John 15:4. “Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, so neither can you unless you abide in Me.”
Abide is the word Jesus used to describe the dynamic relationship between Himself and fruitful branches. They live or dwell in Him, and He dwells or lives in them. The verb tense of abide describes the resulting action of something that happened in the past, namely, pruning or cleansing by Jesus’ words, which gives rise to the one point in time action that you are commanded to take in the present, which is abide. You now abide in Jesus because He lives in you!!! It’s not so much an imperative of “must”, but an imperative of reality. It’s just the way it is, so you do it. You receive His life like a branch receives life from the vine. The idea is that the branch grew out of the vine with life in it, so the branch naturally abides in the vine and the life of the vine is in the branch so it can bear fruit. It’s the only thing that makes sense. If you have Jesus’ life, then you choose to live the rest of your life in Him to love as He loves. In Peter’s first epistle, He used the same verb tense to explain our loving with Jesus. 1 Peter 1:22 – “Having purified your souls by your obedience to the truth for a sincere brotherly love, love (same aorist, active imperative) one another earnestly from a pure heart.” The rationale of the verse is clear: The reader who is a Christian has “purified, or been made clean” and this certain reality is made evident by their “obedience to the truth” for the purpose of “brotherly love (fruit-bearing in John 15)” If all of this past work is actually true, the natural result is that you will “love” each other deeply from the heart now. If we have really been converted, been purified and made new, and we have shown a willingness to obey, especially the command to “love the brethren” then naturally we “have to start loving deeply” to prove that what happened in the past is really true. Abiding in Jesus is the foundation of living to love with Jesus. Have you chosen to repent of living life for yourself? Have you chosen to obey Jesus and surrender yourself to live out of His life?
Acknowledgment: Music from “Carried by the Father” by Eric Terlizzi. www.ericterlizzi.com
