God has blessed the Christian with the richest of spiritual and heavenly blessings, and has given to us His own nature and His Holy Spirit that we might enjoy even now the blessings He has given to us in His Son, but God would have us enter practically into what is ours in Christ so that we might represent Christ in this world, manifesting the features that were seen in their perfection in Him in this world. The ministry of the Lord Jesus on earth, as also that which has been given from heaven, shows us how we can be in this world for the will and pleasure of God, and it behoves us to seek His will, not content with having been eternally blessed of God, but desirous of answering in a real way to what He has done for us.
The Vine and the Branches
Israel, as we learn from Isaiah 5, Psalm 80 and other Old Testament Scriptures is likened to a vine, planted in the goodly land of promise, and cared for by God. Instead of bringing forth fruit for the pleasure of God, it brought forth wild and bitter grapes, so that God allowed the nations to break into the land, and take His erring people captive. The Son of God in Manhood could say to His disciples, “I am the true vine, and my Father is the husbandman” (John 15:1). What God desired from Israel, and could not get, He has procured in His Son on earth, who yielded unbroken pleasure for Him in a life of perfect obedience in which He constantly glorified Him, ever seeking His will.
The Lord Jesus added, “I am the vine, ye are the branches” (verse 5), for God not only sought fruit from His Son on earth, but also from the disciples of the Lord, whom He had brought into living association with His Son, for only those who had the life that was communicated to them by the Son of God could bring forth the fruit that brought delight to the heart of His Father. The saints today are not exactly branches of the vine, for this referred to the disciples of the Lord on earth, but it serves to illustrate how the desired fruit can be produced even now in those who are united to the Son of God in heaven. Just as the disciples on earth required the care and discipline of the Father, so we too need His watchful attention to bring forth the fruit that He desires.
We can therefore see that the words of the Lord to His disciples are also for us, “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” (verse 4). It is impossible for any one to live for God’s will and pleasure if he is not in living touch with the Son of God, and the measure of our communion and dependence upon Christ will determine the measure of our being here for God.
Every true believer has his place before the Father in the Son, and the Son in every true believer by the Spirit, even as the Son of God said to His disciples, “At that day ye shall know that I am in my Father, and ye in me, and I in you” (John 14:20). We now know the Son, in this the Spirit’s day, as essentially one with the Father in the unity of the Godhead, and one with Him in all His thoughts and activities of grace for the blessing of those He has given to His Son. According to this grace, we are in the Son as having the life of the Son, and the Son is in us that His life might be manifested in testimony in this world.
Though we are in the Son, and the Son is in us, we need to live in constant communion with the Son, depending on Him for everything, if we are to represent him aright before men. All the resources of the Father are in the Son, and we can only draw upon these resources as we abide in Him. The abiding of the Son in us is the consequence of our abiding in Him. Because of this we can understand the Lord’s words, “He that abides in me, and I in him, the same brings forth much fruit: for without me ye can do nothing” (verses 5).
The bearing of fruit evinces the divine life in the believer, for fruit is the mature expression of the life of Christ. More fruit comes through the Father’s care, and much fruit on account of our abiding in the Son, and the Son’s abiding in us. If the Son is dwelling in us there will be the evidence of it in the life, and this evidence will testify to men that we are the disciples of the Son of God, and it will bring glory and pleasure to the Father (verse 8).
Feeding on Christ’s Death
In John 6 the Son of God speaks of Himself as “the true bread from heaven” (verse 32), “the bread of God” (verse 33), “the bread of life” (verses 35, 48), and “the living bread” (verse 51), and shows that the only way to obtain divine life is by feeding on His death, saying, “Except ye eat (or shall have eaten) the flesh of the Son of Man, and drink His blood, ye have no life in you. Whoso eats my flesh, and drinks my blood, has eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day” (verses 53-54). This is the life in which we shall live with Christ in heaven, and the life by which we can live for Christ on earth.
Then the Lord said, “He that eats my flesh, and drinks my blood, dwells in me, and I in him” (verses 56). The divine life that is communicated to us by feeding on the death of Christ is to be sustained by continuing to feed on that which gave life to us. It is by continuing to feed on the death of the Son of Man that we abide in the Son of God, and the Son of God abides in us. Feeding upon Christ’s death we feed upon the love that was manifested in that death, and we cannot feed upon divine love without having communion with Him in whom the love was made known, or without depending upon Him to whom we owe everything as seen in His death. It is in Christ’s death we learn the sovereign love of God, and the personal love of Christ for the Father and for those the Father has given to Him.
Eternal Life as Abiding in Him
Every professed Christian really professes to abide in the Son of God, but our walk makes known whether we are real believers or not, for “He that says he abides in Him ought himself also so to walk, even as He walked” (1 John 2:6). Only by dependence on the Son of God, by drawing upon the blessed resources of love that are in Him in heaven, can the saint of God follow His steps, and walk in some little way as He walked. With the Son of God all was perfection, but we walk in the steps He took even if very imperfectly.
Then the Apostle writes in verses 24-25, “Let that therefore abide in you, which ye have heard from the beginning. If that which ye have heard from the beginning shall remain in you, ye shall continue in the Son, and in the Father. And this is the promise that He has promised us, even life eternal.” The three words abide, remain and continue in verses 24 are all the same in the original. We are not to accept any teaching that departs from what came out in the Son of God incarnate, for abiding in the precious truth made known by Him we shall abide in the Son and in the Father. To abide in the Son and in the Father is eternal life for the Christian, for eternal life consists in the knowledge of the Father and the Son, and in the true enjoyment of it (John 17:3) in divine communion.
By the “anointing” of the Spirit of God we are taught all things (John 14:26) as the Lord promised, and He abides in the true believer, and it is as knowing the truth taught by the Holy Spirit that we abide in the Son of God. Knowing that we need the help of the Holy Spirit to guide us into all the truth, we shall rely on Him, and as relying on the Spirit of God we shall be ever depending on the Son of God, communing with Him, and drawing upon the infinite resources of God that are in Him above.
The Apostle John desired his children to “abide in Him,” to be constantly relying on the Son of God in heaven, engaged with Him in relation to all that the Spirit has presented to us as being in Him in the presence of the Father, that “when He shall appear, we may have confidence, and not be ashamed before Him at His coming” (verses 28). What joy there would be for John and his fellow apostles at the coming of the Lord to see those who had been the fruit of their work in glory with Christ, and as having been faithful to the Lord in the time of His absence.
Obedience the Proof of Abiding in Him
The child of God is viewed as abiding in Christ, apart altogether from what he is in his mixed condition, for the Apostle writes, “Whosoever abides in Him sins not: whosoever sins has not seen Him, neither known Him” (1 John 3:6). In our mixed condition “in many things we offend all” (James 3:2), but viewed as the divine nature we do not sin, for the divine nature cannot sin. Those who are in the flesh, which cannot do anything else than sin, have “not seen Him, neither known Him.”
Obedience is the proof of love, but also the evidence of our dwelling in the Son of God, for “he that keeps His commandments dwells in Him, and He in him” (1 John 3:24). The normal Christian life is one of obedience, the same obedience that was found in the Son of earth, not a slavish obedience to legal commandments, but an obedience produced by love, and that manifests delight in doing God’s will. Having the Spirit of God dwelling in us, we have the consciousness of the place that God has given to us in His Son before His face, for we have the joys that belong to our relationship with the Father and the Son above, and the Spirit also gives us to know our privilege of manifesting what the Son is down here, be it ever so feebly.
Manifesting and Dwelling in Love
When the Son of God was on earth, God was seen in Him for He was God, and the nature of God was there in Him for all to see, but now that the Son is in heaven the same nature of love is manifested in the saints of God, and so God is seen in His people, even as we read, “No man has seen God at any time. If we love one another, God dwells in us, and His love is perfected in us” (1 John 4:12). God’s love can only be seen in this world in those in whom He dwells, and that love is known in their hearts as it was seen in Jesus here. We know God’s love in quite a different way from the way it was known to Israel, or to any of the Old Testament saints: it is perfected in us in all the wonderful grace seen in the Son of God.
The knowledge of our place before God, and of His dwelling in us, comes from the Spirit of God who has taken up His abode in us. God has given us “of His Spirit,” so that we know the feelings of His heart, and something of His wonderful thoughts, being able to enter into what He things of the Son of His love and all that He purposes in relation to Him. This is somewhat similar to what Paul writes, “Now we have received, not the Spirit of the world, but the Spirit which is of God; that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God” (1 Cor. 2:12).
Lest any timid believer should think that abiding in God is something beyond him, the Spirit of God writes, “Whosoever shall confess that Jesus is the Son of God, God dwells in him, and he in God” (1 John 4:15). Every true believer in the Son of God has this place and portion before God, dwelling in Him as having His nature, Himself dwelling in us as having received of His Spirit. It is the portion of faith, but also a knowledge possessed, for “we have known and believed the love that God has to us”. God is love; and he that believes in the love presented in the Gospel, but the heart knows that love, for it has been shed abroad in the heart by the Holy Spirit. To abide in this wondrous love, to be in the blessed enjoyment of it, is to abide in God, and God in us.
R. 8.6.70