Abide in Christ

Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine; no more can ye, except ye abide in me. JOHN 15:4

If you asked Andrew Murray to put the Christian life into two words, he would give you the two words Jesus used on the night before He died: Abide in me. His first famous book was called Abide in Christ, and he wrote it for young believers after the Worcester revival who had begun well and did not know how to go on. Years later he came back to the same chapter of John in The True Vine, one of his shortest books and one of his best: a series of brief daily readings that walk slowly through the first sixteen verses of John 15, one phrase at a time. He lived in wine country, and as he wrote he could look out of his window on large vineyards. The parable was not a figure of speech to him. It was the landscape. It is the root of all his teaching, and the best place to begin.

Begun well, and then what

The problem Murray set out to answer is one every pastor knows. A person comes to Christ with joy. For a season everything is fresh. Then the freshness fades, sin returns in old forms, prayer becomes dutiful, and the believer concludes either that the beginning was not real or that the Christian life is simply a long struggle with occasional relief. Murray thought both conclusions were wrong. The trouble was not that such believers had received too little at the start. It was that they did not understand how the life they had received is meant to continue.

As ye have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk ye in him. COLOSSIANS 2:6

We received Christ by faith, in weakness, trusting Him to do what we could not. Murray’s point was that we are to go on exactly as we began. The believer who was saved by trusting Christ is not then handed a set of resources and told to manage. He is to keep on trusting, keep on receiving, keep on coming. The life is in the Vine, not in the branch.

What a branch does

In an address to Christian workers, printed at the end of Absolute Surrender under the title Ye are the Branches, Murray asks his hearers to consider how simple it is to be a branch. A branch, he says, “has no responsibility except just to receive from the root and stem sap and nourishment.” It does not strain to produce grapes. It does not worry about the soil or the rain. It stays where it is, joined to the vine, and the life of the vine flows through it and comes out as fruit.

I am the vine, ye are the branches: He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye can do nothing. JOHN 15:5

Murray drew three lessons from this. The first is absolute dependence: the branch has nothing of its own. The second is deep rest: a branch that is simply receiving is not anxious. The third is fruitfulness: a branch that abides will bear fruit, not by effort but by union. He was not describing laziness. The branch is fully employed. But it is employed in receiving, and its whole activity is the outflow of a life that is not its own.

He applied this directly to Christian workers, and his words are still uncomfortable. Many who labour for Christ, he observed, complain that their work leaves them no time for communion with Him, and that busyness has dulled their prayer. “Sad thought,” he wrote, “that the bearing of fruit should separate the branch from the vine!” If our work has come between us and Christ, we have misunderstood what our work is.

Abide in me, and I in you

In The True Vine Murray looks closely at the double command. Abide in me, he says, points chiefly to what we do: we trust, obey, turn from other supports, and cling to Christ. And I in you points to what He does: He dwells in the heart by faith and strengthens us by His Spirit. The two belong together. We cannot make Christ dwell in us, but we can keep coming to Him, and He has promised to do the rest.

If a man love me, he will keep my words: and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him. JOHN 14:23

Murray was realistic about why believers do not experience this. Many long for the fulness of the Spirit and the indwelling of Christ, he observed, and wonder why they make no progress; often the reason is that they are asking for the second half of the command while neglecting the first. They want Christ in them without the daily, humble, obedient turning to Him that the word abide requires.

And yet he insisted that abiding is not a strenuous achievement. The branch does not hold on to the vine by clenching. It is held. The union is Christ’s work, and our part is to consent, to trust, and to stay.

Every moment

The most distinctive thing in Murray’s teaching on abiding is the word moment. He did not think of abiding as a feeling to be recovered on Sundays or at conventions. The sap does not flow from the vine to the branch for a while and then stop. It flows continuously. So Christ’s life is available to the believer not in occasional supplies but moment by moment, in the ordinary hours of an ordinary day.

In that day sing ye unto her, A vineyard of red wine. I the Lord do keep it; I will water it every moment: lest any hurt it, I will keep it night and day. ISAIAH 27:2–3

This is liberating when it is understood. It means you do not have to keep up a spiritual temperature. You do not have to feel close to Christ in order to be close to Him. You are asked to do the next thing in dependence on Him, trusting that His life is flowing even when you are not conscious of it. When you fail, you do not have to climb back up to where you were. You simply return, confess, and abide again.

The Husbandman

The parable begins, though, not with the branch but with the Father. Before Jesus says anything about branches, He says, I am the true vine, and my Father is the husbandman (John 15:1). Murray thought this order mattered. Before we think about our fruitfulness we must look up and see who is caring for the vine. The Father planted it, tends it, waters it and prunes it. He is not a distant owner who expects a crop and punishes failure. He is the one who does the work.

For we are labourers together with God: ye are God’s husbandry, ye are God’s building. 1 CORINTHIANS 3:9

Many Christians who have learned to trust Christ, Murray noticed, still leave the Father out of their thoughts, as though Christ had to protect them from Him. In The True Vine he puts it bluntly: “The great lack of the Christian life is that, even where we trust Christ, we leave God out of the count.” The Father who cared for the Vine with such delight cares in the same way for every branch. Your growth is not finally in your hands. It is in His.

Fruit is the one thing

What is the branch for? Murray’s answer is uncompromising: fruit is the one thing the branch is for. A branch exists to carry the life of the vine out to where it can be gathered. And fruit, he says, is “something that the branch bears, not for itself, but for its owner.”

Herein is my Father glorified, that ye bear much fruit; so shall ye be my disciples. JOHN 15:8

This led him to one of his sharpest warnings. Many Christians, he observed, arrange their priorities in a fixed order: first their own salvation, then their livelihood and families, and then whatever time and interest is left over for the kingdom and the saving of others. No wonder so little is left. Murray insisted that bearing fruit for others is not an optional extra to the Christian life but the reason for it. The Vine exists to carry God’s saving love to men, and so does every branch.

Nor is the fruit simply activity. It is the character of Christ reproduced in us — love, joy, peace and the rest — and it is the blessing of others through that life. A life that is busy but loveless has not borne the fruit of the Vine; a life that is pious but blesses no one has not either.

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance: against such there is no law. GALATIANS 5:22–23

The pruning knife

Every branch that beareth fruit, he purgeth it, that it may bring forth more fruit (John 15:2). Murray knew the vine as a plant that runs quickly to wild wood and needs the hardest pruning of any. Most Christians assume that the Father’s knife is affliction. Murray would not let affliction take first place. In The True Vine he argues that the knife is the Word of God, and he points to the next verse, where Jesus says that the disciples are already clean through the word which He has spoken to them.

Now ye are clean through the word which I have spoken unto you. JOHN 15:3

Affliction, Murray says, becomes a blessing only when it drives us to the discipline of the Word; without that, suffering is often wasted. This is a wise and pastoral insight. It means that the believer who is spared great suffering is not spared pruning, and the believer who is suffering is not being pruned by the suffering alone. The knife is what God says.

And the vinedresser cuts back healthy growth too — shoots that are vigorous and green and would produce leaves instead of grapes. That is the hardest part. God may cut away good things in us — interests, ambitions, even forms of service — not because they are sinful but because they draw off life that should go into fruit.

Where care is needed

Murray sometimes wrote as if a single act of faith could settle the matter once and for all, so that from that day the believer would abide without interruption. Some readers have taken this to mean that any lapse proves they never truly entered the abiding life, and have exhausted themselves trying to enter it again. That is not the best of Murray, and it is not the teaching of John 15, which is addressed to disciples who would fail that very night. Abiding is a relationship, not a technique, and relationships have their bad days. Christ’s command to abide carries within it His promise to keep, and the one who stumbles is still a branch.

My little children, these things write I unto you, that ye sin not. And if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. 1 JOHN 2:1

In the same way, the parable moves from fruit, to more fruit, to much fruit, and Murray loved that progression; he sometimes wrote as if the fruit of an abiding life will always be visible and abundant. Scripture is more reticent. Some of the most faithful servants of God have seen very little of the fruit of their labour in their own lifetimes, and some fruit — patience, gentleness, faith — is hidden even from the one who bears it. Much fruit is a promise, but its measure and its timing belong to the Husbandman.

Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you, and ordained you, that ye should go and bring forth fruit, and that your fruit should remain. JOHN 15:16

The heart of what Murray taught is simple, and it does not need the scaffolding. You are joined to Christ. His life is in you. The Father tends you. Stay close. Keep coming. Let His life, not your effort, be the source of whatever fruit your life bears, and leave the counting to God.

FOR REFLECTION AND ACTION

1. Ask whether you are trying to live the Christian life in the same way you began it — by trusting Christ — or by effort and management.

2. Identify the work, even good work, that most often comes between you and Christ. Bring it to Him deliberately this week before you begin it.

3. Several times a day, stop for a moment and say inwardly: I am a branch; Your life is in me. Notice what changes.

4. Consider whether you trust Christ but quietly fear the Father. Read John 15:1 and 15:9 together, and let the Father’s care reach you.

5. When you read Scripture this week, ask the Father to use it as a pruning knife. Write down one thing it exposes, even if it is something good.

6. When you fail, or see little fruit, resist the urge to prove yourself. Confess at once, abide again, and leave the harvest to the Husbandman.

A PRAYER

Lord Jesus, You are the Vine and I am a branch. I have tried to bear fruit by my own effort, and I am tired.

Teach me to abide: to trust You, to keep coming, to stay where You have placed me. Let Your life flow into me moment by moment, in the ordinary hours as well as the holy ones.

Father, You are the Husbandman, and I am in Your hands. Prune me by Your Word, and cut away whatever keeps me from bearing fruit.

Give me fruit that remains, and let me be content to leave its measure to You. And when I wander, draw me back quickly, for You hold me more firmly than I hold You. Amen.