This summer I want to take you through the “Fruit of the Spirit” as found in Galatians 5:22-23. We will memorize these two verses, and each Sunday we’re going to discuss a different fruit, but before we do that I think it’s important to look at the source of that fruit and what Jesus says is required to bear this spiritual fruit.
Just a little background here. In Israel, grapevines were very common, much like we would see in central California, they represented Israel as a chosen people. In fact there were vines on their coins, and often at the Jerusalem gates there were vines carved into the stone.
He says at the end of Chapter 14 “Rise, let us go from here.” They were on their way out of the city to the Garden of Gethsemane, so it’s very likely that he sees these vines on the gates and uses them as an object lesson. You could think of the vine much like we would consider the maple leaf, a symbol of our country that everyone knows.
I. The Vine
First I would have you see that the vine represents:
A. The Trinity (vv 1, 3, 4, 5 ,7)
In verse 1 Jesus says he is the true vine, meaning that they no longer need the symbol of the vine, it is now here in person, the source or creator of them as a people group. The Father is the vinedresser, in other words Jesus is a vine that has completely surrendered to the Father and allows Him to do whatever he desires with the vine to make it produce fruit.
You could also say that if Jesus is the vine, God the Father is the root, and then when he speaks about branches, he is not only talking about Christians, but also the Holy Spirit, because every true Christian has the Holy Spirit in them. So here in the grape plant we have the Trinity represented, and I will remind you that Jesus has made us an imperfect part of the Trinity by having the Holy Spirit dwell within us.
But the whole point of this plant is to produce fruit, grapes. Now let’s just skip verse two for a moment and look at verse three where he says we are already clean because of the Word. He means we are already saved, washed clean in the Father’s eyes if we have believed the word he has spoken to us. We’re clean, but do not yet necessarily bear fruit.
If you have a grape plant and just let it grow by itself, the branches will just droop and grow along the ground in the dirt. They will produce no fruit because they don’t get any sunlight and the grapes can’t hang. They have to be lifted up and put on a trellis or wire or something to keep them off the ground. Jesus has now lifted us up and cleaned us through his blood and now we are ready to grow and produce fruit.
Verse 4, “Abide in me”, live in me, stay with me, keep to my teachings, stay in relationship with me. My parents had a grapevine in the backyard. They just let it grow and some of the branches grew up and intertwined around this big evergreen tree about 20 feet in the air, others grew through the cedar hedge that was beside it. Some of these branches must have been forty feet long, but they never produced any grapes.
In fact the only grapes I ever saw on this plant were hidden underneath, out of the sun very close the original vine. But they were very small and sour because they didn’t get much light, and these long fruitless branches probably took most of the water and nutrients to keep themselves alive and growing fruitlessly. As I read this verse it occurred to me that these long branches seemed to be trying to get away, to not abide in the vine, but were reaching, searching for something else.
They were attached to the vine but straying away in search of something else, to fulfill some other purpose, because it was certainly not to produce fruit. Only the ones that stayed close to the vine produced any fruit, but even the quality of their fruit was affected by the other branches that were wandering off.
These rogue branches do not represent nonbelievers, but believers who wander away, do not abide in Jesus, and do not produce fruit. This is confirmed by what he says in the first verse of the next chapter, “I have said all these things to keep you from falling away.”
Verse 5 then says if you abide in me you will produce fruit, but if you don’t you can do nothing, meaning nothing of any spiritual value. These rogue branches were growing to no where, I suppose thinking they were maybe going to find something, but in the end they were completely useless as grape branches, in fact they probably harmed the non grape plants they were wrapping around more than they were helping anything.
All of this is talking about surrendering to the vinedresser. In God we have a vinedresser who cares deeply about the vine and the production of fruit because he doesn’t want to throw away any of the branches of the vine he has planted that he has planted. My parents didn’t care, they didn’t even plant the vine, but our vinedresser does, and if we let him do the pruning and surrender our lives to him, he will make us fruitful.
In fact Jesus says in verse 7, if we abide in Him and let his words abide in us we can ask for anything and it will be done. This means if we are completely surrendered to His will, as Jesus was, we will receive anything we ask just as Jesus did, because it is the Father’s will. We need to ask for what He wants to give and do.
B. The Pruning (vv 2, 6)
Now back to verse two. Jesus says that every branch that does not bear fruit, the vinedresser takes away. We are the branches, so what does this mean that “He will take away”? Some, including those who hold the Arminian viewpoint, believe he is talking about losing salvation, but I don’t think the rest of Scripture supports this view. He is not talking about salvation here but fruit bearing, we do not lose our salvation just because we do not bear fruit.
There are two other widely held views here. One is that He lifts up these fruitless people. The words “take away” can be translated as “lifted up”, so they say that God lifts up fruitless Christians. Again, hard to find scriptural support for this.
The third way to look at it is that these fruitless people were never really Christians in the first place, not true disciples. They are living a life of illusion. Some may call them counterfeit Christians who truly don’t have a relationship with Jesus Christ. I would strongly suggest that this is the accurate view based on what the rest of Scripture tells us, especially Jesus’ own words.
First just look at verse 5 again, whoever abides in me and I in Him, he it is that bears much fruit. You cannot be abiding in Christ and not bear fruit, again talking about spiritual fruit, not necessarily bringing people to Christ or doing ministry, that can be part of it, but it is more about bearing spiritual fruit as we will talk about this summer.
Then in verse six, we get another clue, where we are told that not only does God take fruitless branches away, but they are thrown into the fire and burned. In verse two he says even fruit bearing branches get pruned, but here with non-abiding, fruitless branches he’s not talking about pruning to remove pieces of the branch to help it bear more fruit, he is talking about complete removal of the branch for destruction in fire.
Scripture tells us elsewhere that salvation is once and forever, so truly saved people first of all will eventually and inevitably show some fruit, and they will not be burned in the fire. “They shall never perish and nothing can snatch them out of my hand.” Jesus says. John 6:37 specifically says “Those the Father gives me I will not cast out.” The same words cast out or thrown away that are used here in verse 6 of our text today.
Also, everywhere else in Scripture being thrown into the fire represents not chastisement but eternal damnation and separation from God. Our works may be refined, or judged by fire without actually going to hell, but here he is talking about the branches, our selves, not our works.
So these verses are making two points: 1) that your salvation if authentic - is guaranteed; and 2) That there is such a thing as counterfeit Christians who may not even know it. The reason I talk about this stuff is not because I want to judge or make anyone feel bad, though if you do feel bad when you hear Jesus saying this, you may want to come talk with me.
I talk about this because I have been placed here as your shepherd and my duty is to help you grow in Christ and make sure that you don’t get burned. I cannot stand by if there might be even one person in this room who may not be going to heaven.
II. The Fruit
A. The Reason for the Fruit (v. 8)
Jesus actually gives us two reasons to bear fruit in this life: To glorify God, and to prove that we are Jesus’ disciples. In other places Jesus says that love is what will glorify him and prove that we are his disciples. Love being the first fruit. Some people ask, so what’s in it for me? Nothing. Jesus didn’t save us for our sake, he didn’t give us the Holy Spirit for our sake, and he doesn’t give us spiritual fruit for our sake. We are alive solely for the purpose of glorifying God and spreading the message of hope. Oh, there will be benefits, but most will be after this life is done. Jesus was and is completely uninterested in worldly pursuits and success, he says our joy comes from doing the Father’s will, period.
B. The First Fruits (vv 9-13, 17)
Here Jesus shows us how to abide in Him. This is crucially important for this section. He uses the word abide which means stay, ten times in these 17 verses. Verse 10 is really the key to this whole text: “If you keep my commandments, you will abide (or stay) in my love (this is how we abide in him, how we love him, by keeping his commandments), just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in His love.” We are to be to Jesus, what he was to God the Father in his incarnation.
How do we bear fruit? Abide in Jesus the vine, and let him abide in us. How do we abide in Him? By keeping the Father’s commandments. How does He abide in us? Through the Holy Spirit and the Word. What are the Father’s commandments? Everything he tells us to do in His Word. This doesn’t just mean the Ten Commandments, and the best way to remember what he commands is by remembering what Jesus said, that all the commandments are contained in loving Him and loving others as yourself. This is the foundation of all other commandments, if you are doing this, you will be doing all the others as well.
Love is the first fruit of the Spirit and he mentions it here 9 times. The second fruit of the Spirit is joy and in verse 11 he says that he commands us to obey the Father’s commandments, not so we will be miserable and have no fun or freedom in this life, but so that Jesus joy may be in us, and our joy may be full. Then in verse 17 he again says that he commands these things that we hear today, so that we will love each other. Obedience brings love and joy, not drudgery.
III. The Source of Fruit
A. (vv 4-5, 14-16a)
First I want you to see that we have a choice. Abiding in Jesus is a choice. There’s nothing magical about it, other than the fact that Jesus makes it so that we can even have the choice through his death and resurrection. In verse 16 he says, “you did not choose me, I chose you”. Why? Again, so that we could bear fruit that will last. By choosing us we now can make the choice to abide in him or not.
Jesus is the vine, and unless we choose to abide in Him, he says we can do nothing of any worth. We become a withered stick rather than a fruitful branch. I ask myself rather selfishly, if I am going to be a Christian, why be a useless branch, why not get all I can out of being a Christian by abiding in Him and being fruitful, sounds like more fun to me.
B. The Request (vv 7b, 16b)
The end of verses 7 and 16 are remarkable. Both of them say that we can ask for whatever we wish and it will be done for us. Have you tried that, did you get it every time? Why not? Because there are two conditions. One, that we must abide in Jesus and his words must abide in us, and two, that we must pray in Jesus name. In other words we must ask according to Jesus’ will. What is Jesus name? The Word. Remember we are reading from John and the very first thing he does in this book is call Jesus the word. We must ask according to the Word, not just by throwing his name in at the end of our prayer.
Jesus is saying that if we abide, stay completely in Him, and allow his words which are in the Bible to abide in us, and when we pray, if it is according to the word of God, our prayer will be answered. It still may not be answered the way we expect, but it will be answered.
So I was thinking that if we are constantly focused on obedience to Jesus, if we are filling ourselves continually with the Bible, we should be able to pray from the Bible and always have our prayers answered. These are huge ifs and obviously easier said than done for sure, but Jesus has just given us a great promise with instructions, and He doesn’t lie.
You will find something about every possible circumstance that we could pray for in the Bible, and I believe Jesus is telling us to simply pray what the Bible says. The better we know it, the more easily we will find Scripture to pray for specific situations.
Jesus prayed only God’s will, he only asked for what was God’s will because he was completely surrendered to and abiding in the Father. So again if we look at our relationship with Jesus being parallel to his relationship with the Father, it would make sense to pray the inspired words of Jesus and the Holy Spirit through the Bible. That is very much what they did in the early church, most of their prayer came from Scripture, especially the Psalms.
Conclusion:
So on the surface this passage of Scripture looks like an exhortation to obedience and surrender to the will of God, which it is. But there are three amazing promises here as well, that are the divine consequences of this obedience. First, we will experience Jesus’ love, and the indwelling of his Spirit. Second, we will experience his joy which is unlike any earthly joy we can imagine. And third, he tells us twice that whatever we ask, it will be done. Now we know this is true because Jesus says that he has all these things, and we have seen him perform many miracles because he abides in the Father completely.
This whole chapter 15 in John is Jesus telling us that our relationship with Him can be exactly like his relationship with the Father when he walked on earth. He is showing us in our relationship with him, the exact replica of his relationship with the father that will allow us to produce spiritual fruit and have these incredible promises. He says he chose us, not the other way around, but now we can choose him, because he chose us.
In the previous chapter Jesus says he is in the Father and the Father is in him and that if we trust and obey him we can do even greater things than he did. If you take that and combine it with the promises he makes here in chapter 15, and you really understand what Jesus is saying here, you cannot leave here the same person today.
Yes we are sinners, and the only difference between our lives and the life of Christ on earth, is that he never sinned. He was a human being filled with the Spirit of God just as we are, but he did nothing to stifle or grieve that Spirit because he was not born under the curse of Adam thanks to being conceived by the Holy Spirit, and his only purpose was to do the will of the Father.
The Bible tells us that he was equipped with nothing more than we are now as believers. The only difference was that he wanted nothing for himself. But do you understand that he knew we were sinners when he said these things to us, yet he still says we can have the same relationship with the Father that he has, because the Father sees us as He sees Jesus if we abide in him. That’s what Jesus did for us on the cross. God sees us as he sees Jesus.
I don’t want to overdramatize this, but Jesus is saying that we can perform all the miracles he did, all the healings, have all the knowledge through the Holy Spirit, that he did. What do we have to do? Abide in him, stay in him, let him dwell in us, surrender completely to his will and His Word, because then everything we want is what He wants and he will give it to us. And today he told us how to abide in him, by obeying him, and letting his words abide in us, and we will continue to look at how to bear spiritual fruit throughout the summer.
Does that mean we can raise someone from the dead? Yes, I believe it does, but only if that is what the Father wants, and all the other conditions are met. Jesus certainly didn’t raise everyone who died, but when the Father said to do it, he was empowered to do it, and because he knew the Father’s will, he was completely confident that he would. And I trust the word of God so much that if God clearly told any one of us to go raise someone from the dead, we could by His power.
Now apart from the miracles, we are to bear spiritual fruit. He says that this is how we glorify the Father, not by singing, not even by our chosen works, but by bearing fruit, especially love which we will dig into next week, and thus proving to be his disciples. Chapter 15 ends with Jesus telling us that he said these things to keep us from falling away, especially when abiding in Him costs us.
I leave you today with two questions. Is abiding in Christ, loving him and loving others, the most important thing in your life far above all else? And second, if and when he asks you to do something that may cost you, are you prepared to say yes?
