Abide in Me

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 faith comes from God and fruit grows rather than being manufactured, the obvious question is how the believer stays in the place where God works. Evans’s answer is the one Jesus gave on the night before He died: abide in Me. He preached on John 15 in his sermon Abiding in Christ, and the theme runs through Feasting at the Table and Soar Like the Eagle.

In Him, and abiding in Him

Evans draws a distinction that many believers have found clarifying. It is one thing to be in Christ; it is another to abide in Him. Every born-again believer is in Christ, placed there by God at conversion and secure in Him. But Jesus repeatedly spoke to His followers about abiding, and the conditional form of His words, if ye abide in me, shows that it is possible to be in Christ without abiding.

He illustrates this with a homely picture from Feasting at the Table. A visitor to his home might truly say that he is sitting in Gareth’s house. But unless he accepts the invitation to stay, he cannot say that he is living there, sharing the table and the life of the household. Many Christians, Evans suggests, move back and forth between living in Christ and living in the world. They are like people with a fortune deposited in the bank who live as paupers because they never draw on it.

In a sermon on crossing the Jordan, he makes the same point from the story of Israel. When the tribes came to the edge of the promised land, two and a half of them asked to stay on the eastern side, because the land there was good for cattle. They knew God’s promises but preferred the comfortable pasture. We are called, Evans says, not merely to have God enter us, but to enter into God.

The vine and its branches

Evans notes that Jesus chose the vine deliberately. Throughout the Old Testament, Israel is pictured as God’s vine, and almost every time the picture appears the vine is failing: unfruitful, degenerate, broken down.

Return, we beseech thee, O God of hosts: look down from heaven, and behold, and visit this vine. PSALM 80:14

Against that background Jesus says, I am the true vine. Where Israel failed, He will bear fruit, and those who abide in Him will bear it with Him. A vine, Evans notes, needs heavy pruning, and its soft wood is good for nothing else, so a fruitless branch is fit only for the fire. A vine exists for one purpose: to bear fruit.

The marks of abiding

From the opening verses of John 15, Evans draws out what abiding will mean in practice.

First, it means pruning. He has no patience with a theology that promises unbroken victory. Every great man and woman of God he has read about, he says, went through much pruning before becoming fruitful. If you abide in Christ, you should expect the Father’s knife.

Every branch in me that beareth not fruit he taketh away: and every branch that beareth fruit, he purgeth it, that it may bring forth more fruit. JOHN 15:2

Second, it means fruitfulness, and specifically the fruit of the Spirit, which grows, as we saw in chapter four, not by straining but by drawing life from the Vine.

Third, it means that without Him we can do nothing. Evans applies this pointedly to churches. We can do a great deal for God in our own cleverness and with our own programmes, but without abiding there will be no lasting fruit.

Fourth, it means that His words abide in us, which Evans connects with obedience and with the walk of faith.

Fifth, it means answered prayer. The promise that we may ask what we will and it shall be done puzzles many believers, because so many prayers seem unanswered. Evans suggests that abiding means more than asking. It means coming so close to Christ that we hear His heartbeat, and then praying for what is already on His heart.

Hearing His heartbeat

He illustrates this with an experience that changed his ministry. As a pastor he had preached on missions and honoured missionaries. Then, on a short outreach to an orphanage in Mexico, he watched one of his students weeping over the children, and heard a Mexican co-worker say to her, in effect, that for those who worked there, hearts broke every day. In that moment Evans felt he had heard the heartbeat of God, a heart that breaks daily over a hurting world. He came home changed, from a preacher about missions into a man passionately involved in them.

That, for Evans, is the deepest meaning of abiding: intimacy with the Father, bringing glory to the Father, and sharing His love and joy. The wild branch grafted into the true vine begins to bear fruit, not because it has become competent, but because the life of the Vine flows through it.

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

Yoked, and soaring

Evans connects abiding with two other pictures he loves. One is Jesus’ invitation to take His yoke, which is easy, and His burden, which is light.

Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light. MATTHEW 11:29–30

The other is Isaiah’s promise that those who wait upon the Lord shall mount up with wings as eagles. Evans argues that the Hebrew word translated wait is not about passing time patiently, but carries the idea of strands twisted together into a rope. Those whose lives are bound up with the Lord, he says, are the ones who soar. Waiting on God is abiding in Christ in Old Testament dress.

But they that wait upon the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint. ISAIAH 40:31

It should be said, gently, that this etymology is disputed. The word does have a related noun meaning a cord or line, but in use the verb chiefly means to wait for or look eagerly to the Lord, and most translations render it so. The rope picture is best taken as an illustration rather than as the word’s plain meaning. Yet Evans’s point does not depend on it. Scripture elsewhere makes abundantly clear that those who wait on the Lord are those who depend on Him wholly, and that strength for the journey comes from union with Christ, not from effort.

FOR REFLECTION AND ACTION

1. Ask yourself honestly: am I in Christ only, or am I abiding in Him? What would change this week if you chose to abide?

2. Consider what the Father may be pruning in your life at present. Instead of resisting, ask what fruit He intends.

3. Before your next time of intercession, spend some minutes simply being quiet with Christ and asking what is on His heart.

4. Look at the busiest area of your service for God. Is it flowing from abiding, or from your own energy? Talk to the Lord about it.

5. Memorise John 15:5 and repeat it when you feel pressure to perform.

A PRAYER

Lord Jesus, You are the true Vine, and I am a branch. Without You I can do nothing, though I have often behaved as though I could do a great deal.

I do not want to live on the wrong side of the river, content with pasture when You have called me into Yourself. Draw me in, and keep me there.

Prune me as You will. Let Your words abide in me, and let me hear Your heartbeat for this broken world.

Bind my life to Yours, so that I may run and not be weary, and walk and not faint. Amen.