Bible Study June 5, 2024
John 15:1 – 4 (Legacy Standard Bible)
15 “These things I have spoken to you so that you may be kept from stumbling. 2 They will put you out of the synagogue, but an hour is coming for everyone who kills you to think that he is offering service to God. 3 These things they will do because they did not know the Father or Me. 4 But these things I have spoken to you, so that when their hour comes, you [a]may remember that I told you of them. These things I did not say to you at the beginning, because I was with you.”
Jesus said he would be our resource to help us on all we do.
First, the relationship of abiding means that we cannot “go it alone” in our spiritual lives, what Parker Palmer once described as a “free floating spirituality.” Jesus notes the impossible cannot happen: “the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless you abide in me”
Jesus talked about how grapes grow and compared it to how we should grow. In the story, Jesus is like the vine that gives the branches food, water and everything it needs to grow fruit. We are like the branches that grow out of the vine. When we’re connected to Jesus, we’ll produce fruit, too. The question becomes how deeply we are connected to the roots.
Without connection the vine dies, the branches die and nothing continues to exist. The branch is entirely dependent on the vine. The branch gets its life from the vine. In the same way, we are entirely dependent upon Christ. We get life from Jesus. Jesus gives us his life, and it’s through the life of Jesus, as we depend on him, that we are able to bear fruit.
“The branch … rests in union and communion with the vine; and at the right time, and in the right way, is the fruit found on it.” Hudson Taylor.
God Bless.
Asbury Chapel 