Abiding in the True Vine: Fruitful Living through Christ

Leon Morris discusses the metaphor of Jesus as the true vine and believers as the branches. He emphasizes the importance of abiding in Christ to bear spiritual fruit, noting that apart from Jesus, one can do nothing. Morris explains the role of pruning by the Father to produce more fruit and highlights the necessity of love and obedience as evidence of genuine discipleship. The sermon underscores the centrality of a deep, abiding relationship with Jesus for a fruitful Christian life.

The following unedited transcript is provided by Beluga AI.

---

Yesterday in our study in John 15, we had reached the fifth verse, which is a reminder that apart from Christ, we can’t do a thing. He thought he’s carried on in verse 6: “Anybody who doesn’t remain in me, he’s thrown outside like a vine cane, and withers up; they gather them up and throw them into the fire, and they burn them.”

We were noticing earlier on that this has nothing to do with the final perseverance of the saints, that this is a part of the agricultural picture, which brings out the importance of fruitfulness, the purging out of everything that isn’t fruitful, and Jesus is pointing out here in the strongest of fashion, that the condition of fruitfulness is abiding in him. And the importance of fruitfulness isn’t just an optional extra which some Christians may be interested to pursue. All of us are expected to be producing the fruit in question.

And so in verse 7, if anybody remains in me and my words remain in him, I ask whatever you will, it will be done to you, or you will ask him.

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. (John 15:5-7, ESV)

There are different readings there. Here we notice that the words of Christ are thought of as extremely important. Again and again throughout this institute, we have been reminded of the significance of the word of God, thought of Christ, which of course amounts to the same thing.

The essence of Christianity is not to be seen in some airy, airy ideas which float around in the modern world. The essence of Christianity is in revealed truth. God has spoken, and specifically God has spoken in His Son. And the words that He has uttered are important words for us. We neglect them to our peril. And so Jesus can say here vividly that His words are by night. The great truths that He enunciates may come within our very being and become part of us.

Of course, if we reject them, that’s another matter, but the person who welcomes them and accepts them and takes them into himself has these words remaining within him. They become part of him and they issue inevitably in fruit. That is the imagery which is being carried on. But there’s a little twist, as so often in this gospel, where we have had the imagery of fruitfulness up till now, we expect this to be carried on, and Jesus instead switches to the subject of prayer.

I cannot emphasize too strongly the importance of prayer as it is brought out in these farewell discourses. We noticed earlier on that Jesus said, if you will ask anything in my name, I’ll do it. It’s a tremendous weapon that is given. And now we find that if we abide in Christ, and if Christ’s words abide in us, then we may ask whatever we will. It will be done.

⁷ If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. (John 15:7, ESV)

And I don’t want to take time here because we really dealt with this in the earlier section, but I simply say quickly in passing that this, of course, means the same kind of thing with a little difference of emphasis. seen before, namely, that we are not being given, so to speak, an open check that we can spend on the gratification of any of our own personal desires. The condition here is abiding in Christ as we abide in Him.

So we will ask the kind of thing that we should, and when we do that, when prayer is in accordance with the will of God, then that prayer is mighty and effectual. There is nothing that cannot be wrought by such a prayer. Ask whatever you will; it will be done. Let us be in no doubt as to the greatness of this weapon that God has put into our hands. Why has He put it in the hands I have, I can’t imagine. But He is, and He expects us accordingly to use it.

And the metaphor of fruitfulness is continued in verse 8. In this, was my father glorified? We have to translate it, I guess, is my father glorified? But the use of the past tense in the Greek is a very interesting way in which Jesus puts the certainty of it. He is not suggesting that the disciples may or may not bear fruit, and He is not too certain what will happen.

He is expressing a strong confidence that He believes that they will bear fruit, and He is so sure that they will bear fruit, that He says, “In this, my father already has been glorified, but you bear fruit.” This is a certainty. He has spoken, indeed, in the very first part of our studies when we began chapter 13 of the Father being glorified, John 13:31, the very first verse we looked at. The Father is glorified in the glorification of the Son.

³¹ When he had gone out, Jesus said, “Now is the Son of Man glorified, and God is glorified in him. (John 13:31, ESV)

The Father is glorified in the Son’s atoning work.

And now we see that the Father is glorified also in the fruitfulness of the disciples of Christ. Dr. Lloyd-Jones was bringing it out for us last night when he was pointing out how when a man is transformed by the power that is in the gospel of Jesus Christ, then this brings glory to God. People talk about it, and they are interested in the God who brings about such changes in men. And so Jesus is talking about the way in which fruitful lives bring glory to God.

Not, mark you, to the people who are living those fruitful lives, but to God. It’s the essence of living out the Christian faith that we point not to ourselves, but to Him whose we are and whom we serve. In verse 9, we have a little switch, not a very great one, but a little one. “As the Father loved me, I have loved you. Continue in my love. And if you keep my commandments, you continue in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments, and I remained in His love.”

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. (John 15:9-10, ESV)

Once again, we are reminded of the importance of doing as well as loving. You see, how impossible is this modern antithesis that we so often see. The suggestion that we can forget the commandments of God because the only thing that’s important is that we love. Love and the keeping of the commandments go together. Love, why then we will want to know the will of him whom we love, and when we know it, we will want to do it with all our heart. These are not opposites, but they go hand in hand.

The love that we have for God and the keeping of the commandments of God are necessarily connected in the closest of fashions. If we do not keep His commandments, then grave doubt is being thrown on the reality of our love. And in verse 10, we are reminded that this is not something which Christ is laying on us as a harsh and unpleasant duty, but it is simply a matter of the following of His example. He, and in so many other things, showed us the way by doing Himself.

He came to us, and He kept the Father’s commandments, and He abode in the love of God. And what we see in Him, we, in our measure, are to reproduce in our own experience. Then there is an interesting statement in 1 Thessalonians that I want to stay with for a little. These things I have spoken to you so that my joy might be in you, and your joy might be filled full. This is the first mention of joy in this discourse in the upper room, but it isn’t the last by any manner of means.

Seven times Jesus speaks of joy in this discourse. He doesn’t speak of it very much in the earlier part of this gospel. In fact, the word joy turns up only in chapter 3 verse 29 of all this discourse. But now it becomes one of the important notes. But the joy of the Lord is a very significant part, then, of Jesus’ final teaching.

He says indeed in this verse that all these things he has been speaking, he has been speaking in order that, first, his joy might remain in the disciples, and secondly, that their joy might be filled full. He doesn’t want them to have half measures when joy is handed out. He wants them to have joy in its richness and all its fullness. Now, this is not a casual expression of our Lord’s which we get in his farewell discourses. Joy is one of the characteristic notes running right through the New Testament.

The early Christians, if we can trust the New Testament at all, were a happy lot. They were people into whose hearts and lives they had come back, which filled them full with a new and abounding joy. They were people who exulted in life. And we miss a great deal unless we get that. This pervades the New Testament to a degree that the reader of the New Testament in English, or for that matter, in any translation, scarcely grasps. We can figure out, of course, when we miss joy. That obviously refers to joy. So does rejoice.

But we don’t automatically think of joy when we come up against such a word, say, as grace. We know that grace is one of the very great Christian words, but we very often make it a solemn thing, and sometimes I fear we even reach what is almost impossible and make it dull. But joy and grace are closely connected. Linguistically they’re almost the same. The Greek word for joy is kara. For grace, karas. You can hear the one in the other. And ultimately, basically, fundamentally, grace means that which causes joy.

And we still use this word with a recollection of its original failure in one or two places. For instance, we may talk about a graceful movement, a ballet dancer moving gracefully. The movement is aesthetically pleasing. And this takes us right back to the original understanding of grace. Or we talk about the social graces, the little habits which are pleasing in society in general. And if you search hard enough you can find other examples.

But in the Christian scene, there is nothing that causes joy like the knowledge that God has given us a full and free salvation in Christ. And so this wonderful thing is called the joy-causer, grace. And grace must always be thought of not as solemn and dull and terribly serious, though there are serious and solemn aspects to it, but basically as a happy thing. When the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ comes into your heart, that doesn’t mean that you are depressed beyond measure. It means that you are lifted up into the heights of joy.

If you’ve really got what grace means, then you’ll have joy. The story doesn’t end there. One of the world’s words for forgive is characterize. And here again, we have our chara, joy. To be forgiven is to undergo a joyful experience. There is no need for me to point out that to be forgiven is to undergo a solemn experience. The conviction of sin is never an easy or a comfortable experience, and there are certainly very uncomfortable and very serious realities involved. But when the forgiveness of God really comes through to you, that is a joyful thing.

And the one way of putting it is, I tell you, to use this word which stresses the note of joy. A question which I was led to see came to Dr. Lloyd-Jones and not to me, refers to the spiritual gifts, the charisma, the charisma. And it’s a very sad thing that in these days these gifts so often are divisive and the cause of solemn disputation. In the New Testament they are happy things. They are great gifts, gifts which are freely given to promote joy.

While I could go on, it would be practically impossible to let your Greek New Testament fall open And somewhere on the page before you, not to have one or other of the joy words. This volume is penetrated through and through and through with joy. And so the Christian faith ought always to be a joyful thing. Christian people, if they understand what Christianity is about, must be joyful people. And whenever we get around with great long faces like horses, we have missed out on what being Christian means.

That is, Christianity is just a mass of a joyless thing that ever creates a sad and stingy-sick old world. It’s something which goes through and through the life, and it brings a joy such as the world never knew—the world never gave it, and the world can’t take it away—that my joy might remain in you, that your joy might be filled full. He’s not holding out on us. It’s not that we can get just so much joy and no more. Our joy is to be filled full, is it?

It’s as much joy as a life can contain that Christ brings to us. This is a tremendous piece of teaching, and we should rejoice in our souls that the Lord has given it to us. Well, that is a very tremendous thought, and is followed by another very tremendous thought. This is my commandment, that you love one another just as I loved you. Greater love nobody has than this, that one should put down his life for his friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you.

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. (John 15:12-14, ESV)

You will notice, of course, that once again the keeping of Christ’s commandments and love are intertwined. These are not opposed. They go with one another. If you have the one, you have the other. Somewhere along the line, I want to talk about this general idea of love, and I guess this is as good a place to do it as any, because there is a distinctive quality, I think, in Christian love, for which we should be aware of.

A great Swedish theologian, Anders Nygren, once wrote a book which he called A Café in which he’s tried to draw a line between agape, which he thought meant Christian love, and eros, which he thought meant another kind of love. He’s been subject to a good deal of criticism, and I think these days most people feel that he’s drawn the line too hard.

But, in my opinion, he has drawn attention to something which is important, namely, that whatever be the truth of the linguistics, the Christian quality of love is not in fact what the world understands as love. There is something distinctive about the Christian understanding of it. Let’s chase that one around a little. You know, I don’t know any better way to begin than with some gentle linguistics, so we’ll try you out on those. The Greek language is rich in words for love. There is a word, stogie, for instance, which means natural affection.

This is the love which binds people together in a natural grouping. The love of the members of a family for one another is the outstanding example of stogie. And this is regarded always as a very important quality, but unfortunately, the New Testament doesn’t use the word very often. As a matter of fact, it doesn’t use the word at all. The best you can do is to find the negative form. And in Romans 1, for instance, those who are at stogie, those who are without natural affection, are regarded as sinful beings.

It is a right and proper thing to do to have this natural affection for those who are near and dear to us. But since, as I say, the word doesn’t turn up at all, clearly this is not a very promising lead if we’re trying to find the Christian idea of love. A second word, which is in common use in Greek for love, is philia, which properly denotes the love of a man for his friend. Now, this does occur in the New Testament. you’ll find it in the Epistle of James.

The friendship of the world is enmity with God. And that’s the only occasion in the New Testament where the word does occur. So again, this is not really a very promising lead at all. A third word which the Greeks used, and though this one does not occur in the New Testament at all, it’s an important word because it was the characteristic Greek word for love. This is the word eros. And I want to stay with this a little because this is the word which conveys what most people still understand by love.

Eros, basically, is romantic love, the love of man for man. And eros is the god of love that flies around with the arrows and those who are damaged. Now, this word is quite common in Greek literature at large. And I think we can say that there are two things in particular that characterize love of the eros type. One, it’s the love of the worthy. And two, it’s love that desires to possess.

First, it’s love of the worthy. Now, you have to put “worthy” in quote marks here, because the beloved is not necessarily what the lover thinks she is. We sometimes say of a young man in love, I can’t imagine what he sees in her. But he is in love by definition. He does see something in her. He wouldn’t be in love with her otherwise. It is a necessary part of errors that the lover thinks a great deal of the beloved. She’s wonderful. And this attitude of mine, or her, or whatever it’s an attitude of, is an integral part of love. The second thing is a firm desire to possess the beloved.

You never yet knew a young man who said, I’m head over heels in love with Mary, and I don’t care how much I’ll marry the girl. young men don’t react like that. If he is in love, then he is determined that she will be his. He needs her. Life is just empty and barren without her. He must have her, and he’s determined that he will. Now, these two things characterize errors. It’s love of the worthy, or what the lover thinks to be worthy, and love which desires to possess.

Now, don’t get the idea that I am outlining now a poor and inferior kind of love over against which I propose to set a higher and better kind of love. That isn’t it at all. I am simply pointing out that there are different kinds of love. Errors, of course, can be a very poor and inferior thing. It can degenerate into a very crude light. But it can, though, and often does, a very lofty and pure passion. It can be used far beyond the romantic love with which it’s started.

And Plato, for instance, can use this word for the love of the good. Now you are not saying anything bad about a man when you say that he loves the good in the sense of Eros, that he sees in goodness the supremely worthy in him, and that he is determined to make it his own day by day. That is high praise of a man, and it’s not in any sense criticism. Eros can and often does denote a love which is pure and good and beautiful in itself. But the Christians didn’t use the term.

It wasn’t that that they were trying to convey when they spoke of love. They used the word agape, which may have been used before them, but not much. It certainly was used before them because it turns up in the Greek translation of the Old Testament a few times. But apart from that, you know one of these scholarly quibbles, you know, if Professor X is correctly filling in the gaps in an inscription which he found in some place which Dr. Schultz knows all about, then the word may have been used.

Or if the damaged papyri which Professor Y found somewhere else is properly understood, perhaps agape was used there. It’s just like that. There are very, very few occurrences of this word being used. It’s not true to say there are none, but it is true to say that there are very, very few. But in the New Testament, this is a characteristic word. If the Christians wanted to use the noun love, they used the word agape. They didn’t use any other word at all in the New Testament. And I think that this is a striking fact.

I think it draws our attention to an important point: that love for the Christian is not precisely the same quality that love is for the non-Christian. Now, here is a very interesting thing. Agape is something which you find in the death of Christ for men. That is why I’m talking about it here. “Greater agape has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.”

¹³ Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends. (John 15:13, ESV)

Though if you’re looking for the definition of it, you’ll find it better in 1 John 4:14. Here it is, agape: “Not that we love God.”

You’ll never find out what Christian love is if you start from that. But he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. That’s agape. It is the love that you see in the cross where God sent his Son to deal with man’s sins. And I think we can say that agape contradicts errors at those two distinctive points. Remember, errors is the love of the worthy. But, Romans 5:8, “God commendeth his own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” That’s agape.

God wasn’t deluded about us. He didn’t look out and say, “What a fine lot of people there are down there. I’d better do something for them.” That wasn’t it at all. While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.

⁸ but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. (Romans 5:8, ESV)

He sought us for what we are. And despite that, he loved us. Loved us not in a vague theoretical way, but in the love that we see on the cross. He loved so that he gave. Remember John 3:16. God so loved the world that he gave. That’s characteristic of agape.

And that, of course, is the negation of the second theme of our errors. Errors desire us to possess. Now there is, of course, a sense in which God desires to possess us. He called us to be his own. And it is important that we should respond to that call. But there’s a difference. God doesn’t desire us like the young man desires his maiden. No life for him is going to be an empty and barren affair unless he can get her. He must have her in order that his life will be better.

But it’s not like that when we come to God. When we come to God, we don’t bring in anything that he didn’t have before. Remember the old precepts which we sometimes use? “All things come of thee, O God, and of thy own have we given thee.” And the only thing that we can ever succeed in giving to God is something that he first gave to us. We don’t bring in addition to God when we come to God. He loves not because he can get something out of us.

He loves rather because he can give something to us. He loves because it’s his nature to love. He loves because he is like that. Remembering 1 John 4, twice, we are told that God is love. And I think that this means more than that God is loving. I think it means that it is his nature to love. Emil Brunner somewhere says the element radium is a good illustration of this.

If you talk about radium and you discuss its molecular constitution, the chemical compounds it will form, the physical properties of the element, and so on, and if you omit to say that it is the radium element, that it is constantly radiating away, you have passed over the really significant thing. And so, in the case of God, if you talk about his greatness, his wisdom, and his goodness, and the like, but if you omit to say he is love, he is constantly giving in love, you have passed over the really significant thing.

Well, there is, I suppose, room for some debate on Brunner’s attitude to goodness, strength, and so on, but let’s not worry about that. Let’s concentrate on the way in which he is drawing our attention to the essence of the matter when we come to think of “God is love.” Namely, that it means that God loves, not because He has found people who are tremendously attractive and He has drawn out His love so that He can’t help it. He loves because He is that kind of God. He loves because of His nature to love.

⁸ Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. (1 John 4:8, ESV)

He loves so that he can’t help it. Give to those whom he loves. Now, this Christian idea of love, you see, is simply not the world’s idea of love done up a little bit. It’s different, it’s distinctive, it’s a love that we wouldn’t know about were it not for the cross. Here it is, agape, not that we love God, but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sin.

¹⁰ In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. (1 John 4:10, ESV)

We should add to that that agape is kind of creative, that when we see the love of God for what it is, we are immediately challenged to a decision. Either we respond to that or we don’t. And if we don’t, then there is an annihilating judgment passed on us because we have rejected the very highest and best and most wonderful love that there is. But we are concerned this morning not with that, but with those who respond.

When we do respond to that love of God, when we welcome it gladly and reveal ourselves to God, then a number of things happen. We can be spoken of as being converted and of being born again and putting off the old man and putting on the new and so on. But one thing which happens is that in our measure, we begin to see men as God sees them. We see them as the objects of God’s love. We see them as those for whom Christ died.

And we, in our measure, begin to love, not because the people we meet are attractive, but now.

Because we are that kind of person, because now having been remade by the power of God, we see people as those for whom we can give, as those for whom Christ gave, and so while we can’t ever do it perfectly as God does, we, in our measure, reproduce this divine kind of love, the love that loves in order to give and not to get, the love which depends not on the nature of the loved one, but on the nature of the lover. And so the Christian life is, and always must be, an outgoing life.

The Christian is not going through this world, sort of trying to accumulate a sort of blessing which he brings in all the time and makes himself a more and more blessed person. This can’t be done, of course. Once we try it, we immediately enter into misery and frustration and disappointment. The Christian life is an outgoing life. It’s a life which is possessed by a divine love, and the Christian life works itself out in love to others. It doesn’t matter that they are not worthy. The Christian isn’t worthy either.

It doesn’t matter that they’re not particularly attractive. The Christian knows he is a sinner. He isn’t attractive in God’s eyes, but God loves him, and because God loves him, he loves God’s people wherever they may be. And the love that Christ has is the greatest love that there could possibly be. Greater love is known as in this, that a man lay down his life for the love of God, his life for his friends. I have met the quibble on the part of some requesting to expound this verse which says that this really isn’t great love.

You can think of a greater one. Great love is the love that a man has when he lays down his life for Henry. Well, this I think is to miss the point altogether. Jesus is not talking about friends versus enemies. And as a matter of fact, when it comes to enemies, it is true that Christ died for his enemies if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled by the death of the Son, Romans 5.

¹⁰ For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life. (Romans 5:10, ESV)

So it’s not that Christ is saying he will die for his friends and not for his enemies. There’s no antithesis here.

He is talking about what a man can do to show his love for his friends. And for friends, there is no greater love than to lay down the life. So, I think we can dismiss that quibble. Jesus is saying that the greatest of love that there is, he’s showing that laying down of the life, there is nothing that a man can do which shows more supremely his love than this act of dying for others. And he adds, “you are my friends if you do whatever I command you.”

Again, we ought not to take this as though it meant that we can merit the love of God by our carrying out his commands. It is simply that this is the way it works out. How do you know that a given person is a friend of Christ? Because he carries out his commands. If he ignores the commands of Christ, if he turns his back on them and says this is not for me, then he’s not a friend of Christ.

There is no myth implied here, but there is a recognition that the quality of life is important. The quality of life shows what the man is, and so the commands are not to be passed over as unimportant. And then our Lord proceeds to the point in verse 15, “No longer do I call you slaves, because the slave does not know what it is that his master is doing, but you I have called princes, because all the things that I have heard from my father I have made known to you.”

There is a difference between somebody who is just a slave or a servant, a hired servant, and someone who is a prince. The slave is a particular illustration. He doesn’t know what goes on. But a friend is different. A friend can enter into what a man is doing in a way that somebody else can’t. It was the other day I read a little incident in the life of Henry Ford.

One of his friends, and this is a friend and not a paid servant or a slave of Henry’s, noticed that when there is a problem to be ironed out, Henry Ford, instead of calling one of his executives to his office and dealing with it there, used to go along to the man’s office and deal with it in the man’s own place. And he said, “Henry, why do you do that? Wouldn’t you save a lot of time if you called these guys up to your office and dealt with it there?”

No, said Henry, I wouldn’t. We’d have exactly the same amount of time on the problem. But once we got the problem ironed out, I can get out of those guys’ offices far quicker than you. I can get him in a moment. His subordinates didn’t know where I was when he came to them. The servant doesn’t know what the master is doing, but this is something that can be communicated to a friend. And it’s simple.

The person who doesn’t enter into the category of friend of Christ doesn’t understand what Christ is doing in laying down his life. And as you search the literature of the world you will see illustrations of this plenty. Some will talk about the grave and this carriage of justice that took place, and some will talk about this act of martyrdom, and some will talk about this supreme heroic act of sacrifice, and so on, in ways which miss the essential point.

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. (John 15:13-15, ESV)

But the friends of Christ know that the death of Jesus, while it has such and such aspects which the worldly may get hold of, basically is a death for them. A death which deals with their sin and puts it out of the way. A death which opens to them the way to life. And this is something which comes to the friend, but not to someone else. And in verse 15 we are reminded that we are in the category of the friends of Christ. He has made known to us these things.

He says at the end, all things that I have heard from my father I have made known to you. Revelation is not given with a grudging hand. It isn’t that Christ made known the very minimum that he could make known and still have people become Christians. All the things are made known. Everything that we need is here made known for us in Scripture. Not everything we want.

We persist in asking all kinds of fool questions about all kinds of subjects, and I imagine that even in this gathering of people, if we could put together all our questions—notice our question session—if we could put together all the questions that bother us and get answers to them, we’d probably fill two or three Bibles. But while there are areas that we would like to have more knowledge in, the areas in which knowledge is necessary is all here. Everything that’s needed has been revealed.

And as I say, we ought never to think that God has given revelation grantingly. It isn’t that we have to squeeze out every little bit of knowledge. That isn’t at all. Everything that my father—that I’ve heard of my father, I’ve made known to you. Christ has passed the revelation on in its fullness. And then just one more verse in this little section, verse 16.

It wasn’t you that chose me, but I that chose you, and I appointed you, so that you should go and bear fruit, and your fruit should remain, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it 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. (John 15:16, ESV)

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. (John 15:16, ESV)

Here is the tremendous truth laid down, which usually we find so hard to grasp: that the initiative in salvation didn’t come from us, but from him. And when we are the servants of God, we are the servants of God, not because we decided one day that it was a good thing.

The natural man never does decide that it’s a good thing. We are God’s servants, because God chose us. This is the great biblical doctrine of election. The doctrine which runs through the ages. Old Testament and through the New. The initiative is always with God. God is a great God, a sovereign God, and he lays his hand on the life of this one and of that one, and he calls them into the fellowship of his own. And it’s never open to unregenerate man to say, I will be a Christian.

The way has to be prepared by the Holy Spirit working in the man’s heart, and it’s as the Spirit of God works within that the miracle takes place. You didn’t choose me. This is a very emphatic form in the Greek. I think I translated it. It was not you that chose me, is the way Jesus puts it. And then that strongly emphatic pronoun, that I chose you. Both of these pronouns are emphatic and they’re put in.

And I appointed you, a rather curious word that’s used, but I don’t think we will stay with that, so that you should go and reap fruit. I’ve been pointing out throughout this chapter that fruit probably means qualities of Christian character, but I would not exclude, particularly in this verse, the idea of bringing others into a knowledge of Christ. I don’t see quite the point of going to bring forth fruit apart from that.

I think the emphasis still probably is on the qualities of character, but there is also the thought of evangelistic endeavor and that our fruit should remain. And the most interesting thing, that whatever you ask the Father in my name, He may give it 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. (John 15:16, ESV)

We get it the other way around. We say, “Isn’t prayer wonderful?” It is the means whereby we are able to produce fruit and to see that our fruit remains. But Jesus turns it right round the other way.

It would be a good business for you to produce fruit and to have your fruit remain. Why? In order that you may pray powerfully. Can you see the tremendous importance that Jesus attaches to prayer? It comes out over and over and over in these chapters. And I find it difficult to think of anything that illustrates it more vividly than this. Prayer is not the means to our living fruitful lives, but fruitful lives are the means to more effective prayer. Prayer is that which really gets things done, and we are deluded until we see that.

Well, that’s a tremendous place on which to stop. Let’s stop and engage in prayer.

We thank you, O God, for this passage that we have been privileged to look at together this morning. We thank you for the truth that shines from these pages, and we thank you particularly for the reminder that Thou has given us in these concluding words of the tremendous weapon that Thou has given us in giving us prayer. We pray that we may understand this and that we may act accordingly.

Help us to be more constant in our praying, more ready to look to Thee, more diligent in our beseeching of Thee. And we pray Thee that by our prayers we may accordingly set forward Thy purposes in the place where it is pleasing to set us, through Christ our Lord. Amen.