The Fruit of Remaining

A devotional reflection on John 15:4-11

There is a bowl of fruit on the table. From across the room, the apple on top looks perfect. Deep red. Smooth skin. Not a bruise on it.

Then someone picks it up. It is wax. There is nothing inside.

That is a hard picture, because it can describe a life. It has the church attendance. It has the right words. It has the look. It does not have the root.

On the night before the cross, Jesus sat with his eleven closest friends and told them how to be the real thing. In John 15:4-11, he gives them one command, and he tells them what comes of it. The command is remain. What comes of it is fruit.

The fruit of remaining is a life that looks like Jesus, for the Father's glory.

What It Means to Remain

"Remain in me, and I in you. Just as a branch is unable to produce fruit by itself unless it remains on the vine, neither can you unless you remain in me" (John 15:4).

Jesus uses that word ten times in these verses. It means stay. Do not leave. Stay with me, and I stay with you.

But not everyone who stays near Jesus remains. In John 6:66, a crowd of his disciples turned back and no longer walked with him. Some people have the look, the words, and the signs, and still there is nothing in them. Superficial faith stays near Jesus. Supernatural faith has Jesus inside.

And if we are Christians, he is already inside. Look at the second half of verse 4: "and I in you." So remaining is not how we get Christ. It is how we live with the Christ who is already in us.

That means total reliance. "You can do nothing without me" (John 15:5). A garden hose has no water of its own. It only carries what is connected to the spigot.

So what are we leaning on today? Our record? Our church attendance? Our good intentions? None of those is the vine. We put our whole weight on him.

How We Remain

"If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you want and it will be done for you" (John 15:7).

The answers have been the same for two thousand years. His word. His love. And prayer.

We remain in his word, and his word remains in us. That means we ponder it. We feast on it. It is not a quick bite on the way out the door, and it is not only for the super saints. It is for the everyday child of God.

We remain in his love. "As the Father has loved me, I have also loved you. Remain in my love" (John 15:9). Look at the measure. How much has the Father loved the Son? Without end. Without limit. That is how much Jesus loves us.

It is like sitting on a porch on a cold morning. We do not make ourselves warm. We sit where the sun already is.

And we remain in prayer. We cannot know someone we never talk to. Paul says, "My goal is to know him" (Philippians 3:10). Many of us live in the middle. We stay out of the world's worst sin, but we never taste real communion with God. That is a miserable place to live.

We work to abide, not for fruit or favor, but for fellowship.

What Remaining Produces

Fruit. More fruit. Much fruit.

It is not a matter of human effort. The more we look at Jesus, the more fruit we bear. A real apple tree in October does not strain to make apples. It stays rooted, and the fruit comes. We do not hang the fruit on. It grows from the vine.

The Bible shows us three kinds. First, the fruit of righteousness. God lives in us, and then he grows us. "But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control" (Galatians 5:22-23). That fruit proves the root. It never earns the root.

Second, the fruit of souls. As we live attached to the vine, we want others to know him. This may be the most wonderful fruit of all.

Third, the fruit of joy. "I have told you these things so that my joy may be in you and your joy may be complete" (John 15:11). Jesus does not tell us to remain to steal our joy. He tells us so that obeying him will never sound gray and joyless.

For the Father's Glory

"My Father is glorified by this: that you produce much fruit and prove to be my disciples" (John 15:8).

My Father is glorified. Not the branch. The Father! Everything Jesus has said leads here.

Remember the vineyard in Isaiah 5:2. The Father looked for fruit and found "worthless grapes." So he sent his Son, the true vine. The Son was cut off for branches like us. He took the fire. And now the branches joined to him bear what the Father looks for.

Stop and think about that. The God who owns the vineyard became the vine.

If we have only stood near Jesus, he calls us to himself today. Not to better habits. To himself. Come to him. Trust him. He will put his own life in us. "Christ lives in me" (Galatians 2:20).

A wax apple can only sit in the bowl and look right. A branch joined to the vine does not have to pretend. Its life comes from somewhere else, and so does its fruit. And a life that looks like Jesus will glorify the Father.

Reflection Questions

1. What are we leaning on instead of Jesus: our record, our church attendance, our good intentions? What would it look like to put our whole weight on him this week?

2. Of the three ways we remain, his word, his love, and prayer, which one have we neglected most? What is one small step to return to it this week?

3. Who is one person who does not know Jesus that we can pray for by name this week? What would it look like to ask the Father to bring them to the vine?