Last evening, we focused our attention primarily on statements made by our Lord Jesus in John 14, 15, and 16—specifically, the wonderful promise He gave His disciples: that He would not leave them as orphans, without the help they needed.
We were seeking to focus on what we refer to as the spirit of ascendancy. Our experience of living a life of ascendancy is solidly rooted in the fact that our Lord Jesus has ascended. As we mentioned last evening, Ephesians 4 tells us that His ascendancy was preceded by His descending.
Brothers and sisters, we need to be very careful about how we allow ourselves to think about our Lord Jesus. Even as our brother shared this afternoon about the heavenly, some of us may need to adjust the way we think about heaven. That does not mean we have to agree fully with everything Dana said, but it does require us to seriously consider what was shared and come to our own place of understanding.
Our Lord Jesus said that the Holy Spirit will teach us all things and lead us into all truth. That is your birthright as a child of God. Do not be one of those who simply waits for someone to speak, goes to another conference or teaching meeting, and receives revelation only in that way. We need such ministry, certainly, but you also need your own time to search for yourself and come to your own conclusions concerning these matters.
One of the dangers facing the Colossian church was that people were coming among them who, if believed, would devalue the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. Our enemy’s hatred is not merely for us. Sometimes, brothers and sisters, we make ourselves entirely too important. His hatred is directed toward God—the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit—and he seeks in every possible way to frustrate, undo, or hinder the fulfillment of God’s purpose.
One of his strategies is to introduce things into the lives of believers which, if embraced, cause them to devalue Christ—to make Jesus less than Who He really is. We must not allow ourselves to think of Jesus merely as a created being. He became a man, but He has eternal existence. He is the eternal Son of God. He did not have a beginning.
John makes this clear:
In the beginning was the Word,
and the Word was with God,
and the Word was God.
John 1:1
He was already there before there was a beginning. What beginning is John speaking about? The beginning before there was anything—before there was a universe. In Genesis 1, what was there in the beginning? God. He is an eternal Being.
We must be careful not to reject this simply because we cannot fully work it out to our own satisfaction. Brothers and sisters, we would paralyze ourselves and put ourselves in a straitjacket if we responded only to things we completely understood. You probably would not eat another meal if that were the case. Can you explain in detail how food enters your body, is digested, and is distributed to every cell? If you cannot explain it, then should you not eat?
Just because we cannot fully explain the reality of the eternal Son of God does not mean we should allow ourselves to think in faulty ways. We need to guard ourselves carefully, lest we think in any way that brings devaluation to our Lord Jesus in our own understanding.
You cannot devalue Him in reality—only in your own mind and estimation. He is the eternal Son of God. Our failure to believe it does not change it one bit. He has always been that; He is now, and He will be that throughout eternity.
Our Lord Jesus, out of His great love for these twelve men, sought to prepare them. Perhaps we do not fully appreciate their struggles. They were simple people like us. They had ordinary jobs, and then one day Jesus came into their lives and said, “Come, follow Me.”
If you had asked them why they followed Him, they may have said, “Well, I cannot fully explain it. There was just something in me being drawn to follow Him.” At first, they did not understand that He was the Messiah. Peter’s confession in Matthew 16 came later, and it came by revelation.
These men had their own struggles, but over three years they witnessed Jesus do extraordinary things. John records in his Gospel some things Jesus did and said that are not recorded elsewhere.
What was John’s burden in writing his Gospel? I want to be careful, brothers and sisters, but I believe John’s burden was that his readers might understand how to live an ascended life—a spiritually ascended life. He begins in eternity past and records statements by our Lord Jesus that show how He lived this life.
I can do nothing of Myself.
As I hear, I judge.
I seek not Mine own will,
but the will of Him that sent Me.
John 5:30
Jesus said, in effect, “I only do what I see My Father doing. I only say what I hear My Father say. I do nothing of My own initiative.” How would you describe that? I would describe it as an ascended life. He was here on this planet, yet He lived according to another realm.
One of the earliest heresies in the Christian experience denied that Jesus was truly man. They said He was a phantom and did not leave footprints when He walked. Again, right from the outset, there was an effort to get people to think less of Him than He really is.
Sometimes it is a dangerous thing for us to sing certain songs. If you sang that second song tonight, “Be Thou My Vision,” do you realize it is a dangerous thing to sing if you are singing it to Him? If it came from your heart, He will set in motion things that give Him opportunity to become your whole vision. And that will cost you something. You may have to give up some of your ideas and concepts.
I once read through the Gospels with this perspective: that the Lord Jesus, in His relationship with these twelve men, was seeking to help them adjust their concepts. Some of you have heard Lance Lambert say repeatedly, “Concepts govern behavior.” Your concepts govern the way you live and act.
The Lord wants to change our concepts. That is what He was doing with these twelve men. He lived in a way foreign to them. He treated people in extraordinary ways. They had never seen anyone show such concern, love, and willingness to identify with people in their difficulties. And the words that came from His mouth were unlike anything they had heard before.
When we come to John 13, John begins to focus on one evening. Chapters 13 through 17 take place in one night.
Now before the feast of the passover, Jesus knowing that His hour was come that He should depart out of this world unto the Father, having loved His own that were in the world, He loved them unto the end.
John 13:1
The old King James Version says, “He loved them unto the uttermost.” I like that better. He did love them to the end, but He loved them with His whole heart and being. He looked for every possible opportunity to love them, so that something would be deeply impressed upon their lives and they themselves would become men who manifested this amazing love.
In John 13, our Lord Jesus manifested His love in a very unusual way: He washed their dirty feet. In that culture, foot washing was considered such a lowly task that it was assigned to the lowest servant. The Jewish people considered it too lowly even for their own daughters.
The twelve men entered the room prepared by the Lord Jesus. What were they talking about? They were arguing over who would be greatest—who would be number one, who would sit at the right hand and the left hand, and what positions they would have when Jesus entered Jerusalem and established His kingdom.
During supper, Jesus rose, laid aside His garments, girded Himself with a towel, filled a basin with water, and began to wash the dirty feet of these twelve men.
Why did He do this? He later said:
If I then, the Lord and the Teacher, have washed your feet,
ye also ought to wash one another’s feet.
John 13:14
Our Lord used His final hours with these men to teach them one of the most valuable lessons they ever needed to learn: how to manifest to one another the love He had manifested to them.
It is amazing that He did not say, “I have washed your feet; now it is your turn to wash Mine.” Most of us would have been delighted to do that. But He said, “Now that I have washed your feet, I want you to wash one another’s feet.”
When these men were arguing about who was greatest, were they thinking the way the Lord Jesus thought? Were those heavenly ideas? Were they living in spiritual ascendancy? No, they were very much on the earth.
Why did the Lord wash their feet? They had been polluted. They had been affected by what was going on in the earth. Their feet touched the earth, and therefore He washed their feet.
This was not merely a religious ceremony. There was a genuine practical need. They reclined around the table, where they could see one another’s feet. Those who have walked the streets of Jerusalem in sandals know that they become dirty. Animals were being slaughtered, blood was on the streets, and animals were walking around. Their feet needed washing.
Yet there was also something happening in their hearts that the Lord wanted to address: the desire to be somebody.
Maybe we have some blind spots. I think perhaps we have a few. Do you know why Satan was cast out of heaven? He wanted to be God. He wanted to dethrone God from His position.
When Satan looked at himself and the position given to him, he became proud. Blinded by his pride, he believed he could become God. When Adam ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, that same poison found its way into Adam. And, brothers and sisters, we are his descendants.
In every one of us, to one degree or another, there is this desire and need to be somebody. It must be dealt with radically. Our Lord Jesus took this opportunity to manifest His love by washing their feet and instructing them that the world would know they were His disciples if they had love for one another.
What kind of love? The kind that humbles itself to the lowest position, accepts the lowest responsibility, performs the most menial task, and does it as a manifestation of love toward another person.
This is not something we can do naturally. Everything in us revolts against it. Yet the Lord demonstrated His love and instructed His disciples concerning their responsibility to love in the same way.
In John 14, what our Lord Jesus had been saying brought troubled hearts. Peter’s heart was troubled. Sorrow entered their hearts because He was beginning to tell them that He was leaving.
Again, because of His great love, He began to instruct them. He told them the truth and helped them understand that His going away was necessary—it was to their advantage. They could not understand or agree with that at the time, but He still spoke in love.
In John 17, we have the marvelous record of our Lord pouring out His heart in prayer for the men the Father had given Him—and also praying for those who would believe through their word. In the final hours before His crucifixion, He interceded with His Father on behalf of those who would become His followers.
When we come to John 15, we are still seeking a fuller understanding of spiritual ascendancy. How can we, living here on earth in the year 2002, know in reality how to live a spiritually ascended life? How can we live in the reality that our Lord Jesus has ascended?
He came, lived a perfect life, gave Himself as a sacrifice, was placed in the tomb, was raised from the dead, appeared to His disciples over forty days, and ascended back to His Father.
According to the Word of God, as we have heard repeatedly during these days together, we are seated with Him in the heavenly places. Provision has been made whereby we can rise above circumstances and walk faithfully with our Lord, regardless of the situation.
How do we know this is possible? Because He did it Himself. You and I will never face the temptations, difficulties, antagonism, and hostility that He faced. He experienced these things in a measure we never will, and yet He overcame.
How did He overcome? He overcame by living a one-hundred-percent dependent life upon His Father.
He that overcometh, I will give to him to sit down with Me in My throne,
as I also overcame, and sat down with My Father in His throne.
Revelation 3:21
Our Lord has made provision. He invites and encourages us to enter into the experience that is ours, so that we may overcome. It seems to me that we have one of two choices: we either overcome, or we are overcome.
The Lord has called us into a life of union with Him, whereby we can become overcomers. As we sang tonight, “Make me an overcomer, a conqueror, Lord, in Thee.” He has ascended. He is the Victor. He is the worthy One to Whom the scroll has been given. He is God’s declaration that man can live a different kind of life than men have lived for thousands of years.
Our Lord Jesus is God’s example to us. When you look at our Lord Jesus, you see perfect humanity. This is what God always intended man to be.
Sometimes we become confused because we look at ourselves and see what failures we are. Then we look around and find many friends just like us—failures too—and falsely conclude, “This is what God wanted.” That would be like going into a junkyard, looking at wrecked cars, and concluding that this is why cars were manufactured: so they could become wrecks.
God never intended man to live independently of Him, in disobedience, living his own life. He gave man the choice, but it was not His plan.
God made it clear to Adam that he could eat freely of the trees in the garden, but there were two trees to which He called attention: the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
The tree of the knowledge of good and evil represents man living in his soul independently of God—making decisions without considering what God desires and wants.
God, being perfect, created man perfect. Man had a full capacity for a living relationship with his Creator. God came down in the cool of the day to fellowship with the man and the woman.
But when man ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, something tragic occurred. God came down and said, “Adam, where art thou?” I may be wrong, brothers and sisters, but I believe there was a sense of disappointment in God’s voice. God expected to meet Adam there.
God knows everything, but He wants us to understand how important it is to Him that we have unhindered fellowship—nothing between our soul and our Savior.
Man became something God never intended him to be. But our Lord Jesus came to accomplish what Hebrews calls “so great salvation.”
This salvation takes hopeless, helpless sinners and restores them to full fellowship with God. It conforms them to the image of the Son of God and enables them to enter into a life of spiritual ascendancy—a life in union with God Himself.
What a great salvation! Where would we be if God had not intervened? Brother Jerry and I were talking about this today. Can you imagine where we would be if God, in His mercy, had not laid hold of us, interrupted us, and interfered with the plans we had for our lives? I would not be here.
Available to every blood-bought child of God is the potential to be fully restored to what God originally intended.
But what about the universe God created? Something has happened to it that greatly displeases Him. He cannot leave it this way. Why? Because our God is a perfectionist.
Human beings may try to be perfectionists, especially concerning other people’s lives. But when we look honestly at our own lives, we must admit we are not perfectionists. God, however, can afford to be a perfectionist.
He is not satisfied to leave you and me in imperfection, nor is He satisfied to leave His creation in any state of imperfection. When our Lord Jesus was on the cross and declared, “It is finished,” it meant that from that point forward there was hope for God to fully recover this universe and recover us as fallen humanity.
Let us read John 15:1-17.
I am the true vine, and My Father is the husbandman.
Every branch in Me that beareth not fruit, He taketh it away:
and every branch that beareth fruit, He cleanseth it, that it may bear more fruit.
Already ye are clean because of the word which I have spoken unto you.
Abide in Me, and I in you.
As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine;
so neither can ye, except ye abide in Me.
I am the vine, ye are the branches:
He that abideth in Me, and I in him, the same beareth much fruit:
for apart from Me ye can do nothing.
John 15:1-5
If a man abide not in Me, he is cast forth as a branch, and is withered;
and they gather them, and cast them into the fire, and they are burned.
If ye abide in Me, and My words abide in you, ask whatsoever ye will, and it shall be done unto you.
Herein is My Father glorified, that ye bear much fruit;
and so shall ye be My disciples.
John 15:6-8
Even as the Father hath loved Me, I also have loved you: abide ye in My love.
If ye keep My commandments, ye shall abide in My love;
even as I have kept My Father’s commandments, and abide in His love.
These things have I spoken unto you, that My joy may be in you, and that your joy may be made full.
This is My commandment, that ye love one another, even as I have loved you.
John 15:9-12
Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.
Ye are My friends, if ye do the things which I command you.
No longer do I call you servants; for the servant knoweth not what his lord doeth:
but I have called you friends; for all things that I heard from My Father I have made known unto you.
Ye did not choose Me, but I chose you, and appointed you, that ye should go and bear fruit, and that your fruit should abide.
John 15:13-16
These things I command you, that ye may love one another.
John 15:17
Remember the context. Out of His love for His disciples, the Lord Jesus was instructing them concerning how they could live after He was gone, so they would not be overwhelmed by disappointment and simply give up following Him.
This happened even before He ascended. In John 21, Peter said, “I go a fishing.” Why? He was disappointed. He did not know what else to do. His Lord was no longer there, so he was ready to return to what he had been before.
The Lord wanted these men to understand that they were not at a disadvantage. In fact, they would have greater advantage after He left and sent the Holy Spirit. They would receive help in a way they could not receive it while He was physically present.
In John 14, He told them that in His Father’s house there were many abiding places. This was not merely something for the distant future. It was something about to happen. He would make it possible for them to be with Him where He was—to be in spiritual ascendancy with Him.
He used the analogy of a vine to help them understand how they could live in spiritual ascendancy and experience the life they had seen lived out in Him. Certainly, they would have to grow into it. But the hope was that they did not have to remain the failures they had been.
There was now available to them a way of living that could enable them to overcome and become a joy and pleasure to their heavenly Father.
Notice John 15:8:
Herein is My Father glorified, that ye bear much fruit;
and so shall ye be My disciples.
John 15:8
What did our Lord mean when He said, “My Father is glorified, that ye bear much fruit”? There are some very big words in the Bible. What is the biggest word? Not the longest, but the biggest. “God.” In the beginning, God. It cannot get any bigger than that.
But another great word is “glory.” Often when we think of glory, we think about going to glory—some future place where radical changes will occur and we will live in a glorious place. But God’s glory has several aspects.
First, glory concerns God Himself. He is the God of glory. He is a glorious God. The God of glory appeared to Abraham.
In Exodus 33, Moses had a wonderful conversation with the Lord. Moses asked God to show him His ways, but he was not satisfied with that. He also said:
Show me, I pray Thee, Thy glory.
Exodus 33:18
What was Moses asking to see? God’s character—Who God is. When we speak of God’s glory, we are speaking of God Himself. He is the God of glory, glorious in His character.
The second aspect of glory concerns the presence of God. When the tabernacle and temple were constructed according to God’s prescription, the glory of God came into those places.
The Shekinah glory filled the temple so richly that the priests could not perform their ministry. God’s glory represents His presence.
God is everywhere. There is no place we can go where He is not. Yet He has the wonderful ability to make His presence rich and real in a particular situation and location. Why? Because God longs to be with His people.
It satisfies something in the heart of God to be in a place where He is wanted, appreciated, and given opportunity to be present. Why did our Lord Jesus go to Bethany, to the house of those three simple people, rather than remain with religious leaders in Jerusalem? Because there He was appreciated, loved, and at home.
Another display of God’s glory is His power.
The heavens declare the glory of God;
and the firmament showeth His handiwork.
Psalm 19:1
When you consider creation, you must conclude—unless you are totally blind—that someone of great majesty, ability, and creativity made it. A week or so ago, I was with Sullivan and Judy, watching a program about the Hubble telescope. The discoveries are marvelous.
In our galaxy alone, there are between fifty and eighty billion stars. They have discovered at least fifteen hundred other galaxies larger than ours. When we see these things, we must say that this is a display of God’s glory.
But there is another aspect of glory, and I believe it is what our Lord Jesus is speaking about in John 15: when God is satisfied, God is glorified.
I have had the joy and privilege of visiting many brothers and sisters in the United States and other countries. Many times, I stayed in Chinese homes. In many of these homes, the children took music lessons, often violin lessons.
Sometimes the children had recitals, and I was invited. After attending a few recitals, I began to take my focus off the children playing and look at the parents. When their child played the violin, do you know what was on their faces? Glory.
Their hearts were pleased to see their little ones playing—even if all they played was, “E, E, E, E, E.” It did not matter that there was no real music yet. They were simply satisfied.
That is something like glory for God. When He finds something that corresponds fully to Himself, He is glorified. His heart is fully satisfied, and He must respond.
At the baptism of Jesus, I believe the Father could not help Himself, if we may speak that way. His heart was so pleased, overflowing with joy and appreciation, that He had to say something:
This is My beloved Son, in Whom I am well pleased.
Matthew 3:17
That is glory. Listen again to what Jesus says:
Herein is My Father glorified, that ye bear much fruit;
and so shall ye be My disciples.
John 15:8
Can you imagine what would happen in the heart of our heavenly Father if those of us who have heard about spiritual ascendancy this weekend began tonight to live in the reality of it? This is what we have been called to.
Jesus said:
I am the true vine, and My Father is the husbandman.
John 15:1
Why did He not simply say, “I am the vine”? He is the true vine, the real vine. Any other vine is a counterfeit.
Paul says in Colossians that all the fullness of Deity dwells in Him. It was the Father’s good pleasure for all the fullness to dwell in the Lord Jesus. All the fullness is located there. Anywhere else we go, we find only a counterfeit—something plastic, unreal, and false.
For many of us, we must go through deep valleys before discovering that our Lord Jesus is reality. He is the only reality.
Some younger brothers and sisters may feel that this is too much for them right now. That is all right. But do not try to explain it away merely because it does not yet register in you in a way that impacts your life. You may set it aside as something to consider later.
Jesus said:
I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now.
John 16:12
Perhaps you cannot bear this now, but it is reality. Jesus said, “I am the true vine.” He is the real vine. Anyone else who claims to be a vine is a counterfeit.
One way our enemy seeks to get us off track is by inviting us to embrace a counterfeit. Scripture speaks of the antichrist. Often we imagine someone with horns, but the antichrist will attempt to look, act, and speak like Christ as much as possible.
In these last days, the Lord Jesus said many false Christs and false teachers would come. It brings no pleasure to our heavenly Father when any of His children are deceived and embrace something not of Him.
That is why we need to come to know our Lord Jesus. We need to say it with our mouths and register it in our hearts, so that we do not get drawn into embracing a counterfeit.
For hundreds of years, the name of Christ has been placed on all kinds of things that have nothing to do with Him. Are we going to accept them merely because His name has been put on them?
In Germany, there is a Christian Democratic Party. That bothers me, because I am convinced that the Lord Jesus may have nothing to do with that political party. We must be careful. Just because the name of Christ has been stamped on something does not mean it originated in Him.
You cannot call yourself a Christian unless Christ has come to live in you. Yet there are thousands of people in this country and others who say, “Yes, I am a Christian,” while there is no fruit proving that the Lord Jesus Christ lives within them.
Jesus makes this emphatic: “I am.” He could not say it more strongly. As the great “I AM,” there can be no one else.
In John’s Gospel, Jesus uses this expression repeatedly:
I am the light of the world.
I am the living bread.
I am the bread of life.
Before Abraham was, I am.
I am the way, and the truth, and the life.
I am the door.
I am the good shepherd.
I am the true vine.
These are declarations of spiritual reality. When He says, “I am the true vine,” what should our response be? We can say, “He is the true vine,” but a better response is in the second person: “You are the true vine.” That is what faith does. He says, “I am,” and we say, “You are.”
We need to begin here: recognizing that our Lord Jesus is the true vine. By the help of the Holy Spirit—the Helper—we must allow Him to guard and protect us, so that we do not seek another vine.
At the end of 1 John, John says:
My little children, guard yourselves from idols.
1 John 5:21
What is an idol? Anything that replaces Jesus in your life is an idol. It is not real. It is artificial and false. He is the real One. He is reality. He is the truth.
If we look elsewhere or mix something else in, we bring something unfortunate into our lives. You may say, “Ernie, you are becoming dogmatic.” You are right. I am becoming dogmatic, because we need to settle this in our minds: in the Lord Jesus Christ is the resource of everything we will ever need—today, tomorrow, next week, next month, next year, and throughout eternity.
Paul said he was commissioned to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ. Why would we want to go anywhere else?
Jesus said, “My Father is the vine-dresser.” The vine-dresser is someone who deeply cares for the vines. His primary concern is not merely how beautiful they look, but how much fruit they bear and what kind of fruit they produce.
The Father is the keeper of the vine. He looks after it tenderly. He makes sure of one thing: that it bears fruit.
Jesus says that every branch not bearing fruit is taken away, and every branch bearing fruit is pruned so that it may bear more fruit. Let us not make this passage say something it does not say. This is not primarily about whether someone can be saved and then lost. Jesus is speaking about fruit-bearing.
When I was in seminary, two professors argued for months over this question of “once saved, always saved.” One wanted to use John 15 to prove that someone could be saved and then lost. But that is not what our Lord is discussing. He is talking about fruit, not whether sins have been forgiven.
If there is no fruit, the vine-dresser removes the branch. I do not know much about vines, but I remember my parents growing tomatoes. Tomatoes develop what they called “suckers,” little shoots that draw life away but produce no tomatoes. They are removed so the plant can bear good fruit.
How is it possible for any fruit to be produced in our lives? Only one way: we must be brought into union with the Lord Jesus Christ Himself. And this is God’s doing.
We often read and quote John 3:16, but we should consider carefully what our Lord is saying:
For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son,
that whosoever believeth on Him should not perish,
but have eternal life.
John 3:16
The idea is not merely believing about Him, but believing into Him. What happens when we recognize our sinfulness and hopelessness, when the Holy Spirit shows us the Lord Jesus, and faith rises in our hearts? We believe into Him. We place our faith and confidence in Him.
According to 1 Corinthians 1, God places us in Christ Jesus. By God’s doing, we are in Christ. Everything that happened to Him is now potentially ours, and all that is in Him is our inheritance.
Let me illustrate what it means to be in Christ. Many of you have flown in airplanes. You may see an airplane in the sky and say, “I believe in airplanes. I believe they can fly.” You may even go to the airport and watch airplanes take off and land.
But when do you truly believe into an airplane? When you buy a ticket, get inside, the door closes, the captain starts the engines, the plane moves down the runway, and it takes off. Then you have believed into that airplane. You have trusted it because you are in it.
That is something like what it means to believe into the Lord Jesus Christ. In John 14, Jesus says:
Let not your heart be troubled:
believe in God, believe also in Me.
John 14:1
Trust Him as you trust God. God’s purpose now is to produce fruit in us.
What glorifies God? The fruit of the life of His Son being produced on the branches. Who are the branches? We are the branches.
Because our Lord Jesus came to this planet, lived a perfect life, overcame the enemy, conquered death, and ascended to the right hand of the Father, you and I now have available to us the life and all that is necessary to live a different kind of life.
Before believing in the Lord Jesus, we were in Adam. But when we believe in Jesus, we are in Christ. It is a completely different place of living.
In Adam, we lived our own way of living. But in Christ, we enter into something entirely different. God is not simply taking the old and making it better. He does away with the old and brings us into the experience of knowing the Lord Jesus Christ because we are in Him.
One of Paul’s favorite phrases is “in Christ,” “in Jesus,” “in Him,” and “in Whom.” It appears hundreds of times in his letters. God’s objective is not only to bring us into Christ, but to allow His life to influence us so deeply that we are transformed into something different from what we were before.
Jesus is the whole vine. The life is in Him. But we, as branches in union with Him, connected to Him, are those upon whom God chooses to produce fruit.
Our responsibility is to stay where God has placed us: in Christ. We must allow our lives to remain open so that the Lord Jesus may take up full residence in our being. How does He do it? By the Holy Spirit.
Do not separate our Lord Jesus and our heavenly Father from the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is here to make both of Them a living reality. It is the Holy Spirit Who makes our being in Christ real, and Who makes Christ being in us real.
When you speak of being filled with the Holy Spirit, in reality you are asking to be filled with the Lord Jesus Christ. The Holy Spirit brings the reality of Who Christ is and makes it practical in our daily living.
Our heavenly Father, as the vine-dresser, takes great patience in pruning the branches that produce fruit. Why? He wants them to produce more fruit.
What is this fruit? I have heard many explanations. But if a vine has the life of a grapevine, what will it produce? Grapes. Have you ever seen a grapevine produce apples? No, because it does not have the life of an apple tree. It has grape life, and so it produces grapes.
Who has come to take up residence in us? Who abides in us, and in Whom are we abiding? Then what fruit should the Father expect on the branches? His Son—the character of His Son.
All the beautiful character we find in our Lord Jesus should be found in us. Fruit must grow. It is not like a gift given instantaneously. The Father’s intention is to make us branches that bear fruit, more fruit, much fruit, and fruit that remains.
The Father is almost preoccupied with the branches producing fruit. He will not be satisfied with anything less. He is looking for the character of His Son in every one of us.
How does He do this? Through pruning. Part of the Lord’s pruning concerns discipline.
Hebrews helps us understand that those whom the Lord loves, He disciplines. Why? Because He wants them to share His holiness. He wants them to become like Himself.
No effort on our part will ever produce that. You could live ten thousand lifetimes and spend every waking hour trying to make yourself holy like God, and you would still be a total failure. But there is One Who can produce this character: the Holy Spirit.
Eternal life is a free gift.
The wages of sin is death;
but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Romans 6:23
But how is the character and fruit of that life produced? There can be life in the vine and yet no fruit in a branch. The branch must undergo the pruning work of the vine-dresser.
When we first come to know the Lord, there is much in us that is unlike Him. John the Baptist said:
He must increase, but I must decrease.
John 3:30
How is this accomplished? It is done by the Holy Spirit under the direction of the vine-dresser.
Our heavenly Father knows everything there is to know about you. He knows more about you than you know about yourself. He knows things about you that you do not know—or things you have forgotten. Yet He is not discouraged.
If we saw ourselves as we really are, we would go into a deep depression. I am not joking. In ourselves, it is totally hopeless. Many of you have tried long enough to know that it does not work. You have said, “Tomorrow, Lord, it will be different.” Perhaps it was different for a few seconds, and then you fell back into the old patterns.
How is change possible? There is One Who has been commissioned and instructed to come here, reveal Jesus to us, bring us into an understanding of what is ours in Christ, and produce the character of the Lord Jesus Christ in our lives.
When our heavenly Father looks at the vine, there is only one thing that will satisfy Him: when He finds His Son.
When the Lord Jesus walks among the seven golden lampstands in Revelation, what is He looking for? What should He find? He should find Himself.
When our heavenly Father inspects the branches, He is looking to see how much of Christ—how much of His Son—He finds on them.
It is a simple matter, though not an easy one. Life is free, but character must be produced. How does life produce character? Discipline.
Again, John 15:8 says:
Herein is My Father glorified, that ye bear much fruit;
and so shall ye be My disciples.
John 15:8
What is a disciple? Do you see the connection between disciple and discipline? A disciple is someone under the discipline of his master.
To be a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ includes having your life brought under discipline. The pruning work of our heavenly Father includes His hand of discipline. Do not forget: it is a manifestation of His love, not punishment.
All the punishment you and I deserved, Jesus took on the cross. But we need the hand of discipline so that the character contained in this life may be produced in us—so that there is less of what we were and more of Who we are in the Lord Jesus Christ.
For this fruit to be produced, something is absolutely necessary. It is not optional. You must abide in the vine, and the Lord Jesus must abide in you.
Jesus said:
Apart from Me ye can do nothing.
John 15:5
We sometimes read that without being fully convinced it is true. But after falling on our faces a few hundred times, we finally become willing to accept the reality that without Him we can do nothing.
Remember what our Lord Jesus said concerning His own life:
I can do nothing of Myself.
I seek not Mine own will,
but the will of Him that sent Me.
John 5:30
He did not speak His own words or do His own works. He did only what His Father wanted Him to do and said only what His Father wanted Him to say. He initiated nothing independently.
We see this in John 5. Jesus came to the pool of Bethesda, where hundreds of needy people were lying about—crippled people and those with all kinds of problems. Jesus healed one man and walked away. We would probably still be there.
Why did He do that? Was it because He did not care? No. His Father sent Him there to heal one man. That was it. He learned obedience.
The reason our Lord Jesus is seated at the right hand of Majesty on high is that He was one-hundred-percent obedient to His heavenly Father. He was obedient unto death, even death on a cross. Therefore God highly exalted Him.
Why “therefore”? Because He was obedient. He now occupies the position of sovereignty over the whole universe because He was tested, taught, and qualified.
This is not nepotism. The Father has not merely placed His Son in a position of authority. Jesus is there because He is the only One capable, the only One worthy, the only One Who can fully fulfill the task.
He is there as man. There is a man in the glory. Brothers and sisters, that should bring joy to our hearts. There is a man seated upon the throne of the universe. He is our Forerunner. He has gone ahead of us, and one day we shall share that throne with Him.
This is our destiny. But we will not arrive there in God’s time and according to His purpose unless we learn to yield to the hand of discipline upon our lives and bear the kind of fruit our heavenly Father seeks.
What kind of fruit is the Father looking for? In Galatians 5, what begins the list of the fruit of the Spirit?
But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, meekness, self-control.
Galatians 5:22-23
The first fruit is love. John tells us twice that God is love.
God is love.
1 John 4:8, 16
John does not say simply that God loves. He says God is love. In the deepest part of God’s being, at the foundation of His being, everything that motivates Him and everything He does is based upon sacrificial love.
When He inspects the vine and branches, the first fruit He looks for is love. He wants to see whether love is there.
Paul says:
If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am become sounding brass, or a clanging cymbal.
1 Corinthians 13:1
All the other things Paul lists amount to nothing without love. Unless the fruit of love found in our Lord Jesus is produced in our lives through the discipline of God, nothing else matters. Nothing else registers with God.
You cannot add up anything unless love is part of the equation. Unless love is present, nothing else registers with God.
It was no coincidence that Jesus, having loved His own, loved them to the uttermost. He loved them in a way they could never forget. How could they erase from their minds the picture of the Lord Jesus acting as a lowly servant, washing their dirty feet?
Then He said, “You have seen how I have loved you. Now love one another.” In John 14, 15, and 16, the Lord repeatedly speaks about love:
If ye love Me, ye will keep My commandments.
John 14:15
This is My commandment, that ye love one another, even as I have loved you.
John 15:12
He is preoccupied with love because it is foundational to all other fruit.
Consider the church at Ephesus in Revelation. There were many good things happening in that church. It had a rich history. But the Lord said that if they did not repent, He would remove their lampstand. There would no longer be a testimony there.
What was missing? Their first love. No matter how good something may appear to us, it does not register with God without love.
In 1 Corinthians 13, Paul tells us how love may be recognized. He gives characteristics of love—what it does and what it does not do.
Love suffereth long, and is kind;
love envieth not;
love vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up,
doth not behave itself unseemly,
seeketh not its own,
is not provoked,
taketh not account of evil.
1 Corinthians 13:4-5
If we use these characteristics to judge whether we are loving, we will understand what our Lord is looking for.
The love our Lord seeks will never be found in yourself. You will only find it in Him. No matter how hard you try, you will never find this quality of love in yourself or in anyone else. It is the love of God. It originates in God and is unique to God Himself.
It is not in us naturally. It is not in us as descendants of Adam. It can only become ours as we live in union with the Lord Jesus Christ.
The Lord Jesus is very insistent that loving one another must be practical. It is not merely an idea in our heads. It comes down to where we live every day: caring for one another and forgiving one another.
It is impossible to live in the body of Christ without offending one another. The work is not complete yet. We are still in process. We still have the potential to return to the old Adamic nature and fail to live in the reality of the Lord Jesus.
Sometimes we do and say things that bring deep offense to our brothers and sisters. But what does love do?
Love taketh not account of evil.
1 Corinthians 13:5
Love keeps no record of wrongs. Love keeps no record of wrongs.
That is where we live, brothers and sisters. If we are living parts of an assembly of the Lord’s people, this is our reality. I can tell you from my own experience: the deepest hurts I have received from other human beings have come at the hands of brothers and sisters in Christ.
Why? Because the Lord wants to do something in me. He wants me to discover that there is a love beyond my own ability to love, but it is in the Lord Jesus.
The more we undergo the hand of God’s discipline, the more He wants to teach us and bring us into this experience. He wants us to live an ascended life.
To love as our Lord requires us to love, we have to come off the ground. We must live in another realm, not merely in the world. We must find our resource somewhere else.
The love of God has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit. Then the Lord places us among people with whom we must learn how to love.
There is no way, in my estimation, that we can share the throne of the Son of God and not love as He loves. His throne is a throne of grace. He rules by love and by grace. He does not merely command people authoritatively. He woos them by His love.
That is what He wants to work into our lives. By ourselves this is utterly impossible. But we need not be discouraged, because through the Holy Spirit, the life of the Lord Jesus Christ has come into us. In that life is the ability to love as God loves.
Jesus proved it during the thirty-three years He was here. He continues to prove it as our great High Priest, continually manifesting His great love to us. In the ages to come, He will pour out the riches of His grace upon us.
Let us begin here tonight. One of the great dangers is that we have conferences, go home, and live as though nothing had been said. We fail to translate what we have heard into everyday living.
Most of us live with at least one other person. Many of us meet with groups of other people who belong to the Lord. Why do you think the Lord has placed you there? What is the number-one lesson He wants you to learn?
This is My commandment, that ye love one another, even as I have loved you.
John 15:12
We can fall into the habit of thinking, “Well, I will start working on this tomorrow.” Brothers and sisters, let us stop that foolishness. Let us commit ourselves to Him tonight, asking that this primary fruit He seeks may become reality in our lives.
It will require pruning. He will have to teach us the difference between our love and His love.
Nothing shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Romans 8:39
Yet when someone does not agree with us, what do we do? We cut them off. We begin to avoid them. If they are coming down one side of the street, we go to the other side. What does that prove? It proves that the love of God is not being produced in our lives.
In the body of Christ, the world has a right to see this kind of love demonstrated. Jesus said that all men would know we are His disciples because of our love for one another.
John says not to claim that we love God while hating our brother. If we do, we are liars. How can we love God Whom we have not seen and not love the person we see day after day?
This concerns loving the people with whom we live every day. That is the best laboratory you can find. If you can love the people in your household as the Lord loves you, then you can love almost anybody.
We need to love those in our homes, our brothers and sisters, and anyone the Lord brings into our lives. We need to be channels through whom this love is expressed.
Love is kind. Love is patient. Love is not jealous. These beautiful characteristics must be practically manifested in our lives.
This is a practical, living way for us to begin experiencing spiritual ascendancy: letting the love of God flood our being, take us over, learning to rest in and receive God’s great love, and becoming those who manifest it to anyone the Lord brings into our lives.
Can you think of one example in the Gospels where our Lord Jesus did not manifest the love of God? You will not find one. He is our example.
Our hope is not in trying harder. It is in discovering the resource in Him. We must admit, “Without You, Lord, I cannot love this way. These people are impossible.”
Perhaps there is someone in your life whom you think will never change. That is not the issue. You are not called to love them in order to change them. You love them because the Lord commanded you to love them.
Let us not leave this time without dealing with the Lord in a practical manner concerning loving one another. Let us take hold of the most important thing in God’s destination: sacrificial, agape, selfless love.
Let this love apprehend us, and let us become channels of it to those whom God places in our lives. May the Lord be merciful to us and help us.