“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.” - John 15:5
First of all, I would just like to point out that sometimes the ESV reads as if it was written by Yoda... or maybe that’s just me.
The key word I want to highlight in this passage is “abides”.
Abide: To remain stable or fixed in a state (Merriam-Webster Dictionary)
I feel like so often in my life I have done nothing. I’ve tried. I’ve failed. I’ve tried again. I’ve failed again. It’s a constant cycle of guilt and frustration. Growing up in the church, we are often overwhelmed with lists of things we should and should not do. We are told that we need to help the poor, reach the lost, and love our neighbors. We’re not allowed to drink, lust, or hate. We’re told that were supposed to by Christ’s ambassadors to the earth, which isn’t exactly an easy standard to meet.
And so we try, but continue to fail because there’s always a higher goal.
Sure, forgiveness is by grace through faith and not through works (because if it was by works we could boast and boasting is a sin which is the whole problem in the first place), but if faith produces works and we don’t have works then what if we don’t have faith?
That last “sentence” may have been confusing... Allow me to rephrase: We know that the Bible teaches we can’t earn salvation. Salvation is a gift from God that we could never earn. But we are also taught that faith produces works. We are told that “good Christians” don’t do certain things. We are also told that we must do other things. If we fail we need to try harder and pray and read our Bibles everyday.
In my experience, walking through life with this perspective only leads to emptiness and exhaustion. We are essentially placing a standard upon ourselves which only the God of the universe ever lived up to. Are high aspirations a bad thing? No, of course not, but if I was to go for a swim right now and expect myself to swim as fast as Michael Phelps that would be slightly unrealistic wouldn’t it?
So what? We just don’t try? We just get to do whatever we want?
“Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.” We see in this verse that it is through living in Christ that we bear fruit. Without him we can do NOTHING. We must seek him first. We have to develop a thirst for Christ.
King David is a beautiful example of thirsting for God. Despite all his flaws, he was truly in love with God. I believe that he knew he would fail. He accepted the fact that he wasn’t God; that God was greater than anything he could ever hope to become. But through David’s love and devotion, God was able to use him for amazing things.
Let’s fall in love with God. Let’s pray that he would give us hearts that yearn for him. And when we fail, lets accept that he forgives us and loves us unconditionally. When we are focused on him it frees us from guilt and shame because we are full of so much grace.
Lets ABIDE in him. Stay in him. Long for him. Thirst for him. Hunger for him. Live for him. For apart from him, we can do nothing.
