinist is afraid he will compromise his doctrines of grace. The Arminian is eager to press his advantage on the side of falling away. So the first tends to dodge the solemn warning of personal ruin and final judgment given here. The second argues that the passage means a saved soul may be lost after all.
Such a person may look like a follower. Something else is missing.
It was someone who had come out from the world and had followed Christ. But there was no attraction of heart, no power of faith, and therefore no dependence on Christ; and this is the sentence the Lord pronounces on all such people, whether in that day or in any other.
- Abide — the frame. The vine pictures a visible link with Christ on earth, tested by fruit. The body of Christ, formed by the Spirit, is a different tie, and it cannot be broken.
- Abide, or wither. Cut off from the source, the branch dries up on its own — no supply, no fruit, nothing left.
- A changed word. The Lord switched from "you" to "anyone" so no true disciple could read his own doom into the sentence.
- Judas, the sample. The empty seat shows what an unreal branch looks like: outward following, but no attachment of heart and no dependence.
- A warning kept whole. Commentators here reject both dodges: the fire is real judgment on empty profession, and no true believer is in view.
If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will and it shall come to pass to you.
The Lord has been speaking of the vine and the branches. Now He gives a promise so wide it can unsettle a reader. Everything depends on the two conditions He sets first, and on what they do to the person who asks.
The verse has a sequence, and the sequence is the teaching. Prayer comes third, not first.
Here the larger subject is how vital it is that Christ's words abide in us: "If you abide in me, and my words abide in you." First comes the person, then the expression of His mind. Prayer follows: "ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you." Prayer does not come first, for it must not take the place of Christ, or of understanding His mind. Christ Himself is the prime object. Then come His words, forming the heart fully according to His thoughts and will. Last comes the going out of the heart to the Father, resting on both Christ and His revealed mind, with the assurance attached that it would come to pass for them.
The first condition is dependence. To abide in Christ is to keep leaning on Him, and the branch shows how complete that leaning is.
Here the Lord insists on more — the necessity and the importance of dependence on Him, of intimacy with Himself. This is to abide in Christ, and His word is, "Abide in me, and I in you." This is not sovereign grace to the sinner. It is His call to the disciple. So His abiding in us, as a matter of daily communion, depends on our abiding in Him. "As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me." Outwardly nothing is simpler than this fact. Inwardly nothing is surer in our experience than that it works the same way. He, and He only, is the dwelling-place for the soul in this world of snares and danger, in this desert where there is no water.
The second condition goes deeper. His words settle inside a person and reshape what that person wants.
What, then, is meant by having His word abiding in us? Here it means nothing less than that His words should have found their home in our hearts, and in such a way that they have formed our thoughts. Or rather, because they fill us with divine thoughts, they have produced the mind of Christ in us. So the very desires we express in prayer are only the expression of His own mind and will. That is why He can say, "ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you."
When Christ's words direct the will, the promise puts God's power behind a life of obedience.
There is one more element in John 15:7, "and my words abide in you." My mind and will are directed by Christ's words. The words of Christ abide in me. That being so, I ask whatever I wish and it will be done for me. Divine power is at my disposal if I am directed by Christ's will, if what He says is what I am doing and nothing else. We ask whatever we wish when these words have power in us. This is not asking wrongly, as in James. If He answers such a prayer, it is in discipline. Still, it is an immense thing, if I am doing God's will, to have God's power at my disposal, to be able to wield His power in the path of obedience.
Many ask and do not get what they prayed for. One writer finds the answer in what the asking here covers.
This is often a puzzle to many of us, for we often ask and do not get what we pray for. The difficulty vanishes when we see that the asking here is not for ourselves or our affairs, but for what concerns His interests and His testimony on the earth. The Father and the Son had put their affairs into the disciples' hands. In these chapters the disciples are seen as being in that business, so that their prayers and asking serve the interests of the business, if we may venture to speak that way.
Commentators differ on how far to narrow this. Others treat the promise as covering the full range of a believer's requests, insisting the double condition already guarantees the prayer is right.
This is sometimes spoken of as a lower kind of prayer, but the slightest examination of the terms our Lord uses will dispel the misunderstanding.
- Person first. Christ comes first, then His words, then prayer. Asking never takes the place of either.
- Abide means depend. Abiding is daily dependence on Christ and closeness to Him. It is His call to every disciple, as the branch stays in the vine.
- Words reshape wanting. When His words make their home in us, they form the mind of Christ in us. Then the desires we voice in prayer already express His will.
- Then power is at hand. If His will directs us, God's power is at our disposal on the path of obedience. Asking wrongly is the opposite, and He may answer that only as discipline.
- Aimed at His interests. The asking here concerns His interests and His testimony on the earth, not our own affairs. That explains much unanswered prayer.