Lesson 29
Okay today we’re going to review 1 John a little bit. We haven’t had class for 3 weeks so we need to kind of get going and get back in the groove here. I want to spend some time reviewing so the handout that you have goes through some of these major ideas that we have to deal with in this epistle. These are the fundamental ideas. Today we want to go back and make sure that we have two ideas in mind. One is the distinguishing Christian growth from fellowship. These two ideas are confused. So what we’re going to do this morning is review and go into this because if you’re not clear on the difference between growth and being in or out of fellowship, exegesis is impossible to understand what John is saying here, in 1 John 3 particularly. So in order to understand John 3, we have to understand there is a latent distinguishing thing going on between these two ideas. So I want to devote some time to that. If you’ll follow with me in the outline in the handout; and if you’ll turn to 1 John 2:28 we’ll go back to the theme verse of this epistle.
(Opening prayer)
In John 2:28 John moves into this next section. That’s why I cut out in the first part of handout there under Roman I, review and introduction - that section that runs from 2:28 to 4:19. That is the major section of the epistle. All the other stuff before 2:28 is introductory material that you can of have to be understanding that John has these different ideas in mind. But 2:28 is the theme section of the main section of this epistle. Keep in mind as we said again and again, and again that these epistles were written to people who were largely illiterate.
So why would somebody write a letter to somebody that can’t read the letter? The answer is that these letters were read. They were written to pastors. They were written to the early churches and people would get up in the assemblies when they could meet, when they had the freedom to meet; somebody would have a copy of these and would read it. So that’s why in the scholarly work that’s been done in the last several decades on this epistle they realized that the ordering structure of the epistle is really the same kind of structure that was used at that time in history for speeches, for rhetoric. That’s why scholars in previous eras who’ve tried to approach this and outline it like it was a Trieste to be read by people had who could read had problems trying to understand the flow of John’s argument. But once it was realized that John is writing to people who are going to hear it, not people who are going to read it; they realized that well of course John is just using the normal ways of giving a short talk in his time and era.
So 2:28 is a theme, the introduction to this large section. So we want to go through verse 28 by way to remember.
NKJ 1 John 2:28 And now, little children, abide in Him,
Now there’s a purpose clause coming up.
that
So when you see “that” now we understand, there’s a purpose. So why do we want to abide in Him – whatever that means – which we’ll review.
abide in Him, that
Purpose
when He appears,
Now we’re talking about the Second Advent of Jesus Christ.
we may have confidence and not be ashamed before Him at His coming.
So that’s an implication about the return of Jesus Christ. It’s possible to be a believer and be ashamed when He comes. That must mean that we are going to be evaluated. We’re going to be judged, not for salvation but for something else - whether we’ve been abiding or not. So that’s the judgment of believers. It’s the same thing as Paul brings up in 1 Corinthians 3, the so-called Bema Seat Judgment.
The purpose is that when He appears we may have confidence and not be ashamed before Him at His coming. So that’s the set up. That’s why in the handout (in the little box), you’ll see where I tried to summarize it because in 2:28 and 4:19, the word confidence is used again; but this time, the second time that word confidence is used, it’s used in connection with praying for your fellow believers. The confidence that we have facing our ultimate accountability to our Savior is related to the confidence that we have in prayers now - which I think is kind of interesting that if we have confidence in our praying that we’re praying in the will of God for certain people and so on, we are in tune such that we won’t be condemned - not condemned but discredited for some of the stuff that we’ve don if it’s been done while we’re abiding.
So that gets back to the basic ideas So I want to go through three basic charts here so that we get the basic ideas of what’s going on here. Here’s the trinity. John the Apostle is using implicitly the Doctrine of the Trinity. When he talks about fellowship with God, he’s talking about fellowship with God the Father, fellowship with God the Son, fellowship with God the Holy Spirit.
John doesn’t use what the civil society today wants you and me to do when we pray in public. The idea today is that we shouldn’t pray sectarian prayers - whatever silly kind of a concept that is. We don’t pray to generic deities.
Remember we had that discussion. If you were asked to pray in a public forum and somebody comes up to you 5 minutes before you’re supposed to get up and pray and tells you, “We shouldn’t pray in Jesus’ name. You need to pray a generic prayer.”
Well, we don’t pray generic prayers. I think a quick retort to that kind of a situation would be, “Well which god do you want me to pray to?”
Usually people come up short when you ask that because they never thought of the fact that there are different gods out there. They aren’t all blended together. So here down below, these arrows indicate the areas in our fellowship that interact with those members of the trinity. John shows that in the early chapters with the Father. God is righteous and He is just. So there’s His character. That’s His nature. That’s the emphasis that John is making.
NKJ 1 John 1:5 …that God is light and in Him is no darkness at all.
The Greek says none at all, emphatic. So he’s emphasizing that aspect of God’s character that God is the source of righteousness. God is the source of justice. So that means we have to become compatible with that which is why in 1 John 1:9 it says:
NKJ 1 John 1:9 If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
So that’s how we get into compatibility with the Father as believers in time. We confess our sins when we’ve become aware of them. So that’s our compatibility with the nature.
Now the slide here doesn’t show it because we have a little problem up here with the projector and color. In the center of this, this was supposed to be the same color as that. The reason I used the same color as I did over here with the Father is to show that with the Son and the Spirit we haven’t abandoned God’s nature. God’s nature is the same. Here the Son is the Word of God. He is the revealer of His nature. So wherever you see God in the Bible, you’re seeing God the Son manifested. Now this is a shocker for some people because they never think of Jesus Christ’s presence in the Old Testament. Well, which member of the trinity do you suppose was being revealed in the Old Testament? It is the only member that’s ever revealed in the Old Testament or any other part of the Bible and that is the Second Person. He is the Word of God. Jesus Christ is the revealer of the Father’s nature.
Now if we come into compatible fellowship with the Father through confession of sin; then what’s our relationship with the Son in our fellowship? That is submission to His revelation. If He is the revealer, then we submit to what He’s revealing. And what is he revealing? The Father’s nature. It’s not absolutely distinct here. We don’t want to make it more complicated than it is. All I’m trying to do is show you that John doesn’t believe in a generic deity. John is talking about the God of the Scriptures and the God of the Scriptures is the triune God. So we have God’s nature, God the Father – God the Son who is the revealer of that nature. We submit to the revelation of that nature. That’s what the Son does; He reveals. Then the Spirit and this is crucial for this third chapter coming up. The Spirit is the worker of God and He gives us or puts into the world system the influence of Father’s nature. The Holy Spirit’s the worker. So what’s our response in fellowship? In chapter 3 what it’s going to be – and that’s the big idea of what it’s going to be.
Remember we’re coming into one of the most controversial and difficult sections of John’s writings to interpret. There are more battles over chapter 3 of John’s first epistle than any other part of John’s writings. So in order to prepare for that, to understand the flow, we want to make sure that we understand that if the Spirit is the worker of God, the Spirit is bringing the influence of God the Father’s nature as revealed by the Son into men’s hearts. Therefore the issue in our fellowship is do we love His workmanship or not? God’s work in other believers and our lives is the work of the Holy Spirit. Are we being compatible with His workmanship? This gets into loving the brethren and so forth. That’s the idea of fellowship as it’s distributed through the trinity.
Now we come to and I think Michael I’m going to have to ask you to move the slide. This gets back to the internal relationship in the trinity to 3 things, 3 characteristics. We emphasize this problem because our society has a problem right here. To the degree that you and I are peer pressure influenced, we are in denial of this. I am deliberately making a point about this because it’s deliberately the place in our culture that is absolutely confused. There are 3 ideas here – righteousness, justice and love. We need to get our heads straight about the relationship between these three points.
Righteousness basically is a standard. There’s a standard. Think of a ruler or a thermometer or something measured. Righteousness is the standard. Justice is the imposition of that standard. It’s making reality fit the standard. So that’s justice. Justice implements righteousness. That’s why a simple picture in your mind’s eye of what justice looks like in the Old Testament is the court. What is the judge supposed to do? What are courts supposed to do? They are supposed to implement righteousness in particular situations. This situation – this situation. What’s justice here? What’s justice here? What’s justice here? That’s what justice is. It’s the imposition of righteousness.
Now our society has a problem right here because you hear over and over again particularly university students - you hear this jazz about social justice. Nine times out of ten the people who talk yak-yak about social justice haven’t got a clue because what they’re talking about is a Marxist idea of equality. They’re talking about economic justice.
We can debate economic justice. But their concept behind that word justice is lacking. If they don’t have some transcendent value of righteousness, you can’t have justice if you don’t have a righteous standard to define what justice is. So all the yak-yak about social justice is vacuous and a waste of hot air unless you have first agreed on what your standard is. So if you peel back a lot of this stuff about social justice, you’ll find that you can take about 5 people talking about social justice and there are 5 different ideas of what righteousness is. So you can’t talk about social justice until you first talk about righteousness. One is dependent on the other. So in God’s character there’s no problem. He is righteous.
He says:
NKJ Psalm 45:7 You love righteousness…
So God has no problem with incompatibility between those two ideas.
Now we add a third level to this discussion. Now we start introducing love. Here we’ve got another big problem. Love today in our society is a description of sentiment. It’s a description of emotions. We’re not denying there are emotions here. But it’s not just emotions. Love is a decision. It’s decisive. It’s a commitment. It’s not how you feel.
Right here in Maryland, right down over in Annapolis, right when we were talking about this whole issue of same sex marriage, the reason why the whole thing went through is because the people that were pushing this brought in sob stories about this guy and this guy or this gal and this gal they love one another.
Then they brought up, “Don’t you care these people love one another?”
They can love one another all they want to. The point is the discussion here is what is righteousness and what is just. What is the structure of marriage? What is your sexual identity? Your sexual identity has nothing to do with how you feel. Your sexual identity has to do with how you’ve been created and made. Your sexual identity is a result of your anatomy by God’s design. People who can’t stand that basically hate God’s design and therefore hate God that designed them that way. Let’s be frank about it. So the issue here gets back to righteousness and justice. How are we designed? Creator-creature distinction. Now God the Father loves righteousness and justice. Those three are compatible in His nature.
Think of it this way. What is the greatest act of love in all of history according to the Bible?
NKJ John 3:16 "For God so loved the world
That what?
that He gave His only begotten Son, …
Why did He have to give His only begotten Son? Because that was the only way He could express love that would meet righteousness and justice, isn’t it? I mean how hard is this to understand? The greatest act of love dealt directly with the righteousness and justice problem. So love, righteousness, and justice go together in the Scriptures. They’re not to be ripped apart and manipulated and redefined. So we have this. Now God the Father in His love, He loves righteousness and justice in His nature. He sees that in Son. He sees that in the Holy Spirit. The Son loves righteousness and justice because that’s His nature and so there’s a perfect compatibility.
Now we get into eternal relationship. John says:
NKJ 1 John 1:2 the life was manifested, and we have seen, and bear witness, and declare to you that eternal life which was with the Father and was manifested to us --
Now when John uses the word eternal life, he’s talking about a relationship here. He says that that was with the Father, but we have seen it because who has revealed it? The Son.
which was with the Father and was manifested to us --
How was it manifested? When the Second Person of the trinity became man so He could walk around and talk to us. Do you realize we’re the only religion whose God walked around on earth and got dirt under His fingernails? We are the only religion. No other religion has that. No other religion has that sort of revelation of its god.
So we have the incarnation. We have the eternal relationship. Now when John uses eternal life he’s going talk about introducing us into that circle, that relationship not introducing us to deity because we’re not deity. We don’t become deity. We’re not like the Mormons as God was man one shall day be. We are not evolving from finitude to infinitude. We are remaining as creatures, but we are introduced relationally into that intra trinity relationship. That’s why that relationship is so important. That stands behind this term eternal life.
Okay. Next slide please. Now to help us think through this, divide salvation into three parts by time. The first part of salvation is sometimes called justification or phase 1 I call it - justification. That happens in an instant of time. When somebody trusts in Jesus Christ – boom, that’s righteousness. When it occurs is up to God. How it occurs - up to God. But that’s a point in time. That’s phase 1 salvation.
Phase 2 is different. We’ll get to phase 2, but I want to skip to phase 3 which is called theologically glorification. Justification (phase 1), skip phase 2 and go all the way to the end of your life to glorification (phase 3). That’s resurrection and receiving incorruptible nature. So in the first phase love is expressed, righteousness is satisfied, and justice is executed. See how all 3 of these are compatible? See the design here. This is a perfect design. Every time we try to mess with it, we screw it up. So we want to see that love expressed, righteousness satisfied, justice executed. Phase 1 and these are some of the things going on in phase 1.
There are actually over thirty different things that happen to you and happen to me at the moment we trust in Jesus Christ - 30 different things. We’re doing good if we can remember two or three of them. Actually if you go through the text carefully there is an enormous amount of truths here with phase 1 salvation. Here we’ve introduced a few of them – we’re justified, regenerated, indwelt by the Holy Spirit, baptized into the body of Christ, and we’re sealed with the pledge of resurrection. Those are phase 1 things. Now set those aside for a moment.
Now let’s think ahead to the fact that we die or we’re raptured and we are going into the presence of God. Phase 3, now phase 3 - this by the way is offered to all men; but all men do not respond. Now we come to the end of life, and we have a resurrection. There are two resurrections in Scripture – the resurrection to life and the resurrection to death. It’s sobering.
What is resurrection? Resurrection is freezing us in the status that we were in when we died or when we were raptured (resurrected). At that point there’s no change. That’s the end of grace. Grace is the ability to change status. It ends with resurrection. That’s what’s sobering. That’s the sobering side of resurrection. Once we’re resurrected, we’re resurrected for all eternity in whatever status we’re resurrected in. We can be resurrected as believers in Jesus Christ (justified) and sharing His nature. Or we can be resurrected as defiant sinners and we want to be confirmed and live eternally as defiant sinners and against God’s authority. That’s the consequence of the way God has designed history. So that’s phase 3.
For believers the Bema Seat evaluation of phase 2 life gain or loss of rewards. All believers are not equal.
It doesn’t mean economically – what God’s talking about here. It’s not talking about socially or your geniality or whatever. At the end all believers don’t come in the race at the same point.
Mike talks about the marathons that are run – he and Aaron run. Everybody in the marathon doesn’t come in at the same time. Well, it’s the same thing with believers. We all aren’t going to come in at finish line at the same position. Now I mentioned this because what I’m doing is I’m undercutting the idea that equality is justice. In the Bible the only time equality means justice is equality before the law; and that is right. All this other application of equality is bogus.
We’ve used the expression before. Think about two American citizens, okay. Here’s first citizen who can see. Here’s a second citizen who is blind. Now let me ask you two questions. Are these two people, American citizens, are these two citizens equal with regard to voting? Yes. Are these two American citizens equal with regard to driving a car? Oh… Your answers to those two questions had nothing to do with equality. In your mind how did you answer both of those questions? When I held my hand up and you answered yes to voting rights, your mind was on not equality, but? Voting capability. When I held my two hands up and asked are you equal with regard to driving a car, what were you thinking about? Driving the car. Equality wasn’t even entering your mind at the time other than just bouncing it off that category. So this is why the use of the word equality today - use of the word equality is 90% manipulative. It has nothing to do with the issue.
The issue for example in same sex marriage verses heterosexual marriage has to do not with whether you’re homosexual or not. It has nothing to do with that. It has to do with what is marriage. But by constantly yak, yakking over and over and over using equality, equality, equality, fair, fair, fair the attention was deflected from what marriage is to this vague notion of equality. See what has happened? See how the manipulation happens? Logically speaking equality had nothing to do with the argument at all. It had to do with what is the definition of marriage and whether the people particularly fit that.
If we have a young man who’s skilled at baseball and another man skilled in football - we have both of them here in the congregation - if that’s the case, are they equal with regard to baseball? No, one’s better that the other one. Why? Because one is suited to baseball. The issue is what is baseball. The issue is what is football. So here’s how sloppy contemporary discussion is. It goes all the way up to the court system. The courts can’t even think clearly about this.
That’s why we’re stressing over here at the end of life, everybody isn’t equal. That is not part of God’s justice here in this regard. In this case, it’s based on choices that people have made in history. Choices have consequences, and we can be thankful they do because that means your life (and my life) is able be planned because God tells us what consequences to different choices are. That gives us predictability in the environment, doesn’t it? That gives us a chance to decide whether we choose this or whether we choose that because God has structured history with consequences. These are powerful basic ideas. It’s not John’s first epistle in Sunday school class. These are life dominating, life important concepts.
So in between phase 1 and phase 3 is phase 2. That’s where we are in John’s epistle. What happens now? The people to whom this epistle is written already passed through phase 1. They haven’t yet gotten to phase 3. So they’re in between. They are born again; but they haven’t died yet. So what do we do now in this interval? That is the big idea of where we’re moving.
Now we want to go back to Mike Furches’s vineyard. So let’s talk. I’m going to show these 3 slides. We’ve shown them before. Let’s turn to John 15 because “abide”, the metaphor abide in the epistle of John, comes from John 15 because John 15 was revelation given before 1 John. The whole picture here of abide is not some vague theology. It’s not some specialized language of the Bible. It goes back to a picture.
In John 15 Jesus says:
NKJ John 15:1 "I am the true vine, and My Father is the vinedresser.
Let’s just stop right there. We’ve got the vine. Now there are 3 pictures here that I’ve showed of the vineyard. We’ve explained why Mr. Furches had planted them north south and so on and why they’re separated in different rows like this. Next slide. The next slide shows you the vines. I’ll come back to this particular slide because you see the wires that are horizontal here. Notice what’s happening to the vineyard, the vines. The vines are suspended along these horizontals. That’s for a reason. Then finally, next slide, there’s the fruit. The fruit is produced on the vine that is properly supported and properly pruned. So with that physical picture in mind and in the ancient world it’s not any different. They may have used different species of grapes. They may have used different things other than wires. Some of them used rocks, piles and so on from what we can tell. They used branches of trees that they had. Maybe they didn’t have wire like we do. With this in mind let’s look at John 15.
NKJ John 15:1 "I am the true vine, and My Father is the vinedresser.
There is the Father and the Son. See we can’t get way from the trinity here in the apostle’s writings. If Jesus is the vine, the Father is the vinedresser. Those are the roles involved. So if there is any fruit production, where’ s the fruit production associated with directly? The Son or the Father? They are both involved, but who’s bearing the fruit, the Father or the Son? The Son, right? Bearing the fruit - I mean actually physically producing the fruit. So it’s the Son as the vine who’s producing the fruit. But who has to take care of the vine and makes sure that it does produce the fruit? The Father. See the roles of the trinity here going on. Jesus has illustrated it with the vine.
NKJ John 15:1 "I am the true vine, and My Father is the vinedresser.
NKJ John 15:2 "Every branch in Me that does not bear fruit He takes away;
Now unfortunately the King James translation here, translates this verb takes away. We have to challenge that translation. There are two things here. The word translated takes away is a word that can mean take away; but it was also was used in the literature of the time where plants were dealt with and particularly grape vines were dealt with. Eiro meant to lift up. So we want to watch.
There are three different kinds of branches here. The first branch is a branch in me that isn’t bearing fruit. Now the first thing we want to deal with there is en. On your handout I have down at the bottom of the first page there, you see where it says the locative use of en in John. You see and I give you references so you can check this out make sure I’m right - John 10:38, John 14:10-12, John 17:21. Look there in those verses and look at how Jesus Himself uses the word “I am.” You’ll see way that the way Jesus uses the word I am is in the terms of relationship. He’s not using “I am” the way Paul uses it when he says we are in Christ. He’s talking phase 1 and justification. He’s talking about the Abrahamic Covenant idea that we are in a contract. We are in a legal relationship. That’s Pauline use of en, the locative. The locative the way the Apostle John uses it - because keep in mind writers of Scripture are individual personalities and they have nuances. This is what we call biblical theology versus systematic theology.
When you’re in seminary you learn you have to do biblical theology before you systematize theology because before you can systematize you have to realize John is John, Paul is Paul, and Peter is Peter. We have to let these guys speak in their own lingo. They all have nuances. God the Holy Spirit worked that way to give us I think to give us a multi-dimensional view of truth. So John uses en for relationship. The reason we know that is because Jesus will say things like this that make no sense if you take a Pauline use of en.
He says, “I am in the Father and the Father is in Me.” Is that talking about a soteriological, legal relationship or is it talking about the trinity relationship. It’s talking about relationship.
So the first branch:
NKJ John 15:2 "Every branch in Me
That is the branch has a relationship with me. There is no problem between the branch and me. We’re getting along together. We’re compatible. We’re in fellowship. But it’s simply he doesn’t bear fruit. So who prunes? The pronoun He, third person. Which personality based on verse 1? What’s verse 1? Who’s the pruner? Father.
All right we come now here to verse 2.
NKJ John 15:2 "Every branch in Me
That’s the Son.
He takes away;
Who’s the He there? The Father. So here’s the vinedresser doing it. This is the Father lifting up the branch, taking care of the branch. Next slide.
See how Mr. Furches and Joel – see what they did. See how they held up those branches. They were the vinedressers. They’re holding them up off the ground. Why are they holding them up off the ground? What’s the whole point? What do they want out of this vineyard? Fruit. So they’re holding up the vine. God the Father holds up.
Now here in this branch we’re talking about growth. We’re not talking about fellowship here. There is no problem with fellowship. The branch is already in the vine. The Father is taking care of it in order to grow and produce fruit. So that’s the Father’s care for each one of us, particularly as we’re new believers.
We’re in fellowship. We’re following the Lord. We’re just not that fruitful yet. You can’t expect a lot of fruit from a baby. You can’t expect a lot of fruit from these branches. You can’t pressure people to artificially pretend they’re producing fruit. You let that come. You have to be like a mother and a dad. You want your kids to turn out right; but you can’t force it. You can’t speed up their growth. Sometimes you wish you could; but you can’t. You have to sit back and bite your tongue and be patient. You know, little Johnnie and Janie – they’ll turn out. It will take a few prayers along the way and so on but just be patient. They’ll work. That’s growth. So the first branch is a baby branch and it needs to grow.
Okay, let’s move on.
and every branch that bears fruit He prunes, that it may bear more fruit.
and every branch
This is the second branch.
that bears fruit He prunes, that it may bear more fruit.
Now that is a branch (every branch that bears fruit) is obviously in the vine. So that’s not fellowship either. That’s continued growth. The first branch and the second branch are growing issues. They’re being tended by God to produce fruit.
Now, something to think about here - when you have a vine and a vineyard is a capital investment. Let’s talk about this in business terms here. You’ve invested money. You’ve had to buy the land. You had to buy the labor. This is a big investment. What do you want on an investment? A return on your investment, right? Okay, see the analogy?
What does God want from us? He’s invested in your life and He’s invested in my life. He owns us. What does He want from us? He wants return. So we need to work on what is this fruit. What is the fruit? Whatever it is, our lives are not our own. We are owned, and we are an investment of the Father.
He’s looking down and saying, “Can you produce something for Me, please? I’ve invested in you. I’ve given you my Son and I’d like a little return on my investment.”
Okay. Now we go on and look at John 17 for a moment because we’ve got to work this fruit. Over in John 17 Jesus is praying to the Father. By the way John 17 is a rare passage. Here probably for maybe the second or third time in the ministry of Jesus are the disciples (whichever ones are still awake when this prayer happens in the vineyard or in the Garden of Gethsemane), they are hearing the communication within the trinity. Think of how stunning John 17 is. This is the Father and Son discussing things. In John 17 He says:
NKJ John 17:1 … "Father, the hour has come. Glorify Your Son, that Your Son also may glorify You,
2 "as You have given Him authority over all flesh, that He should give eternal life to as many as You have given Him.
3 "And this is eternal life,
Notice how he defines eternal life.
that they may know You,
Relationship – remember how we talked about “know.”
NKJ John 14:9 Jesus said to him, "Have I been with you so long, and yet you have not known Me, Philip?
NKJ John 17:3 "And this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.
4 "I have glorified You on the earth. I have finished the work which You have given Me to do.
5 "And now, O Father, glorify Me together with Yourself, with the glory which I had with You before the world was.
Looking at just that verse, what do you think the fruit is? Whatever is finished. Think of Jesus. He says:
I have finished the work which You have given Me to do.
What does He say in parallel to the fact in that verse? He says, “I finished it,” but then He parallels it. He tells us what He did. What is it that He did? Anyone?
Comment
Okay. He glorified His Father by gathering disciples who will go out into the world. But He glorifies the Father. How did Jesus glorify the Father in the sense that it wooed the people to be saved? What was Jesus doing when He was glorifying the Father? He was what? He made Him known. He was manifesting the Father’s nature.
So here you come close to this fruit idea. The fruit idea - think of grapes and the vine. The grapes in one sense glorify the vine, don’t they? Because they taste nice. They’re products of the vine - we like the grape juice. We like the wine. We like that and that glorifies the vine. We praise the vine don’t we – because of what the vine produces. So the eternal life that we’re talking about here – that Jesus is working in our lives is so other people will be attracted to our Father. That’s one of the fruits – that people will see our lives and be attracted to our heavenly Father. He likes that – if he can use the physical nature. Why do we like grapes? Because they taste nice. Why do we like wine? Why do we like grape juice? Because it tastes nice.
Now our sense of taste, our appreciation for good taste, is somehow analogous to God’s sense of pleasure that He gets from us glorifying Him. It produces a taste that He likes. See the picture? There’s an analogy going on between enjoying the produce of this invested vineyard and the pleasure that God gets when we are producing and glorifying Him.
But then the grape also has another thing that gets back to what Mike brought out. What is in the grape besides glucose? Seeds. Now we have reproduction. So now we have reproduction which then goes to make another vine when then goes to produce more. That’s the manifestation. That’s the expansion of the body of Christ. So I hope by looking at John 17 it gives you an appreciation of what’s going on in John 15 that the fruit here is the manifestation of the nature of God. It’s pretty heavy and awesome responsibility for us to be representatives of our heavenly Father and not screw up and be bad examples of His nature.
In our time remaining let’s turn back to John 15 and look the third branch. In John 15:6 – verse 5. Let’s start at verse 5.
NKJ John 15:5 "I am the vine,
Let’s look at the verse before that. Let’s look back at verse 4.
NKJ John 15:4 "Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in Me.
Now he’s stretching the metaphor here because branches on those grapevines can’t decide whether they’re going to be in the vine or out of the vine. That’s where it breaks down. This is a botanical example of creatures with volition and choice. Like every metaphor there are limits here. What Jesus is saying here is that those grapes – if Joel and his dad come along and cut off those branches, the branches aren’t going to produce any more grapes. So there’s an example of how necessary, whatever this “abide” is, it is necessary that we abide or we’re not going to produce the fruit that the Father wants. So this is talking not about salvation, phase 1. This is talking about sanctification, phase 2. And, it’s not talking about growth.
So now we come to distinguish two ideas here. Branches 1 and 2 are already abiding. It’s just a matter of whether going to produce fruit – a little bit, none, or a lot of fruit. That’s growth – growth. Theologians ever since the Protestant Reformation have been talking about growth. Reformed people are very good talking about growth. But, there’s a finesse to this. This is where dispensational theology comes in here. There’s a second factor in phase 2. That’s whether we’re in fellowship or out of fellowship – whether we’re abiding in Christ or we’re not abiding in Christ. Branch 3 is the issue.
Jesus says you cannot produce fruit unless you abide in Me.
NKJ John 15:5 "I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing.
Then He says:
NKJ John 15:6 "If anyone does not abide in Me, he is cast out as a branch and is withered; and they gather them and throw them into the fire, and they are burned.
Why does a vineyard owner do that? He’s worked with the vine. He’s given the branch all kinds of support - lifted it up off the ground, pruned it. It still doesn’t produce fruit because it’s not abiding in the vine. Now this isn’t a growth issue here. This is an abide-not-abide issue. So here we have the cutting off. Why would a vineyard owner do that? What’s on his mind?
Let’s go back to the farming investment business side of this. What’s the whole point here? Are we producing what? Fruit
“I want return on the investment.”
So a believer who’s not abiding isn’t doing the Father any good. He’s not producing anything - useless. So it’s a bad picture, a sad picture, of a believer that’s perpetually out of fellowship - always got an issue, always having a problem and always in disobedience to the Father. The picture here makes you useless –absolutely useless. So there’s a concept now of growth and a concept of fellowship. That’s what John 3 – next time when we come we’re going to work with that.
There’s one more slide there. Another one. Here’s the dichotomy that goes on. This is that either-or ness, the two phased nature of sanctification. Comparative verbs require a binary response - yes or no. Every parent knows that. Abide in Christ, not abide; walk in the light, walk in darkness; walk by the Spirit, walk as men; walk in newness of life, walk after the flesh. See Paul had the same binary examples. So that’s what we want to grapple with. I wanted to make clear these distinctions. We’ll have more time for Q&A next week because we’re a little bit over now. We’ll return to 1 John 3 and get into the abiding.
The big idea that we’ve covered this morning - think of the vineyard, think of the branches, think of the grapevine.
(Closing Prayer)