The True Vine – by Andrew Murray
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Title: The True Vine: Meditations for a Month on John 15:1-16
Creator(s): Murray, Andrew
Rights: Public Domain
CCEL Subjects: All; Practical;
LC Call no: BS2615.4
LC Subjects:
The Bible
New Testament
Special parts of the New Testament
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THE TRUE VINE
Meditations for a Month
on John 15:1-16…..
By
Rev. Andrew Murray
“The mystery which hath been hid from ages, but now is made manifest
to His saints: to whom God would make known what is the riches of the
glory of this mystery…which is Christ in you, the hope of
glory.”–Colossians 1.26,27
MOODY PRESS
CHICAGO
ONLY A BRANCH
“I am the vine, ye are the branches.”–John 15.5
“Tis only a little Branch,
A thing so fragile and weak,
But that little Branch hath a message true
To give, could it only speak.
“I’m only a little Branch,
I live by a life not mine,
For the sap that flows through my tendrils small
Is the life-blood of the Vine.
“No power indeed have I
The fruit of myself to bear,
But since I’m part of the living Vine,
Its fruitfulness I share.
“Dost thou ask how I abide?
How this life I can maintain?–
I am bound to the Vine by life’s strong band,
And I only need remain.
“Where first my life was given,
In the spot where I am set,
Upborne and upheld as the days go by,
By the stem which bears me yet.
“I fear not the days to come,
I dwell not upon the past,
As moment by moment I draw a life,
Which for evermore shall last.
“I bask in the sun’s bright beams,
Which with sweetness fills my fruit,
Yet I own not the clusters hanging there,
For they all come from the root.”
A life which is not my own,
But another’s life in me:
This, this is the message the Branch would speak,
A message to thee and me.
Oh, struggle not to “abide,”
Nor labor to “bring forth fruit,”
But let Jesus unite thee to Himself,
As the Vine Branch to the root.
So simple, so deep, so strong
That union with Him shall be:
His life shall forever replace thine own,
And His love shall flow through thee.
For His Spirit’s fruit is love,
And love shall thy life become,
And for evermore on His heart of love
Thy spirit shall have her home.
Freda Hanbury
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PREFACE
I have felt drawn to try to write what young Christians might easily
apprehend, as a help to them to take up that position in which the
Christian life must be a success. It is as if there is not one of the
principal temptations and failures of the Christian life that is not
met here. The nearness, the all-sufficiency, the faithfulness of the
Lord Jesus, the naturalness, the fruitfulness of a life of faith, are
so revealed, that it is as if one could with confidence say, Let the
parable enter into the heart, and all will be right.
May the blessed Lord give the blessing. May He teach us to study the
mystery of the Vine in the spirit of worship, waiting for God’s own
teaching.
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THE VINE
I am the True Vine–John 15.1
All earthly things are the shadows of heavenly realities–the
expression, in created, visible forms, of the invisible glory of God.
The Life and the Truth are in Heaven; on earth we have figures and
shadows of the heavenly truths. When Jesus says: “I am the true Vine,”
He tells us that all the vines of earth are pictures and emblems of
Himself. He is the divine reality, of which they are the created
expression. They all point to Him, and preach Him, and reveal Him. If
you would know Jesus, study the vine.
How many eyes have gazed on and admired a great vine with its
beautiful fruit. Come and gaze on the heavenly Vine till your eye
turns from all else to admire Him. How many, in a sunny clime, sit and
rest under the shadow of a vine. Come and be still under the shadow of
the true Vine, and rest under it from the heat of the day. What
countless numbers rejoice in the fruit of the vine! Come, and take,
and eat of the heavenly fruit of the true Vine, and let your soul say:
“I sat under His shadow with great delight, and His fruit was sweet to
my taste.”
I am the true Vine.–This is a heavenly mystery. The earthly vine can
teach you much about this Vine of Heaven. Many interesting and
beautiful points of comparison suggest themselves, and help us to get
conceptions of what Christ meant. But such thoughts do not teach us to
know what the heavenly Vine really is, in its cooling shade, and its
life-giving fruit. The experience of this is part of the hidden
mystery, which none but Jesus Himself, by His Holy Spirit, can unfold
and impart.
I am the true Vine.–The vine is the living Lord, who Himself speaks,
and gives, and works all that He has for us. If you would know the
meaning and power of that word, do not think to find it by thought or
study; these may help to show you what you must get from Him to awaken
desire and hope and prayer, but they cannot show you the Vine. Jesus
alone can reveal Himself. He gives His Holy Spirit to open the eyes to
gaze upon Himself, to open the heart to receive Himself. He must
Himself speak the word to you and me.
I am the true Vine.–And what am I to do, if I want the mystery, in
all its heavenly beauty and blessing, opened up to me? With what you
already know of the parable, bow down and be still, worship and wait,
until the divine Word enters your heart, and you feel His holy
presence with you, and in you. The overshadowing of His holy love will
give you the perfect calm and rest of knowing that the Vine will do
all.
I am the true Vine.–He who speaks is God, in His infinite power able
to enter into us. He is man, one with us. He is the crucified One, who
won a perfect righteousness and a divine life for us through His
death. He is the glorified One, who from the throne gives His Spirit
to make His presence real and true. He speaks–oh, listen, not to His
words only, but to Himself, as He whispers secretly day by day: “I am
the true Vine! All that the Vine can ever be to its branch, “I will be
to you.”
Holy Lord Jesus, the heavenly Vine of God’s own planting, I beseech
Thee, reveal Thyself to my soul. Let the Holy Spirit, not only in
thought, but in experience, give me to know all that Thou, the Son of
God, art to me as the true Vine.
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THE HUSBANDMAN
And My Father is the Husbandman–John 15.1
A vine must have a husbandman to plant and watch over it, to receive
and rejoice in its fruit. Jesus says: “My Father is the husbandman.”
He was “the vine of God’s planting.” All He was and did, He owed to
the Father; in all He only sought the Father’s will and glory. He had
become man to show us what a creature ought to be to its Creator. He
took our place, and the spirit of His life before the Father was ever
what He seeks to make ours: “Of him, and through him, and to him are
all things.” He became the true Vine, that we might be true branches.
Both in regard to Christ and ourselves the words teach us the two
lessons of absolute dependence and perfect confidence.
My Father is the Husbandman.–Christ ever lived in the spirit of what
He once said: “The Son can do nothing of himself.” As dependent as a
vine is on a husbandman for the place where it is to grow, for its
fencing in and watering and pruning. Christ felt Himself entirely
dependent on the Father every day for the wisdom and the strength to
do the Father’s will. As He said in the previous chapter (14:10): “The
words that I say unto you, I speak not from Myself; but the Father
abiding in Me doeth his works.” This absolute dependence had as its
blessed counterpart the most blessed confidence that He had nothing to
fear: the Father could not disappoint Him. With such a Husbandman as
His Father, He could enter death and the grave. He could trust God to
raise Him up. All that Christ is and has, He has, not in Himself, but
from the Father.
My Father is the Husbandman.–That is as blessedly true for us as for
Christ. Christ is about to teach His disciples about their being
branches. Before He ever uses the word, or speaks at all of abiding in
Him or bearing fruit, He turns their eyes heavenward to the Father
watching over them, and working all in them. At the very root of all
Christian life lies the thought that God is to do all, that our work
is to give and leave ourselves in His hands, in the confession of
utter helplessness and dependence, in the assured confidence that He
gives all we need. The great lack of the Christian life is that, even
where we trust Christ, we leave God out of the count. Christ came to
bring us to God. Christ lived the life of a man exactly as we have to
live it. Christ the Vine points to God the Husbandman. As He trusted
God, let us trust God, that everything we ought to be and have, as
those who belong to the Vine, will be given us from above.
Isaiah said: “A vineyard of red wine; I the Lord do keep it, I will
water it every moment; lest any hurt it, I will keep it night and
day.” Ere we begin to think of fruit or branches, let us have our
heart filled with the faith: as glorious as the Vine, is the
Husbandman. As high and holy as is our calling, so mighty and loving
is the God who will work it all. As surely as the Husbandman made the
Vine what it was to be, will He make each branch what it is to be. Our
Father is our Husbandman, the Surety for our growth and fruit.
Blessed Father, we are Thy husbandry. Oh, that Thou mayest have honor
of the work of Thy hands! O my Father, I desire to open my heart to
the joy of this wondrous truth: My Father is the Husbandman. Teach me
to know and trust Thee, and to see that the same deep interest with
which Thou caredst for and delightedst in the Vine, extends to every
branch, to me too.
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THE BRANCH
Every Branch in me that Beareth Not Fruit, He taketh It away–John
15.2
Here we have one of the chief words of the parable–branch. A vine
needs branches: without branches it can do nothing, can bear no fruit.
As important as it is to know about the Vine, and the Husbandman, it
is to realize what the branch is. Before we listen to what Christ has
to say about it, let us first of all take in what a branch is, and
what it teaches us of our life in Christ. A branch is simply a bit of
wood, brought forth by the vine for the one purpose of serving it in
bearing its fruit. It is of the very same nature as the vine, and has
one life and one spirit with it. Just think a moment of the lessons
this suggests.
There is the lesson of entire consecration. The branch has but one
object for which it exists, one purpose to which it is entirely given
up. That is, to bear the fruit the vine wishes to bring forth. And so
the believer has but one reason for his being a branch–but one reason
for his existence on earth –that the heavenly Vine may through him
bring forth His fruit. Happy the soul that knows this, that has
consented to it, and that says, I have been redeemed and I live for
one thing–as exclusively as the natural branch exists only to bring
forth fruit, I too; as exclusively as the heavenly Vine exists to
bring forth fruit, I too. As I have been planted by God into Christ, I
have wholly given myself to bear the fruit the Vine desires to bring
forth.
There is the lesson of perfect conformity. The branch is exactly like
the vine in every aspect–the same nature, the same life, the same
place, the same work. In all this they are inseparably one. And so the
believer needs to know that he is partaker of the divine nature, and
has the very nature and spirit of Christ in him, and that his one
calling is to yield himself to a perfect conformity to Christ. The
branch is a perfect likeness of the vine; the only difference is, the
one is great and strong, and the source of strength, the other little
and feeble, ever needing and receiving strength. Even so the believer
is, and is to be, the perfect likeness of Christ.
There is the lesson of absolute dependence. The vine has its stores of
life and sap and strength, not for itself, but for the branches. The
branches are and have nothing but what the vine provides and imparts.
The believer is called to, and it is his highest blessedness to enter
upon, a life of entire and unceasing dependence upon Christ. Day and
night, every moment, Christ is to work in him all he needs.
And then the lesson of undoubting confidence. The branch has no cure;
the vine provides all; it has but to yield itself and receive. It is
the sight of this truth that leads to the blessed rest of faith, the
true secret of growth and strength: “I can do all things through
Christ which strengtheneth me.”
What a life would come to us if we only consented to be branches! Dear
child of God, learn the lesson. You have but one thing to do: Only be
a branch–nothing more, nothing less! Just be a branch; Christ will be
the Vine that gives all. And the Husbandman, the mighty God, who made
the Vine what it is, will as surely make the branch what it ought to
be.
Lord Jesus, I pray Thee, reveal to me the heavenly mystery of the
branch, in its living union with the Vine, in its claim on all its
fullness. And let Thy all-sufficiency, holding and filling Thy
branches, lead me to the rest of faith that knows that Thou workest
all.
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THE FRUIT
Every Branch in me That Beareth Not Fruit, He Taketh It Away–John
15.2
Fruit.–This is the next great word we have: the Vine, the Husbandman,
the branch, the fruit. What has our Lord to say to us of fruit? Simply
this–that fruit is the one thing the branch is for, and that if it
bear not fruit, the husbandman takes it away. The vine is the glory of
the husbandman; the branch is the glory of the vine; the fruit is the
glory of the branch; if the branch bring not forth fruit, there is no
glory or worth in it; it is an offense and a hindrance; the husbandman
takes it away. The one reason for the existence of a branch, the one
mark of being a true branch of the heavenly Vine, the one condition of
being allowed by the divine Husbandman to share the life the Vine
is–bearing fruit.
And what is fruit? Something that the branch bears, not for itself,
but for its owner; something that is to be gathered, and taken away.
The branch does indeed receive it from the vine sap for its own life,
by which it grows thicker and stronger. But this supply for its own
maintenance is entirely subordinate to its fulfillment of the purpose
of its existence–bearing fruit. It is because Christians do not
understand or accept of this truth, that they so fail in their efforts
and prayers to live the branch life. They often desire it very
earnestly; they read and meditate and pray, and yet they fail, they
wonder why? The reason is very simple: they do not know that
fruit-bearing is the one thing they have been saved for. Just as
entirely as Christ became the true Vine with the one object, you have
been made a branch too, with the one object of bearing fruit for the
salvation of men. The Vine and the branch are equally under the
unchangeable law of fruit-bearing as the one reason of their being.
Christ and the believer, the heavenly Vine and the branch, have
equally their place in the world exclusively for one purpose, to carry
God’s saving love to men. Hence the solemn word: Every branch that
beareth not fruit, He taketh it away.
Let us specially beware of one great mistake. Many Christians think
their own salvation is the first thing; their temporal life and
prosperity, with the care of their family, the second; and what of
time and interest is left may be devoted to fruit-bearing, to the
saving of men. No wonder that in most cases very little time or
interest can be found. No, Christian, the one object with which you
have been made a member of Christ’s Body is that the Head may have you
to carry out His saving work. The one object God had in making you a
branch is that Christ may through you bring life to men. Your personal
salvation, your business and care for your family, are entirely
subordinate to this. Your first aim in life, your first aim every day,
should be to know how Christ desires to carry out His purpose in you.
Let us begin to think as God thinks. Let us accept Christ’s teaching
and respond to it. The one object of my being a branch, the one mark
of my being a true branch, the one condition of my abiding and growing
strong, is that I bear the fruit of the heavenly Vine for dying men to
eat and live. And the one thing of which I can have the most perfect
assurance is that, with Christ as my Vine, and the Father as my
Husbandman, I can indeed be a fruitful branch.
Our Father, Thou comest seeking fruit. Teach us, we pray Thee, to
realize how truly this is the one object of our existence, and of our
union to Christ. Make it the one desire of our hearts to be branches,
so filled with the Spirit of the Vine, as to bring forth fruit
abundantly.
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MORE FRUIT
And Every Branch That Beareth Fruit, He Cleanseth, That it May Bear
More Fruit–John 15.2
The thought of fruit is so prominent in the eye of Him who sees things
as they are, fruit is so truly the one thing God has set His heart
upon, that our Lord, after having said that the branch that bears no
fruit is taken away, at once adds: and where there is fruit, the one
desire of the Husbandman is more fruit. As the gift of His grace, as
the token of spiritual vigor, as the showing forth of the glory of God
and of Christ, as the only way for satisfying the need of the world,
God longs and fits for, more fruit.
More Fruit–This is a very searching word. As churches and individuals
we are in danger of nothing so much as self-contentment. The secret
spirit of Laodicea–we are rich and increased in goods, and have need
of nothing–may prevail where it is not suspected. The divine
warning–poor and wretched and miserable–finds little response just
where it is most needed.
Let us not rest content with the thought that we are taking an equal
share with others in the work that is being done, or that men are
satisfied with our efforts in Christ’s service, or even point to us as
examples. Let our only desire be to know whether we are bearing all
the fruit Christ is willing to give through us as living branches, in
close and living union with Himself, whether we are satisfying the
loving heart of the great Husbandman, our Father in Heaven, in His
desire for more fruit.
More Fruit–The word comes with divine authority to search and test
our life: the true disciple will heartily surrender himself to its
holy light, and will earnestly ask that God Himself may show what
there may be lacking in the measure or the character of the fruit he
bears. Do let us believe that the Word is meant to lead us on to a
fuller experience of the Father’s purpose of love, of Christ’s
fullness, and of the wonderful privilege of bearing much fruit in the
salvation of men.
More Fruit–The word is a most encouraging one. Let us listen to it.
It is just to the branch that is bearing fruit that the message comes:
more fruit. God does not demand this as Pharaoh the task-master, or as
Moses the lawgiver, without providing the means. He comes as a Father,
who gives what He asks, and works what He commands. He comes to us as
the living branches of the living Vine, and offers to work the more
fruit in us, if we but yield ourselves into His hands. Shall we not
admit the claim, accept the offer, and look to Him to work it in us?
“That it may bear more fruit”: do let us believe that as the owner of
a vine does everything to make the fruitage as rich and large as
possible, the divine Husbandman will do all that is needed to make us
bear more fruit. All He asks is, that we set our heart’s desire on it,
entrust ourselves to His working and care, and joyfully look to Him to
do His perfect work in us. God has set His heart on more fruit; Christ
waits to work it in us; let us joyfully look up to our divine
Husbandman and our heavenly Vine, to ensure our bearing more fruit.
Our Father which art in Heaven, Thou art the heavenly Husbandman. And
Christ is the heavenly Vine. And I am a heavenly branch, partaker of
His heavenly life, to bear His heavenly fruit. Father, let the power
of His life so fill me, that I may ever bear more fruit, to the glory
of Thy name.
THE CLEANSING
Every Branch That Beareth Fruit, He Cleanseth It, That It May Bear
More Fruit–John 15.2
There are two remarkable things about the vine. There is not a plant
of which the fruit has so much spirit in it, of which spirit can be so
abundantly distilled as the vine. And there is not a plant which so
soon runs into wild wood, that hinders its fruit, and therefore needs
the most merciless pruning. I look out of my window here on large
vineyards: the chief care of the vinedresser is the pruning. You may
have a trellis vine rooting so deep in good soil that it needs neither
digging, nor manuring, nor watering: pruning it cannot dispense with,
if it is to bear good fruit. Some tree needs occasional pruning;
others bear perfect fruit without any: the vine must have it. And so
our Lord tells us, here at the very outset of the parable, that the
one work the Father does to the branch that bears fruit is: He
cleanseth it, that it may bear more fruit.
Consider a moment what this pruning or cleansing is. It is not the
removal of weeds or thorns, or anything from without that may hinder
the growth. No; it is the cutting off of the long shoots of the
previous year, the removal of something that comes from within, that
has been produced by the life of the vine itself. It is the removal of
something that is a proof of the vigor of its life; the more vigorous
the growth has been, the greater the need for the pruning. It is the
honest, healthy wood of the vine that has to be cut away. And why?
Because it would consume too much of the sap to fill all the long
shoots of last year’s growth: the sap must be saved up and used for
fruit alone. The branches, sometimes eight and ten feet long, are cut
down close to the stem, and nothing is left but just one or two inches
of wood, enough to bear the grapes. It is when everything that is not
needful for fruit-bearing has been relentlessly cut down, and just as
little of the branches as possible has been left, that full, rich
fruit may be expected.
What a solemn, precious lesson! It is not to sin only that the
cleansing of the Husbandman here refers. It is to our own religious
activity, as it is developed in the very act of bearing fruit. It is
this that must be cut down and cleansed away. We have, in working for
God, to use our natural gifts of wisdom, or eloquence, or influence,
or zeal. And yet they are ever in danger of being unduly developed,
and then trusted in. And so, after each season of work, God has to
bring us to the end of ourselves, to the consciousness of the
helplessness and the danger of all that is of man, to feel that we are
nothing. All that is to be left of us is just enough to receive the
power of the life-giving sap of the Holy Spirit. What is of man must
be reduced to its very lowest measure. All that is inconsistent with
the most entire devotion to Christ’s service must be removed. The more
perfect the cleansing and cutting away of all that is of self, the
less of surface over which the Holy Spirit is to be spread, so much
the more intense can be the concentration of our whole being, to be
entirely at the disposal of the Spirit. This is the true circumcision
of the heart, the circumcision of Christ. This is the true crucifixion
with Christ, bearing about the dying of the Lord Jesus in the body.
Blessed cleansing, God’s own cleansing! How we may rejoice in the
assurance that we shall bring forth more fruit.
O our holy Husbandman, cleanse and cut away all that there is in us
that would make a fair show, or could become a source of
self-confidence and glorying. Lord, keep us very low, that no flesh
may glory in Thy presence. We do trust Thee to do Thy work.
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THE PRUNING KNIFE
Already Ye Are Clean Because of the Word I Have Spoken Unto You–John
15.3
What is the pruning knife of this heavenly Husbandman? It is often
said to be affliction. By no means in the first place. How would it
then fare with many who have long seasons free from adversity; or with
some on whom God appears to shower down kindness all their life long?
No; it is the Word of God that is the knife, shaper than any two-edged
sword, that pierces even to the dividing asunder of the soul and
spirit, and is quick to discern the thoughts and intents of the heart.
It is only when affliction leads to this discipline of the Word that
it becomes a blessing; the lack of this heart-cleansing through the
Word is the reason why affliction is so often unsanctified. Not even
Paul’s thorn in the flesh could become a blessing until Christ’s
Word–“My strength is made perfect in weakness”–had made him see the
danger of self-exaltation, and made him willing to rejoice in
infirmities.
The Word of God’s pruning knife. Jesus says: “Ye are already clean,
because of the word I have spoken unto you.” How searchingly that word
had been spoken by Him, out of whose mouth there went a sharp
two-edged sword, as he had taught them! “Except a man deny himself,
lose his life, forsake all, hate father and mother, he cannot be My
disciple, he is not worthy of Me”; or as He humbled their pride, or
reproved their lack of love, or foretold their all forsaking Him. From
the opening of His ministry in the Sermon on the Mount to His words of
warning in the last night, His Word had tried and cleansed them. He
had discovered and condemned all there was of self; they were now
emptied and cleansed, ready for the incoming of the Holy Spirit.
It is as the soul gives up its own thoughts, and men’s thoughts of
what is religion, and yields itself heartily, humbly, patiently, to
the teaching of the Word by the Spirit, that the Father will do His
blessed work of pruning and cleansing away all of nature and self that
mixes with our work and hinders His Spirit. Let those who would know
all the Husbandman can do for them, all the Vine can bring forth
through them, seek earnestly to yield themselves heartily to the
blessed cleansing through the Word. Let them, in their study of the
Word, receive it as a hammer that breaks and opens up, as a fire that
melts and refines, as a sword that lays bare and slays all that is of
the flesh. The word of conviction will prepare for the word of comfort
and of hope, and the Father will cleanse them through the Word.
All ye who are branches of the true Vine, each time you read or hear
the Word, wait first of all on Him to use it for His cleansing of the
branch. Set your heart upon His desire for more fruit. Trust Him as
Husbandman to work it. Yield yourselves in simple childlike surrender
to the cleansing work of His Word and Spirit, and you may count upon
it that His purpose will be fulfilled in you.
Father, I pray Thee, cleanse me through Thy Word. Let it search out
and bring to light all that is of self and the flesh in my religion.
Let it cut away every root of self-confidence, that the Vine may find
me wholly free to receive His life and Spirit. O my holy Husbandman, I
trust Thee to care for the branch as much as for the Vine. Thou only
art my hope.
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ABIDE
Abide in Me, and I in You–John 15.4
When a new graft is placed in a vine and it abides there, there is a
twofold process that takes place. The first is in the wood. The graft
shoots its little roots and fibers down into the stem, and the stem
grows up into the graft, and what has been called the structural union
is effected. The graft abides and becomes one with the vine, and even
though the vine were to die, would still be one wood with it. Then
there is the second process, in which the sap of the vine enters the
new structure, and uses it as a passage through which sap can flow up
to show itself in young shoots and leaves and fruit. Here is the vital
union. Into the graft which abides in the stock, the stock enters with
sap to abide in it.
When our Lord says: “Abide in me, and I in you,” He points to
something analogous to this. “Abide in me”: that refers more to that
which we have to do. We have to trust and obey, to detach ourselves
from all else, to reach out after Him and cling to Him, to sink
ourselves into Him. As we do this, through the grace He gives, a
character is formed, and a heart prepared for the fuller experience:
“I in you,” God strengthens us with might by the Spirit in the inner
man, and Christ dwells in the heart by faith.
Many believers pray and long very earnestly for the filling of the
Spirit and the indwelling of Christ, and wonder that they do not make
more progress. The reason is often this, the “I in you” cannot come
because the “abide in me” is not maintained. “There is one body and
one spirit”; before the Spirit can fill, there must be a body
prepared. The graft must have grown into the stem, and be abiding in
it before the sap can flow through to bring forth fruit. It is as in
lowly obedience we follow Christ, even in external things, denying
ourselves, forsaking the world, and even in the body seeking to be
conformable to Him, as we thus seek to abide in Him, that we shall be
able to receive and enjoy the “I in you.” The work enjoined on us:
“Abide in me,” will prepare us for the work undertaken by Him: “I in
you.”
In–The two parts of the injunction have their unity in that central
deep-meaning word “in.” There is no deeper word in Scripture. God is
in all. God dwells in Christ. Christ lives in God. We are in Christ.
Christ is in us: our life taken up into His; His life received into
ours; in a divine reality that words cannot express, we are in Him and
He in us. And the words, “Abide in me and I in you,” just tell us to
believe it, this divine mystery, and to count upon our God the
Husbandman, and Christ the Vine, to make it divinely true. No thinking
or teaching or praying can grasp it; it is a divine mystery of love.
As little as we can effect the union can we understand it. Let us just
look upon this infinite, divine, omnipotent Vine loving us, holding
us, working in us. Let us in the faith of His working abide and rest
in Him, ever turning heart and hope to Him alone. And let us count
upon Him to fulfill in us the mystery: “Ye in me, and I in you.”
Blessed Lord, Thou dost bid me abide in Thee. How can I, Lord, except
Thou show Thyself to me, waiting to receive and welcome and keep me? I
pray Thee show me how Thou as Vine undertaketh to do all. To be
occupied with Thee is to abide in Thee. Here I am, Lord, a branch,
cleansed and abiding–resting in Thee, and awaiting the inflow of Thy
life and grace.
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EXCEPT YE ABIDE
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
We know the meaning of the word except. It expresses some
indispensable condition, some inevitable law. “The branch cannot bear
fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine. No more can ye, except
ye abide in me.” There is but one way for the branch to bear fruit,
there is no other possibility, it must abide in unbroken communion
with the vine. Not of itself, but only of the vine, does the fruit
come. Christ had already said: “Abide in me”; in nature the branch
teaches us the lesson so clearly; it is such a wonderful privilege to
be called and allowed to abide in the heavenly Vine; one might have
thought it needless to add these words of warning. But no–Christ
knows so well what a renunciation of self is implied in this: “Abide
in me”; how strong and universal the tendency would be to seek to bear
fruit by our own efforts; how difficult it would be to get us to
believe that actual, continuous abiding in Him is an absolute
necessity! He insists upon the truth: Not of itself can the branch
bear fruit; except it abide, it cannot bear fruit. “No more can ye,
except ye abide in me.”
But must this be taken literally? Must I, as exclusively, and
manifestly, and unceasingly, and absolutely, as the branch abides in
the vine, be equally given up to find my whole life in Christ alone? I
must indeed. The except ye abide is as universal as the except it
abide. The no more can ye admits of no exception or modification. If I
am to be a true branch, if I am to bear fruit, if I am to be what
Christ as Vine wants me to be, my whole existence must be as
exclusively devoted to abiding in Him, as that of the natural branch
is to abiding in its vine.
Let me learn the lesson. Abiding is to be an act of the will and the
whole heart. Just as there are degrees in seeking and serving God,
“not with a perfect heart,” or “with the whole heart,” so there may be
degrees in abiding. In regeneration the divine life enters us, but
does not all at once master and fill our whole being. This comes as
matter of command and obedience. There is unspeakable danger of our
not giving ourselves with our whole heart to abide. There is
unspeakable danger of our giving ourselves to work for God, and to
bear fruit, with but little of the true abiding, the wholehearted
losing of ourselves in Christ and His life. There is unspeakable
danger of much work with but little fruit, for lack of this one thing
needful. We must allow the words, “not of itself,” “except it abide,”
to do their work of searching and exposing, of pruning and cleansing,
all that there is of self-will and self-confidence in our life; this
will deliver us from this great evil, and so prepare us for His
teaching, giving the full meaning of the word in us: “Abide in me, and
I in you.”
Our blessed Lord desires to call us away from ourselves and our own
strength, to Himself and His strength. Let us accept the warning, and
turn with great fear and self-distrust to Him to do His work. “Our
life is hid with Christ in God!” That life is a heavenly mystery, hid
from the wise even among Christians, and revealed unto babes. The
childlike spirit learns that life is given from Heaven every day and
every moment to the soul that accepts the teaching: “not of itself,”
“except it abide,” and seeks its all in the Vine. Abiding in the Vine
then comes to be nothing more nor less than the restful surrender of
the soul to let Christ have all and work all, as completely as in
nature the branch knows and seeks nothing but the vine.
Abide in Me. I have heard, my Lord, that with every command, Thou also
givest the power to obey. With Thy “rise and walk,” the lame man
leaped, I accept Thy word, “Abide in me,” as a word of power, that
gives power, and even now I say, Yea, Lord, I will, I do abide in
Thee.
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THE VINE
I am The Vine, Ye Are The Branches–John 15.5
In the previous verse Christ had just said: “Abide in me.” He had then
announced the great unalterable law of all branch-life, on earth or in
Heaven: “not of itself”; “except it abide.” In the opening words of
the parable He had already spoken: “I am the vine.” He now repeats the
words. He would have us understand–note well the lesson, simple as it
appears, it is the key of the abiding life–that the only way to obey
the command, “Abide in me,” is to have eye and heart fixed upon
Himself. “Abide in me…I am the true vine.” Yea, study this holy
mystery until you see Christ as the true Vine, bearing, strengthening,
supplying, inspiring all His branches, being and doing in each branch
all it needs, and the abiding will come of itself. Yes, gaze upon Him
as the true Vine, until you feel what a heavenly Mystery it is, and
are compelled to ask the Father to reveal it to you by His Holy
Spirit. He to whom God reveals the glory of the true Vine, he who sees
what Jesus is and waits to do every moment, he cannot but abide. The
vision of Christ is an irresistible attraction; it draws and holds us
like a magnet. Listen ever to the living Christ still speaking to you,
and waiting to show you the meaning and power of His Word: “I am the
vine.”
How much weary labor there has been in striving to understand what
abiding is, how much fruitless effort in trying to attain it! Why was
this? Because the attention was turned to the abiding as a work we
have to do, instead of the living Christ, in whom we were to be kept
abiding, who Himself was to hold and keep us. we thought of abiding as
a continual strain and effort–we forget that it means rest from
effort to one who has found the place of his abode. Do notice how
Christ said, “Abide in Me; I am the Vine that brings forth, and holds,
and strengthens, and makes fruitful the branches. Abide in Me, rest in
Me, and let Me do My work. I am the true Vine, all I am, and speak,
and do is divine truth, giving the actual reality of what is said. I
am the Vine, only consent and yield thy all to Me, I will do all in
thee.”
And so it sometimes comes that souls who have never been specially
occupied with the thought of abiding, are abiding all the time,
because they are occupied with Christ. Not that the word abide is not
needful; Christ used it so often, because it is the very key to the
Christian life. But He would have us understand it in its true
sense–“Come out of every other place, and every other trust and
occupation, come out of self with its reasonings and efforts, come and
rest in what I shall do. Live out of thyself; abide in Me. Know that
thou art in Me; thou needest no more; remain there in Me.”
“I am the Vine.” Christ did not keep this mystery hidden from His
disciples. He revealed it, first in words here, then in power when the
Holy Spirit came down. He will reveal it to us too, first in the
thoughts and confessions and desires these words awaken, then in power
by the Spirit. Do let us wait on Him to show us all the heavenly
meaning of the mystery. Let each day, in our quiet time, in the inner
chamber with Him and His Word, our chief thought and aim be to get the
heart fixed on Him, in the assurance: all that a vine ever can do for
its branches, my Lord Jesus will do, is doing, for me. Give Him time,
give Him your ear, that He may whisper and explain the divine secret:
“I am the vine.”
Above all, remember, Christ is the Vine of God’s planting, and you are
a branch of God’s grafting. Ever stand before God, in Christ; ever
wait for all grace from God, in Christ; ever yield yourself to bear
the more fruit the Husbandman asks, in Christ. And pray much for the
revelation of the mystery that all the love and power of God that
rested on Christ is working in you too. “I am God’s Vine,” Jesus says;
“all I am I have from Him; all I am is for you; God will work it in
you.”
I am the Vine. Blessed Lord, speak Thou that word into my soul. Then
shall I know that all Thy fullness is for me. And that I can count
upon Thee to stream it into me, and that my abiding is so easy and so
sure when I forget and lose myself in the adoring faith that the Vine
holds the branch and supplies its every need.
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YE THE BRANCHES
I Am The Vine, Ye Are the Branches–John 15.5
Christ had already said much of the branch; here He comes to the
personal application: “Ye are the branches of whom I have been
speaking. As I am the Vine, engaged to be and do all the branches
need, so I now ask you, in the new dispensation of the Holy Spirit
whom I have been promising you, to accept the place I give you, and to
be My branches on earth.” The relationship He seeks to establish is an
intensely personal one: it all hinges on the two little words I and
You. And it is for us as intensely personal as for the first
disciples. Let us present ourselves before our Lord, until He speak to
each of us in power, and our whole soul feels it: “I am the Vine; you
are the branch.”
Dear disciple of Jesus, however young or feeble, hear the voice. “You
are the branch.” You must be nothing less. Let no false humility, no
carnal fear of sacrifice, no unbelieving doubts as to what you feel
able for, keep you back from saying: “I will be a branch, with all
that may mean–a branch, very feeble, but yet as like the Vine as can
be, for I am of the same nature, and receive of the same spirit. A
branch, utterly helpless, and yet just as manifestly set apart before
God and men, as wholly given up to the work of bearing fruit, as the
Vine itself. A branch, nothing in myself, and yet resting and
rejoicing in the faith that knows that He will provide for all. Yes,
by His grace, I will be nothing less than a branch, and all He means
it to be, that through me, He may bring forth His fruit.”
You are the branch.–You need be nothing more. You need not for one
single moment of the day take upon you the responsibility of the Vine.
You need not leave the place of entire dependence and unbounded
confidence. You need, least of all, to be anxious as to how you are to
understand the mystery, or fulfill its conditions, or work out its
blessed aim. The Vine will give all and work all. The Father, the
Husbandman, watches over your union with and growth in the Vine. You
need be nothing more than a branch. Only a branch! Let that be your
watchword; it will lead in the path of continual surrender to Christ’s
working, of true obedience to His every command, of joyful expectancy
of all His grace.
Is there anyone who now asks: “How can I learn to say this aright,
`Only be a branch!’ and to live it out?” Dear soul, the character of a
branch, its strength, and the fruit it bears, depend entirely upon the
Vine. And your life as branch depends entirely upon your apprehension
of what our Lord Jesus is. Therefore never separate the two words: “I
the Vine–you the branch.” Your life and strength and fruit depend
upon what your Lord Jesus is! Therefore worship and trust Him; let Him
be your one desire and the one occupation of your heart. And when you
feel that you do not and cannot know Him aright, then just remember it
is part of His responsibility as Vine to make Himself known to you. He
does this not in thoughts and conceptions–no–but in a hidden growth
within the life that is humbly and restfully and entirely given up to
wait on Him. The Vine reveals itself within the branch; thence comes
the growth and fruit, Christ dwells and works within His branch; only
be a branch, waiting on Him to do all; He will be to thee the true
Vine. The Father Himself, the divine Husbandman, is able to make thee
a branch worthy of the heavenly Vine. Thou shalt not be disappointed.
Ye are the branches. This word, too Lord! O speak it in power unto my
soul. Let not the branch of the earthly vine put me to shame, but as
it only lives to bear the fruit of the vine, may my life on earth have
no wish or aim, but to let Thee bring forth fruit through me.
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MUCH FRUIT
He That Abideth in Me, and I in Him, the Same Bringeth Forth Much
Fruit–John 15.5
Our Lord had spoken of fruit, more fruit. He now adds the thought:
much fruit. There is in the Vine such fullness, the care of the divine
Husbandman is so sure of success, that the much fruit is not a demand,
but the simple promise of what must come to the branch that lives in
the double abiding–he in Christ, and Christ in him. “The same
bringeth forth much fruit.” It is certain.
Have you ever noticed the difference in the Christian life between
work and fruit? A machine can do work: only life can bear fruit. A law
can compel work: only love can spontaneously bring forth fruit. Work
implies effort and labor: the essential idea of fruit is that it is
the silent natural restful produce of our inner life. The gardener may
labor to give his apple tree the digging and manuring, the watering
and the pruning it needs; he can do nothing to produce the apple: “The
fruit of the Spirit is love, peace, joy.” The healthy life bears much
fruit. The connection between work and fruit is perhaps best seen in
the expression, “fruitful in every good work.” (Col. 1.10). It is only
when good works come as the fruit of the indwelling Spirit that they
are acceptable to God. Under the compulsion of law and conscience, or
the influence of inclination and zeal, men may be most diligent in
good works, and yet find that they have but little spiritual result.
There can be no reason but this–their works are man’s effort, instead
of being the fruit of the Spirit, the restful, natural outcome of the
Spirit’s operation within us.
Let all workers come and listen to our holy Vine as He reveals the law
of sure and abundant fruitfulness: “He that abideth in me, and I in
him, the same bringeth forth much fruit.” The gardener cares for one
thing–the strength and healthy life of his tree: the fruit follows of
itself. If you would bear fruit, see that the inner life is perfectly
right, that your relation to Christ Jesus is clear and close. Begin
each day with Him in the morning, to know in truth that you are
abiding in Him and He in you. Christ tells that nothing less will do.
It is not your willing and running, it is not by your might or
strength, but–“by my Spirit, saith the Lord.” Meet each new
engagement, undertake every new work, with an ear and heart open to
the Master’s voice: “He that abideth in me, beareth much fruit.” See
you to the abiding; He will see to the fruit, for He will give it in
you and through you.
O my brother, it is Christ must do all! The Vine provides the sap, and
the life, and the strength: the branch waits, and rests, and receives,
and bears the fruit. Oh, the blessedness of being only branches,
through whom the Spirit flows and brings God’s life to men!
I pray you, take time and ask the Holy Spirit to give you to realize
the unspeakably solemn place you occupy in the mind of God. He has
planted you into His Son with the calling and the power to bear much
fruit. Accept that place. Look much to God, and to Christ, and expect
joyfully to be what God has planned to make you, a fruitful branch.
Much fruit! So be it, blessed Lord Jesus. It can be, for Thou art the
Vine. It shall be, for I am abiding in Thee. It must be, for Thy
Father is the Husbandman that cleanses the branch. Yea, much fruit,
out of the abundance of Thy grace.
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YOU CAN DO NOTHING
Apart From Me Ye Can Do Nothing–John 15.5
In everything the life of the branch is to be the exact counterpart of
that of the Vine. Of Himself Jesus had said: “The Son can do nothing
of himself.” As the outcome of that entire dependence, He could add:
“All that the Father doeth, doeth the Son also likewise.” As Son He
did not receive His life from the Father once for all, but moment by
moment. His life was a continual waiting on the Father for all He was
to do. And so Christ says of His disciples: “Ye can do nothing apart
from me.” He means it literally. To everyone who wants to live the
true disciple life, to bring forth fruit and glorify God, the message
comes: You can do nothing. What had been said: “He that abideth in me,
and I in him, the same beareth much fruit,” is here enforced by the
simplest and strongest of arguments: “Abiding in Me is indispensable,
for, you know it, of yourselves you can do nothing to maintain or act
out the heavenly life.”
A deep conviction of the truth of this word lies at the very root of a
strong spiritual life. As little as I created myself, as little as I
could raise a man from the dead, can I give myself the divine life. As
little as I can give it myself, can I maintain or increase it: every
motion is the work of God through Christ and His Spirit. It is as a
man believes this, that he will take up that position of entire and
continual dependence which is the very essence of the life of faith.
With the spiritual eye he sees Christ every moment supplying grace for
every breathing and every deepening of the spiritual life. His whole
heart says Amen to the word: You can do nothing. And just because he
does so, he can also say: “I can do all things in Christ who
strengtheneth me.” The sense of helplessness, and the abiding to which
it compels, leads to true fruitfulness and diligence in good works.
Apart from me ye can do nothing.–What a plea and what a call every
moment to abide in Christ! We have only to go back to the vine to see
how true it is. Look again at that little branch, utterly helpless and
fruitless except as it receives sap from the vine, and learn that the
full conviction of not being able to do anything apart from Christ is
just what you need to teach you to abide in your heavenly Vine. It is
this that is the great meaning of the pruning Christ spoke of–all
that is self must be brought low, that our confidence may be in Christ
alone. “Abide in me”–much fruit! “Apart from me”–nothing! Ought
there to be any doubt as to what we shall choose?
The one lesson of the parable is–as surely, as naturally as the
branch abides in the vine, You can abide in Christ. For this He is the
true Vine; for this God is the Husbandman; for this you are a branch.
Shall we not cry to God to deliver us forever from the “apart from
me,” and to make the “abide in me” an unceasing reality? Let your
heart go out to what Christ is, and can do, to His divine power and
His tender love to each of His branches, and you will say evermore
confidently: “Lord! I am abiding; I will bear much fruit. My impotence
is my strength. So be it. Apart from Thee, nothing. In Thee, much
fruit.”
Apart from Me–you nothing. Lord, I gladly accept the arrangement: I
nothing–Thou all. My nothingness is my highest blessing, because Thou
art the Vine, that givest and workest all. So be it, Lord! I, nothing,
ever waiting on Thy fullness. Lord, reveal to me the glory of this
blessed life.
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WITHERED BRANCHES
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–John 15.6
The lessons these words teach are very simple and very solemn. A man
can come to such a connection with Christ, that he counts himself to
be in Him, and yet he can be cast forth. There is such a thing as not
abiding in Christ, which leads to withering up and burning. There is
such a thing as a withered branch, one in whom the initial union with
Christ appears to have taken place, and in whom yet it is seen that
his faith was but for a time. What a solemn call to look around and
see if there be not withered branches in our churches, to look within
and see whether we are indeed abiding and bearing fruit!
And what may be the cause of this “not abiding.” With some it is that
they never understood how the Christian calling leads to holy
obedience and to loving service. They were content with the thought
that they had believed, and were safe from Hell; there was neither
motive nor power to abide in Christ–they knew not the need of it.
With others it was that the cares of the world, or its prosperity,
choked the Word: they had never forsaken all to follow Christ. With
still others it was that their religion and their faith was in the
wisdom of men, and not in the power of God. They trusted in the means
of grace, or in their own sincerity, or in the soundness of their
faith in justifying grace; they had never come even to seek an entire
abiding in Christ as their only safety. No wonder that, when the hot
winds of temptation or persecution blew, they withered away: they were
not truly rooted in Christ.
Let us open our eyes and see if there be not withered branches all
around us in the churches. Young men, whose confessions were once
bright, but who are growing cold. Or old men, who have retained their
profession, but out of whom the measure of life there once appeared to
be has died out. Let ministers and believers take Christ’s words to
heart, and see, and ask the Lord whether there is nothing to be done
for branches that are beginning to wither. And let the word Abide ring
through the Church until every believer has caught it–no safety but
in a true abiding in Christ.
Let each of us turn within. Is our life fresh, and green, and
vigorous, bringing forth its fruit in its season? (See Ps. 1.3; 92.13,
14; Jer. 17.7, 8.) Let us accept every warning with a willing mind,
and let Christ’s “if a man abide not” give new urgency to His “abide
in me.” To the upright soul the secret of abiding will become ever
simpler, just the consciousness of the place in which He has put me;
just the childlike resting in my union with Him, and the trustful
assurance that He will keep me. Oh, do let us believe there is a life
that knows of no withering, that is ever green; and that brings forth
fruit abundantly!
Withered! O my Father, watch over me, and keep me, and let nothing
ever for a moment hinder the freshness that comes from a full abiding
in the Vine. Let the very thought of a withered branch fill me with
holy fear and watchfulness.
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WHATSOEVER YE WILL
If Ye Abide in Me, and My Words Abide in You, Ask Whatsoever Ye Will,
and it Shall be Done Unto You–John 15.7
The Whole place of the branch in the vine is one of unceasing prayer.
Without intermission it is ever calling: “O my vine, send the sap I
need to bear Thy fruit.” And its prayers are never unanswered: it asks
what it needs, what it will, and it is done.
The healthy life of the believer in Christ is equally one of unceasing
prayer. Consciously or unconsciously, he lives in continual
dependence. The Word of his Lord, “You can do nothing,” has taught him
that not more unbroken than the continuance of the branch in the vine,
must be his asking and receiving. The promise of our text gives us
infinite boldness: “Ask whatsoever ye will, and it shall be done unto
you.”
The promise is given in direct connection with fruit-bearing. Limit it
to yourself and your own needs, and you rob it of its power; you rob
yourself of the power of appropriating it. Christ was sending these
disciples out, and they were ready to give their life for the world;
to them He gave the disposal of the treasures of Heaven. Their prayers
would bring the Spirit and the power they needed for their work.
The promise is given in direct connection with the coming of the
Spirit. The Spirit is not mentioned in the parable, just as little as
the sap of the vine is mentioned. But both are meant all through. In
the chapter preceding the parable, our Lord had spoken of the Holy
Spirit, in connection with their inner life, being in them, and
revealing Himself within them (14.15-23). In the next chapter He
speaks of the Holy Spirit in connection with their work, coming to
them, convincing the world, and glorifying Him (16.7-14). To avail
ourselves of the unlimited prayer promises, we must be men who are
filled with the Spirit, and wholly given up to the work and glory of
Jesus. The Spirit will lead us into the truth of its meaning and the
certainty of its fulfillment.
Let us realize that we can only fulfill our calling to bear much
fruit, by praying much. In Christ are hid all the treasures men around
us need; in Him all God’s children are blessed with all spiritual
blessings; He is full of grace and truth. But it needs prayer, much
prayer, strong believing prayer, to bring these blessings down. And
let us equally remember that we cannot appropriate the promise without
a life given up for men. Many try to take the promise, and then look
round for what they can ask. This is not the way; but the very
opposite. Get the heart burdened with the need of souls, and the
command to save them, and the power will come to claim the promise.
Let us claim it as one of the revelations of our wonderful life in the
Vine: He tells us that if we ask in His name, in virtue of our union
with Him, whatsoever it be, it will be done to us. Souls are perishing
because there is too little prayer. God’s children are feeble because
there is too little prayer. We bear so little fruit because there is
so little prayer. The faith of this promise would make us strong to
pray; let us not rest till it has entered into our very heart, and
drawn us in the power of Christ to continue and labor and strive in
prayer until the blessing comes in power. To be a branch means not
only bearing fruit on earth, but power in prayer to bring down
blessing from Heaven. Abiding fully means praying much.
Ask what ye will. O my Lord, why is it that our hearts are so little
able to accept these words in their divine simplicity? Oh, give me to
see that we need nothing less than this promise to overcome the powers
of the world and Satan! Teach us to pray in the faith of this Thy
promise.
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IF YE ABIDE
If Ye Abide in Me, and My Words, Abide in You, Ask Whatsoever Ye Will,
and it Shall be Done Unto You–John 15.7
The reason the Vine and its branches are such a true parable of the
Christian life is that all nature has one source and breathes one
spirit. The plant world was created to be to man an object lesson
teaching him his entire dependence upon God, and his security in that
dependence. He that clothes the lilies will much more cloth us. He
that gives the trees and the vines their beauty and their fruits,
making each what He meant it to be, will much more certainly make us
what He would have us to be. The only difference is what God works in
the trees is by a power of which they are not conscious. He wants to
work in us with our consent. This is the nobility of man, that he has
a will that can cooperate with God in understanding and approving and
accepting what He offers to do.
If ye abide–Here is the difference between the branch of the natural
and the branch of the spiritual Vine. The former abides by force of
nature: the latter abides, not by force of will, but by a divine power
given to the consent of the will. Such is the wonderful provision God
has made that, what the power of nature does in the one case, the
power of grace will do in the other. The branch can abide in the Vine.
If ye abide in me…ask whatsoever ye will–If we are to live a true
prayer life, with the love and the power and the experience of prayer
marking it, there must be no question about the abiding. And if we
abide, there need be no question about the liberty of asking what we
will, and the certainty of its being done. There is the one condition:
“If ye abide in me.” There must be no hesitation about the possibility
or the certainty of it. We must gaze on that little branch and its
wonderful power of bearing such beautiful fruit until we truly learn
to abide.
And what is its secret? Be wholly occupied with Jesus. Sink the roots
of your being in faith and love and obedience deep down into Him. Come
away out of every other place to abide here. Give up everything for
the inconceivable privilege of being a branch on earth of the
glorified Son of God in Heaven. Let Christ be first. Let Christ be
all. Do not be occupied with the abiding–be occupied with Christ! He
will hold you, He will keep you abiding in Him. He will abide in you.
If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you–This He gives as the
equivalent of the other expression: “I in you. If my words abide in
you”–that is, not only in meditation, in memory, in love, in
faith–all these words enter into your will, your being, and
constitute your life–if they transform your character into their own
likeness, and you become and are what they speak and mean–ask what ye
will; it shall be done unto you. Your words to God in prayer will be
the fruit of Christ and His words living in you.
Ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you–Believe in the truth
of this promise. Set yourself to be an intercessor for men; a
fruit-bearing intercessor, ever calling down more blessing. Such faith
and prayer will help you wonderfully to abide wholly and unceasingly.
If ye abide. Yes, Lord, the power to pray and the power to prevail
must depend on this abiding in Thee. As Thou art the Vine, Thou art
the divine Intercessor, who breathest Thy spirit in us. Oh, for grace
to abide simply and wholly in Thee, and ask great things!
_________________________________________________________________
THE FATHER GLORIFIED
Herein is My Father Glorified, that Ye Bear Much Fruit–John 15.8
How can we glorify God? Not by adding to His glory or bringing Him any
new glory that He has not. But simply by allowing His glory to shine
out through us, by yielding ourselves to Him, that His glory may
manifest itself in us and through us to the world. In a vineyard or a
vine bearing much fruit, the owner is glorified, as it tells of his
skill and care. In the disciple who bears much fruit, the Father is
glorified. Before men and angels, proof is given of the glory of God’s
grace and power; God’s glory shines out through him.
This is what Peter means when he writes: “He that ministers, let him
minister as of the ability that God giveth, that God in all things may
be glorified through Jesus Christ.” As a man works and serves in a
power which comes from God alone, God gets all the glory. When we
confess that the ability came from God alone, he that does the work,
and they who see it, equally glorify God. It was God who did it. Men
judge by the fruit of a garden of what the gardener is. Men judge of
God by the fruit that the branches of the Vine of His planting bears.
Little fruit brings little glory to God. It brings no honor to either
the Vine or the Husbandman. “That ye bear much fruit, herein is my
Father glorified.”
We have sometimes mourned our lack of fruit, as a loss to ourselves
and our fellow men, with complaints of our feebleness as the cause.
Let us rather think of the sin and shame of little fruit as robbing
God of the glory He ought to get from us. Let us learn the secret of
bringing glory to God, serving of the ability which God giveth. The
full acceptance of Christ’s Word, “You can do nothing”; the simple
faith in God, who worketh all in all; the abiding in Christ through
whom the divine Husbandman does His work and gets much fruit–this is
the life that will bring glory to God.
Much fruit–God asks it; see that you give it. God can be content with
nothing less; be you content with nothing less. Let these words of
Christ–fruit, more fruit, much fruit–abide in you, until you think
as He does, and you be prepared to take from Him, the heavenly Vine,
what He has for you. Much fruit: herein is my Father glorified. Let
the very height of the demand be your encouragement. It is so entirely
beyond your power, that it throws you more entirely upon Christ, your
true Vine. He can, He will, make it true in you.
Much fruit–God asks because he needs. He does not ask fruit from the
branches of His Vine for show, to prove what He can do. No; He needs
it for the salvation of men: it is in that He is to be glorified.
Throw yourself in much prayer on your Vine and your Husbandman. Cry to
God and your Father to give you fruit to bring to men. Take the burden
of the hungry and the perishing on you, as Jesus did when He was moved
with compassion, and your power in prayer, and your abiding, and your
bearing much fruit to the glory of the Father will have a reality and
a certainty you never knew before.
The Father glorified. Blessed prospect–God glorifying Himself in me,
showing forth the glory of His goodness and power in what He works in
me, and through me. What a motive to bear much fruit, just as much as
He works in me! Father, glorify Thyself in me.
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TRUE DISCIPLES
Herein is My Father Glorified, that Ye Bear Much Fruit: So Shall Ye Be
My Disciples–John 15.8
And are those who do not bear much fruit not disciples? They may be,
but in a backward and immature stage. Of those who bear much fruit,
Christ says: “These are My disciples, such as I would have them
be–these are true disciples.” Just as we say of someone in whom the
idea of manliness is realized: That is a man! So our Lord tells who
are disciples after His heart, worthy of the name: Those who bear much
fruit. We find this double sense of the word disciple in the Gospel.
Sometimes it is applied to all who accepted Christ’s teaching. At
other times it includes only the inner circle of those who followed
Christ wholly, and gave themselves to His training for service. The
difference has existed throughout all ages. There have always been a
smaller number of God’s people who have sought to serve Him with their
whole heart, while the majority have been content with a very small
measure of the knowledge of His grace and will.
And what is the difference between this smaller inner circle and the
many who do not seek admission to it? We find it in the words: much
fruit. With many Christians the thought of personal safety, which at
their first awakening was a legitimate one, remains to the end the one
aim of their religion. The idea of service and fruit is always a
secondary and very subordinate one. The honest longing for much fruit
does not trouble them. Souls that have heard the call to live wholly
for their Lord, to give their life for Him as He gave His for them,
can never be satisfied with this. Their cry is to bear as much fruit
as they possibly can, as much as their Lord ever can desire or give in
them.
Bear much fruit: so shall ye be My disciples–Let me beg every reader
to consider these words most seriously. Be not content with the
thought of gradually doing a little more or better work. In this way
it may never come. Take the words, much fruit, as the revelation of
your heavenly Vine of what you must be, of what you can be. Accept
fully the impossibility, the utter folly of attempting it in your
strength. Let the words call you to look anew upon the Vine, an
undertaking to live out its heavenly fullness in you. Let them waken
in you once again the faith and the confession: “I am a branch of the
true Vine; I can bear much fruit to His glory, and the glory of the
Father.”
We need not judge others. But we see in God’s Word everywhere two
classes of disciples. Let there be no hesitation as to where we take
our place. Let us ask Him to reveal to us how He ask and claims a life
wholly given up to Him, to be as full of His Spirit as He can make us.
Let our desire be nothing less than perfect cleansing, unbroken
abiding, closest communion, abundant fruitfulness–true branches of
the true Vine.
The world is perishing, the church is failing, Christ’s cause is
suffering, Christ is grieving on account of the lack of wholehearted
Christians, bearing much fruit. Though you scarce see what it implies
or how it is to come, say to Him that you are His branch to bear much
fruit; that you are ready to be His disciple in His own meaning of the
word.
My disciples. Blessed Lord, much fruit is the proof that Thou the true
Vine hast in me a true branch, a disciple wholly at Thy disposal. Give
me, I pray Thee, the childlike consciousness that my fruit is pleasing
to Thee, what Thou countest much fruit.
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THE WONDERFUL LOVE
Even as the Father Hath Loved Me, I Also Have Loved you–John 15.9
Here Christ leaves the language of parable, and speaks plainly out of
the Father. Much as the parable could teach, it could not teach the
lesson of love. All that the vine does for the branch, it does under
the compulsion of a law of nature: there is no personal living love to
the branch. We are in danger of looking to Christ as a Saviour and a
supplier of every need, appointed by God, accepted and trusted by us,
without any sense of the intensity of personal affection in which
Christ embraces us, and our life alone can find its true happiness.
Christ seeks to point us to this.
And how does He do so? He leads us once again to Himself, to show us
how identical His own life is with ours. Even as the Father loved Him,
He loves us. His life as vine dependent on the Father was a life in
the Father’s love; that love was His strength and His joy; in the
power of that divine love resting on Him He lived and died. If we are
to live like Him, as branches to be truly like our Vine, we must share
in this too. Our life must have its breath and being in a heavenly
love as much as His. What the Father’s love was to Him, His love will
be to us. If that love made Him the true Vine, His love can make us
true branches. “Even as the Father hath loved me, so have I loved
you.”
Even as the Father hath loved Me–And how did the Father love Him? The
infinite desire and delight of God to communicate to the Son all He
had Himself, to take the Son into the most complete equality with
Himself, to live in the Son and have the Son live in Him–this was the
love of God to Christ. It is a mystery of glory of which we can form
no conception, we can only bow and worship as we try to think of it.
And with such a love, with this very same love, Christ longs in an
infinite desire and delight to communicate to us all He is and has, to
make us partakers of His own nature and blessedness, to live in us and
have us live in Himself.
And now, if Christ loves us with such an intense, such an infinite
divine love, what is it that hinders it triumphing over every obstacle
and getting full possession of us? The answer is simple. Even as the
love of the Father to Christ, so His love to us is a divine mystery,
too high for us to comprehend or attain to by any effort of our own.
It is only the Holy Spirit who can shed abroad and reveal in its
all-conquering power without intermission this wonderful love of God
in Christ. It is the vine itself that must give the branch its growth
and fruit by sending up its sap. It is Christ Himself must by His Holy
Spirit dwell in the heart; then shall we know and have in us the love
that passeth knowledge.
As the Father loved Me, so have I loved you–Shall we not draw near to
the personal living Christ, and trust Him, and yield all to Him, that
He may love this love into us? Just as he knew and rejoiced every
hour–the Father loveth Me–we too may live in the unceasing
consciousness–as the Father loved Him, so He loves me.
As the Father loved Me, so have I loved you. Dear Lord, I am only
beginning to apprehend how exactly the life of the Vine is to be that
of the branch too. Thou art the Vine, because the Father loved Thee,
and poured His love through Thee. And so Thou lovest me, and my life
as branch is to be like Thine, a receiving and a giving out of
heavenly love.
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ABIDE IN MY LOVE
Even as the Father Hath Loved Me, I Also Have Loved You: Abide Ye in
My Love–John 15.9
Abide in My love–We speak of a man’s home as his abode. Our abode,
the home of our soul, is to be the love of Christ. We are to live our
life there, to be at home there all the day: this is what Christ means
our life to be, and really can make it. Our continuous abiding in the
Vine is to be an abiding in His love.
You have probably heard or read of what is called the higher, or the
deeper life, of the richer or the fuller life, of the life abundant.
And you possibly know that some have told of a wonderful change, by
which their life of continual failure and stumbling had been changed
into a very blessed experience of being kept and strengthened and made
exceeding glad. If you asked them how it was this great blessing came
to them, many would tell you it was simply this, that they were led to
believe that this abiding in Christ’s love was meant to be a reality,
and that they were made willing to give up everything for it, and then
enabled to trust Christ to make it true to them.
The love of the Father to the Son is not a sentiment–it is a divine
life, an infinite energy, an irresistible power. It carried Christ
through life and death and the grave. The Father loved Him and dwelt
in Him, and did all for Him. So the love of Christ to us too is an
infinite living power that will work in us all He delights to give us.
The feebleness of our Christian life is that we do not take time to
believe that this divine love does really delight in us, and will
possess and work all in us. We do not take time to look at the Vine
bearing the branch so entirely, working all in it so completely. We
strive to do for ourselves what Christ alone can, what Christ, oh, so
lovingly, longs to do for us.
And this now is the secret of the change we spoke of, and the
beginning of a new life, when the soul sees this infinite love willing
to do all, and gives itself up to it. “Abide ye in my love.” To
believe that, it is possible so to live moment by moment; to believe
that everything that makes it difficult or impossible will be overcome
by Christ Himself; to believe that Love really means an infinite
longing to give itself wholly to us and never leave us; and in this
faith to cast ourselves on Christ to work it in us; this is the secret
of the true Christian life.
And how to come to this faith? Turn away from the visible if you would
see and possess the invisible. Take more time with Jesus, gazing on
Him as the heavenly Vine, living in the love of the Father, wanting
you to live in His love. Turn away from yourself and your efforts and
your faith, if you would have the heart filled with Him and the
certainty of His love. Abiding means going out from everything else,
to occupy one place and stay there. Come away from all else, and set
your heart on Jesus, and His love, that love will waken your faith and
strengthen it. Occupy yourself with that love, worship it, wait for
it. You may be sure it will reach out to you, and by its power take
you up into itself as your abode and your home.
Abide in My love. Lord Jesus, I see it, it was Thy abiding in Thy
Father’s love that made Thee the true Vine, with Thy divine fullness
of love and blessing for us. Oh, that I may even so, as a branch,
abide in Thy love, for its fullness to fill me and overflow on all
around.
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OBEY AND ABIDE
If Ye Keep My Commandments, Ye Shall Abide In My Love–John 15.10
In our former meditation reference was made to the entrance into a
life of rest and strength which has often come through a true insight
into the personal love of Christ, and the assurance that that love
indeed meant that He would keep the soul. In connection with that
transition, and the faith that sees and accepts it, the word surrender
or consecration is frequently used. The soul sees that it cannot claim
the keeping of this wonderful love unless it yields itself to a life
of entire obedience. It sees too that the faith that can trust Christ
for keeping from sinning must prove its sincerity by venturing at once
to trust Him for strength to obey. In that faith it dares to give up
and cut off everything that has hitherto hindered it, and to promise
and expect to live a life that is well pleasing to God.
This is the thought we have here now in our Saviour’s teaching. After
having in the words, “Abide in my love,” spoken of a life in His love
as a necessity, because it is at once a possibility and an obligation,
He states what its one condition is: “If ye keep my commandments, ye
shall abide in my love.” This is surely not meant to close the door to
the abode of His love which he had just opened up. Not in the most
distant way does it suggest the thought which some are too ready to
entertain, that as we cannot keep His commandments, we cannot abide in
His love. No; the precept is a promise: “Abide in my love,” could not
be a precept if it were not a promise. And so the instruction as to
the way through this open door points to no unattainable ideal; the
love that invites to her blessed abode reaches out the hand, and
enables us to keep the commandments. Let us not fear, in the strength
of our ascended Lord, to take the vow of obedience, and give ourselves
to the keeping of His commandments. Through His will, loved and done,
lies the path to His love.
Only let us understand well what it means. It refers to our
performance of all that we know to be God’s will. There may be things
doubtful, of which we are not sure. A sin of ignorance has still the
nature of sin in it. There may be involuntary sins, which rise up in
the flesh, which we cannot control or overcome. With regard to these
God will deal in due tome in the way of searching and humbling, and if
we be simple and faithful, give us larger deliverance than we dare
expect. But all this may be found in a truly obedient soul. Obedience
has reference to the positive keeping of the commandments of our Lord,
and the performance of His will in everything in which we know it.
This is a possible degree of grace, and it is the acceptance in
Christ’s strength of such obedience as the purpose of our heart, of
which our Saviour speaks here. Faith in Christ as our Vine, in His
enabling and sanctifying power, fits us for this obedience of faith,
and secures a life of abiding in His love.
If ye keep My commandments, ye shall abide in My love–It is the
heavenly Vine unfolding the mystery of the life He gives. It is to
those abiding in Him to whom He opens up the secret of the full
abiding in His love. It is the wholehearted surrender in everything to
do His will, that gives access to a life in the abiding enjoyment of
His love.
Obey and abide. Gracious Lord, teach me this lesson, that it is only
through knowing Thy will one can know Thy heart, and only through
doing that will one can abide in Thy love. Lord, teach me that as
worthless as is the doing in my own strength, so essential and
absolutely indispensable is the doing of faith in Thy strength, if I
would abide in Thy love.
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YE, EVEN AS I
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–John 15.10
We have had occasion more than once to speak of the perfect similarity
of the vine and the branch in nature, and therefore in aim. Here
Christ speaks no longer in a parable, but tells us plainly out of how
His own life is the exact model of ours. He had said that it is alone
by obedience we can abide in His love. He now tells that this was the
way in which He abode in the Father’s love. As the Vine, so the
branch. His life and strength and joy had been in the love of the
Father: it was only by obedience He abode in it. We may find our life
and strength and joy in His love all the day, but it is only by an
obedience like His we can abide in it. Perfect conformity to the Vine
is one of the most precious of the lessons of the branch. It was by
obedience Christ as Vine honored the Father as Husbandman; it is by
obedience the believer as branch honors Christ as Vine.
Obey and abide–That was the law of Christ’s life as much as it is to
be that of ours. He was made like us in all things, that we might be
like Him in all things. He opened up a path in which we may walk even
as He walked. He took our human nature to teach us how to wear it, and
show us how obedience, as it is the first duty of the creature, is the
only way to abide in the favor of God and enter into His glory. And
now He comes to instruct and encourage us, and asks us to keep His
commandments, even as He kept His Father’s commandments and abides in
His love.
The divine fitness of this connection between obeying and abiding,
between God’s commandments and His love, is easily seen. God’s will is
the very center of His divine perfection. As revealed in His
commandments, it opens up the way for the creature to grow into the
likeness of the Creator. In accepting and doing His will, I rise into
fellowship with Him. Therefore it was that the Son, when coming into
the world, spoke: “I come to do thy will, O God”! This was the place
and this would be the blessedness of the creature. This was what he
had lost in the Fall. This was what Christ came to restore. This is
what, as the heavenly Vine, He asks of us and imparts to us, that even
as He by keeping His Father’s commandments abode in His love, we
should keep His commandments and abide in His love.
Ye, even as I–The branch cannot bear fruit except as it has exactly
the same life as the Vine. Our life is to be the exact counterpart of
Christ’s life. It can be, just in such measure as we believe in Him as
the Vine, imparting Himself and His life to His branches. “Ye, even as
I,” the Vine says: one law, one nature, one fruit. Do let us take from
our Lord the lesson of obedience as the secret of abiding. Let us
confess that simple, implicit, universal obedience has taken too
little the place it should have. Christ died for us as enemies, when
we were disobedient. He took us up into His love; now that we are in
Him, His Word is: “Obey and abide; ye, even as I.” Let us give
ourselves to a willing and loving obedience. He will keep us abiding
in His love.
Ye, even as I. O my blessed Vine, who makest the branch in everything
partake of Thy life and likeness, in this too I am to be like Thee: as
Thy life in the Father’s love through obedience, so mine in Thy love!
Saviour, help me, that obedience may indeed be the link between Thee
and me.
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JOY
These Things Have I Spoken Unto You, That My Joy May Be in You, and
That Your Joy May Be Fulfilled–John 15.11
If any one asks the question, “How can I be a happy Christian?” our
Lord’s answer is very simple: “These things,” about the Vine and the
branches, “I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that
your joy may be fulfilled.” “You cannot have My joy without My life.
Abide in Me, and let Me abide in you, and My joy will be in you.” All
healthy life is a thing of joy and beauty; live undividedly the branch
life; you will have His joy in full measure.
To many Christians the thought of a life wholly abiding in Christ is
one of strain and painful effort. They cannot see that the strain and
effort only come, as long as we do not yield ourselves unreservedly to
the life of Christ in us. The very first words of the parable are not
yet opened up to them: “I am the true Vine; I undertake all and
provide for all; I ask nothing of the branch but that it yields wholly
to Me, and allows Me to do all. I engage to make and keep the branch
all that it ought to be.” Ought it not to be an infinite and unceasing
joy to have the Vine thus work all, and to know that it is none less
than the blessed Son of God in His love who is each moment bearing us
and maintaining our life?
That My joy may be in you–We are to have Christ’s own joy in us. And
what is Christ’s own joy? There is no joy like love. There is no joy
but love. Christ had just spoken of the Father’s love and His own
abiding in it, and of His having loved us with that same love. His joy
is nothing but the joy of love, of being loved and of loving. It was
the joy of receiving His Father’s love and abiding in it, and then the
joy of passing on that love and pouring it out on sinners. It is this
joy He wants us to share: the joy of being loved of the Father and of
Him; the joy of in our turn loving and living for those around us.
This is just the joy of being truly branches: abiding in His love, and
then giving up ourselves in love to bear fruit for others. Let us
accept His life, as He gives it in us as the Vine, His joy will be
ours: the joy of abiding in His love, the joy of loving like Him, of
loving with His love.
And that your joy may be fulfilled–That it may be complete, that you
may be filled with it. How sad that we should so need to be reminded
that as God alone is the fountain of all joy, “God our exceeding joy,”
the only way to be perfectly happy is to have as much of God, as much
of His will and fellowship, as possible! Religion is meant to be in
everyday life a thing of unspeakable joy. And why do so many complain
that it is not so? Because they do not believe that there is no joy
like the joy of abiding in Christ and in His love, and being branches
through whom He can pour out His love on a dying world.
Oh, that Christ’s voice might reach the heart of every young
Christian, and persuade him to believe that His joy is the only true
joy, that His joy can become ours and truly fill us, and that the sure
and simple way of living in it is–only this–to abide as branches in
Him our heavenly Vine. Let the truth enter deep into us–as long as
our joy is not full, it is a sign that we do not yet know our heavenly
Vine aright; every desire for a fuller joy must only urge us to abide
more simply and more fully in His love.
My joy–your joy. In this too it is: as the Vine, so the branch; all
the Vine in the branch. Thy joy is our joy–Thy joy in us, and our joy
fulfilled. Blessed Lord, fill me with Thy joy–the joy of being loved
and blessed with a divine love; the joy of loving and blessing others.
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LOVE ONE ANOTHER
This is My Commandment, That Ye Love One Another–John 15.12
God is love. His whole nature and perfection is love, living not for
Himself, but to dispense life and blessing. In His love He begat the
Son, that He might give all to Him. In His love He brought forth
creatures that He might make them partakers of His blessedness.
Christ is the Son of God’s love, the bearer, the revealer, the
communicator of that love. His life and death were all love. Love is
His life, and the life He gives. He only lives to love, to live out
His life of love in us, to give Himself in all who will receive Him.
The very first thought of the true Vine is love–living only to impart
His life to the branches.
The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of love. He cannot impart Christ’s life
without imparting His love. Salvation is nothing but love conquering
and entering into us; we have just as much of salvation as we have of
love. Full salvation is perfect love.
No wonder that Christ said: “A new commandment I give unto you”; “This
is my commandment”–the one all-inclusive commandment–“that ye love
one another.” The branch is not only one with the vine, but with all
its other branches; they drink one spirit, they form one body, they
bear one fruit. Nothing can be more unnatural than that Christians
should not love one another, even as Christ loved them. The life they
received from their heavenly Vine is nothing but love. This is the one
thing He asks above all others. “Hereby shall all men know that ye are
my disciples…love one another.” As the special sort of vine is known
by the fruit it bears, the nature of the heavenly Vine is to be judged
of by the love His disciples have to one another.
See that you obey this commandment. Let your “obey and abide” be seen
in this. Love your brethren as the way to abide in the love of your
Lord. Let your vow of obedience begin here. Love one another. Let your
intercourse with the Christians in your own family be holy, tender,
Christlike love. Let your thoughts of the Christians round you be,
before everything, in the spirit of Christ’s love. Let your life and
conduct be the sacrifice of love–give your self up to think of their
sins or their needs, to intercede for them, to help and to serve them.
Be in your church or circle the embodiment of Christ’s love. The life
Christ lives in you is love; let the life in which you live it out be
all love.
But, man, you write as if all this was so natural and simple and easy.
Is it at all possible thus to live and thus to love? My answer is:
Christ commands it: you must obey. Christ means it: you must obey, or
you cannot abide in His love.
But I have tried and failed. I see no prospect of living like Christ.
Ah! that is because you have failed to take in the first word of the
parable–“I am the true Vine: I give all you need as a branch, I give
all I myself have.” I pray you, let the sense of past failure and
present feebleness drive you to the Vine. He is all love. He loves to
give. He gives love. He will teach you to love, even as He loved.
Love one another. Dear Lord Jesus, Thou art all love; the life Thou
gavest us is love; Thy new commandment, and Thy badge of discipleship
is, “Love one another.” I accept the charge: with the love with which
Thou lovest me, and I love Thee, I will love my brethren.
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EVEN AS I HAVE LOVED YOU
This is My Commandment, That Ye Love One Another, Even as I Have Loved
You–John 15.12
This is the second time our Lord uses the expression–Even as I. The
first time it was of His relation to the Father, keeping His
commandments, and abiding in His love. Even so we are to keep Christ’s
commandments, and abide in His love. The second time He speaks of His
relation to us as the rule of our love to our brethren: “Love one
another, as I have loved you.” In each case His disposition and
conduct is to be the law for ours. It is again the truth we have more
than once insisted on–perfect likeness between the Vine and the
branch.
Even as I–But is it not a vain thing to imagine that we can keep His
commandments, and love the brethren, even as He kept His Father’s, and
as He loved us? And must not the attempt end in failure and
discouragement? Undoubtedly, if we seek to carry out the injunction in
our strength, or without a full apprehension of the truth of the Vine
and its branches. But if we understand that the “even as I” is just
the one great lesson of the parable, the one continual language of the
Vine to the branch, we shall see that it is not the question of what
we feel able to accomplish, but of what Christ is able to work in us.
These high and holy commands–“Obey, even as I! Love, even as I”–are
just meant to bring us to the consciousness of our impotence, and
through that to waken us to the need and the beauty and the
sufficiency of what is provided for us in the Vine. We shall begin to
hear the Vine speaking every moment to the branch: “Even as I. Even as
I: My life is your life; and have a share in all My fullness; the
Spirit in you, and the fruit that comes from you, is all just the same
as in Me. Be not afraid, but let your faith grasp each “Even as I” as
the divine assurance that because I live in you, you may and can live
like Me.”
But why, if this really be the meaning of the parable, if this really
be the life a branch may live,who do so few realize it? Because they
do not know the heavenly mystery of the Vine. They know much of the
parable and its beautiful lessons. But the hidden spiritual mystery of
the Vine in His divine omnipotence and nearness, bearing and supplying
them all the day–this they do not know, because they have not waited
on God’s Spirit to reveal it to them.
Love one another, even as I have loved you–“Ye, even as I.” How are
we to begin if we are really to learn the mystery? With the confession
that we need to be brought to an entirely new mode of life, because we
have never yet known Christ as the Vine in the completeness of His
quickening and transforming power. With the surrender to be cleansed
from all that is of self, and detached from all that is in the world,
to live only and wholly as Christ lived for the glory of the Father.
And then with the faith that this “even as I” is in very deed what
Christ is ready to make true, the very life the Vine will maintain in
the branch wholly dependent upon Him.
Even as I. Ever again it is, my blessed Lord, as the Vine, so the
branch–one life, one spirit, one obedience, one joy, one love.
Lord Jesus, in the faith that Thou art my Vine, and that I am Thy
branch, I accept Thy command as a promise, and take Thy “even as I” as
the simple revelation of what Thou dost work in me. Yea, Lord, as Thou
hast loved, I will love.
_________________________________________________________________
CHRIST’S FRIENDSHIP: ITS ORIGIN
Greater Love Hath No Man Than This, That a Man Lay Down His Life for
His Friends–John 15.13
In the three following verses our Lord speaks of His relation to His
disciples under a new aspect–that of friendship. He point us to the
love in which it on His side has its origin (v.13): to the obedience
on our part by which it is maintained (v.14); and then to the holy
intimacy to which it leads (v.15).
Our relation to Christ is one of love. In speaking of this previously,
He showed us what His love was in its heavenly glory; the same love
with which the Father had loved Him. Here we have it in its earthly
manifestation–lay down His life for us. “Greater love hath no man
than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.” Christ does
indeed long to have us know that the secret root and strength of all
He is and does for us as the Vine is love. As we learn to believe
this, we shall feel that here is something which we not only need to
think and know about, but a living power, a divine life which we need
to receive within us. Christ and His love are inseparable; they are
identical. God is love, and Christ is love. God and Christ and the
divine love can only be known by having them, by their life and power
working within us. “This is eternal life, that they know thee”; there
is no knowing God but by having the life; the life working in us alone
gives the knowledge. And even so the love; if we would know it, we
must drink of its living stream, we must have it shed forth by the
Holy Spirit in us.
“Greater love hath no man than this, that a man give his life for his
friends.” The life is the most precious thing a man has; the life is
all he is; the life is himself. This is the highest measure of love:
when a man gives his life, he hold nothing back, he gives all he has
and is. It is this our Lord Jesus wants to make clear to us concerning
His mystery of the Vine; with all He has He has placed Himself at our
disposal. He wants us to count Him our very own; He wants to be wholly
our possession, that we may be wholly His possession. He gave His life
for us in death not merely as a passing act, that when accomplished
was done with; no, but as a making Himself ours for eternity. Life for
life; He gave His life for us to possess that we might give our life
for Him to possess. This is what is taught by the parable of the Vine
and the branch, in their wonderful identification, in their perfect
union.
It is as we know something of this, not by reason or imagination, but
deep down in the heart and life, that we shall begin to see what ought
to be our life as branches of the heavenly Vine. He gave Himself to
death; He lost Himself, that we might find life in Him. This is the
true Vine, who only lives to live in us. This is the beginning and the
root of that holy friendship to which Christ invites us.
Great is the mystery of godliness! Let us confess our ignorance and
unbelief. Let us cease from our own understanding and our own efforts
to master it. Let us wait for the Holy Spirit who dwells within us to
reveal it. Let us trust His infinite love, which gave its life for us,
to take possession and rejoice in making us wholly its own.
His life for His friends. How wonderful the lessons of the Vine,
giving its very life to its branches! And Jesus gave His life for His
friends. And that love gives itself to them and in them. My heavenly
Vine, oh, teach me how wholly Thou longest to live in me!
_________________________________________________________________
CHRIST’S FRIENDSHIP: ITS EVIDENCE
Ye Are My Friends, if Ye Do the Things Which I Command You–John 15.14
Our Lord has said what He gave as proof of His friendship: He gave His
life for us. He now tells us what our part is to be–to do the things
which He commands. He gave His life to secure a place for His love in
our hearts to rule us; the response His love calls us to, and empowers
us for, is that we do what He commands us. As we know the dying love,
we shall joyfully obey its commands. As we obey the commands, we shall
know the love more fully. Christ had already said: “If ye keep my
commandments, ye shall abide in my love.” He counts it needful to
repeat the truth again: the one proof of our faith in His love, the
one way to abide in it, the one mark of being true branches is–to do
the things which He commands us. He began with absolute surrender of
His life for us. He can ask nothing less from us. This alone is a life
in His friendship.
This truth, of the imperative necessity of obedience, doing all that
Christ commands us, has not the place in our Christian teaching and
living that Christ meant it to have. We have given a far higher place
to privilege than to duty. We have not considered implicit obedience
as a condition of true discipleship. The secret thought that it is
impossible to do the things He commands us, and that therefore it
cannot be expected of us, and a subtle and unconscious feeling that
sinning is a necessity have frequently robbed both precepts and
promises of their power. The whole relation to Christ has become
clouded and lowered, the waiting on His teaching, the power to hear
and obey His voice, and through obedience to enjoy His love and
friendship, have been enfeebled by the terrible mistake. Do let us try
to return to the true position, take Christ’s words as most literally
true, and make nothing less the law of our life: “Ye are my friends,
if ye do the things that I command you.” Surely our Lord asks nothing
less than that we heartily and truthfully say: “Yea, Lord, what Thou
dost command, that will I do.”
These commands are to be done as a proof of friendship. The power to
do them rests entirely in the personal relationship to Jesus. For a
friend I could do what I would not for another. The friendship of
Jesus is so heavenly and wonderful, it comes to us so as the power of
a divine love entering in and taking possession, the unbroken
fellowship with Himself is so essential to it, that it implies and
imparts a joy and a love which make the obedience a delight. The
liberty to claim the friendship of Jesus, the power to enjoy it, the
grace to prove it in all its blessedness–all come as we do the things
He commands us.
Is not the one thing needful for us that we ask our Lord to reveal
Himself to us in the dying love in which He proved Himself our friend,
and then listen as He says to us: “Ye are My friends.” As we see what
our Friend has done for us, and what as unspeakable blessedness it is
to have Him call us friends, the doing His commands will become the
natural fruit of our life in his love. We shall not fear to say: “Yea,
Lord, we are Thy friends, and do what Thou dost command us.”
If ye do. Yes, it is in doing that we are blessed, that we abide in
His love, that we enjoy His friendship. “If ye do what I command you!”
O my Lord, let Thy holy friendship lead me into the love of all Thy
commands, and let the doing of Thy commands lead me ever deeper into
Thy friendship.
_________________________________________________________________
CHRIST’S FRIENDSHIP: ITS INTIMACY
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–John 15.15
The highest proof of true friendship, and one great source of its
blessedness, is the intimacy that holds nothing back, and admits the
friend to share our inmost secrets. It is a blessed thing to be
Christ’s servant; His redeemed ones delight to call themselves His
slaves. Christ had often spoken of the disciples as His servants. In
His great love our Lord now says: “No longer do I call you servants”;
with the coming of the Holy Spirit a new era was to be inaugurated.
“The servant knoweth not what his Lord doeth”–he has to obey without
being consulted or admitted into the secret of all his master’s plans.
“But, I have called you friends, for all things I heard from my Father
I have made known unto you.” Christ’s friends share with Him in all
the secrets the Father has entrusted to Him.
Let us think what this means. When Christ spoke of keeping His
Father’s commandments, He did not mean merely what was written in Holy
Scripture, but those special commandments which were communicated to
Him day by day, and from hour to hour. It was of these He said: “The
Father loveth the Son, and showeth him all things that he doeth, and
he will show him greater things.” All that Christ did was God’s
working. God showed it to Christ, so that He carried out the Father’s
will and purpose, not, as man often does, blindly and unintelligently,
but with full understanding and approval. As one who stood in God’s
counsel, He knew God’s plan.
And this now is the blessedness of being Christ’s friends, that we do
not, as servants, do His will without much spiritual insight into its
meaning and aim, but are admitted, as an inner circle, into some
knowledge of God’s more secret thoughts. From the Day of Pentecost on,
by the Holy Spirit, Christ was to lead His disciples into the
spiritual apprehension of the mysteries of the kingdom, of which He
had hitherto spoken only by parables.
Friendship delights in fellowship. Friends hold council. Friends dare
trust to each other what they would not for anything have others know.
What is it that gives a Christian access to this holy intimacy with
Jesus? That gives him the spiritual capacity for receiving the
communications Christ has to make of what the Father has shown Him?
“Ye are my friends if ye do what I command you.” It is loving
obedience that purifies the soul. That refers not only to the
commandments of the Word, but to that blessed application of the Word
to our daily life, which none but our Lord Himself can give. But as
these are waited for in dependence and humility, and faithfully
obeyed, the soul becomes fitted for ever closer fellowship, and the
daily life may become a continual experience: “I have called you
friends; for all things I have heard from my Father, I have made known
unto you.”
I have called you friends. What an unspeakable honor! What a heavenly
privilege! O Saviour, speak the word with power into my soul: “I have
called you My friend, whom I love, whom I trust, to whom I make known
all that passes between my Father and Me.”
_________________________________________________________________
ELECTION
Ye Did Not Choose Me, But I Chose You, and Appointed You That Ye
Should Go and Bear Fruit–John 15.16
The branch does not choose the vine, or decide on which vine it will
grow. The vine brings forth the branch, as and where it will. Even so
Christ says: “Ye did not choose me, but I chose you.” But some will
say is not just this the difference between the branch in the natural
and in the spiritual world, that man has a will and a power of
choosing, and that it is in virtue of his having decided to accept
Christ, his having chosen Him as Lord, that he is now a branch? This
is undoubtedly true. And yet it is only half a truth. The lesson of
the Vine, and the teaching of our Lord, points to the other half, the
deeper, the divine side of our being in Christ. If He had not chosen
us, we had never chosen Him. Our choosing Him was the result of His
choosing us, and taking hold of us. In the very nature of things, it
is His prerogative as Vine to choose and create His own branch. We owe
all we are to “the election of grace.” If we want to know Christ as
the true Vine, the sole origin and strength of the branch life, and
ourselves as branches in our absolute, most blessed, and most secure
dependence upon Him, let us drink deep of this blessed truth: “Ye did
not choose me, but I chose you.”
And with what view does Christ say this? That they may know what the
object is for which He chose them, and find, in their faith in His
election, the certainty of fulfilling their destiny. Throughout
Scripture this is the great object of the teaching of election.
“Predestinated to be conformed to the image of his son.” (to be
branches in the image and likeness of the Vine). “Chosen that we
should be holy.” “Chosen to salvation, through sanctification of the
Spirit.” “Elect in sanctification of the Spirit unto obedience.” Some
have abused the doctrine of election, and others, for fear of its
abuse, have rejected it, because they have overlooked this teaching.
They have occupied themselves with its hidden origin in eternity, with
the inscrutable mysteries of the counsels of God instead of accepting
the revelation of its purpose in time, and the blessings it brings
into our Christian life.
Just think what these blessings are. In our verse Christ reveals His
twofold purpose in choosing us to be His branches: that we may bear
fruit on earth, and have power in prayer in Heaven. What confidence
the thought that He has chosen us for this gives, that He will not
fail to fit us for carrying out His purpose! What assurance that we
can bear fruit that will abide, and can pray so as to obtain! What a
continual call to the deepest humility and praise, to the most entire
dependence and expectancy! He would not choose us for what we are not
fit for, or what He could not fit us for. He has chosen us; this is
the pledge, He will do all in us.
Let us listen in silence of soul to our holy Vine speaking to each of
us: “You did not choose Me!” And let us say, “Yea, Lord, but I chose
You! Amen, Lord!” Ask Him to show what this means. In Him, the true
Vine, your life as branch has its divine origin, its eternal security,
and the power to fulfill His purpose. From Him to whose will of love
you owe all, you may expect all. In Him, His purpose, and His power,
and His faithfulness, in His love let me abide.
I chose you. Lord, teach me what this means–that Thou hast set Thy
heart on me, and chosen me to bear fruit that will abide, and to pray
prayer that will prevail. In this Thine eternal purpose my soul would
rest itself and say: “What He chose me for I will be, I can be, I
shall be.”
_________________________________________________________________
ABIDING FRUIT
I Chose You, and Appointed You, That Ye Should Go and Bear Fruit, and
That Your Fruit Should Abide–John 15.16
There are some fruits that will not keep. One sort of pears or apples
must be used at once; another sort can be kept over till next year. So
there is in Christian work some fruit that does not last. There may be
much that pleases and edified, and yet there is no permanent
impression made on the power of the world or the state of the Church.
On the other hand, there is work that leaves its mark for generations
or for eternity. In it the power of God makes itself lastingly felt.
It is the fruit of which Paul speaks when he describes the two styles
of ministry: “My preaching was not in persuasive words of wisdom, but
in demonstrations of the Spirit and of power; that your faith should
not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God.” The more of
man with his wisdom and power, the less of stability; the more of
God’s Spirit, the more of a faith standing in God’s power.
Fruit reveals the nature of the tree from which it comes. What is the
secret of bearing fruit that abides? The answer is simple. It is as
our life abides in Christ, as we abide in Him, that the fruit we bear
will abide. The more we allow all that is of human will and effort to
be cut down short and cleansed away by the divine Husbandman, the more
intensely our being withdraws itself from the outward that God may
work in us by His Spirit; that is, the more wholly we abide in Christ,
the more will our fruit abide.
What a blessed thought! He chose you, and appointed you to bear fruit,
and that your fruit should abide. He never meant one of His branches
to bring forth fruit that should not abide. The deeper I enter into
the purpose of this His electing grace, the surer my confidence will
become that I can bring forth fruit to eternal life, for myself and
others. The deeper I enter into this purpose of His electing love, the
more I will realize what the link is between the purpose from
eternity, and the fruit to eternity: the abiding in Him. The purpose
is His, He will carry it out; the fruit is His, He will bring it
forth; the abiding is His, He will maintain it.
Let everyone who professes to be a Christian worker, pause. Ask
whether you are leaving your mark for eternity on those around you. It
is not your preaching or teaching, your strength of will or power to
influence, that will secure this. All depends on having your life full
of God and His power. And that again depends upon your living the
truly branchlike life of abiding–very close and unbroken fellowship
with Christ. It is the branch, that abides in Him, that brings forth
much fruit, fruit that will abide.
Blessed Lord, reveal to my soul, I pray Thee, that Thou hast chosen me
to bear much fruit. Let this be my confidence, that Thy purpose can be
realized–Thou didst choose me. Let this be my power to forsake
everything and give myself to Thee. Thou wilt Thyself perfect what
Thou hast begun. Draw me so to dwell in the love and the certainty of
that eternal purpose, that the power of eternity may posses me, and
the fruit I bear may abide.
That ye may bear fruit. O my heavenly Vine, it is beginning to dawn
upon my soul that fruit, more fruit–much fruit–abiding fruit is the
one thing Thou hast to give me, and the one thing as branch I have to
give Thee! Here I am. Blessed Lord, work out Thy purpose in me; let me
bear much fruit, abiding fruit, to thy glory.
_________________________________________________________________
PREVAILING PRAYER
I Appointed You That Ye Should Go and Bear Fruit, and That Your Fruit
Should Abide: That Whatsoever Ye Shall Ask of the Father in My Name,
He May Give It You–John 15.16
In the first verse of our parable, Christ revealed Himself as the true
Vine, and the Father as the Husbandman, and asked for Himself and the
Father a place in the heart. Here, in the closing verse, He sums up
all His teaching concerning Himself and the Father in the twofold
purpose for which He had chosen them. With reference to Himself, the
Vine, the purpose was, that they should bear fruit. With reference to
the Father, it was, that whatsoever they should ask in His name,
should be done of the Father in Heaven. As fruit is the great proof of
the true relation to Christ, so prayer is of our relation to the
Father. A fruitful abiding in the Son, and prevailing prayer to the
Father, are the two great factors in the true Christian life.
That whatsoever ye shall ask of the Father in my name, he may give it
you.–These are the closing words of the parable of the Vine. The
whole mystery of the Vine and its branches leads up to the other
mystery–that whatsoever we ask in His name the Father gives! See here
the reason of the lack of prayer, and of the lack of power in prayer.
It is because we so little live the true branch life, because we so
little lose ourselves in the Vine, abiding in Him entirely, that we
feel so little constrained to much prayer, so little confident that we
shall be heard, and so do not know how to use His name as the key to
God’s storehouse. The Vine planted on earth has reached up into
Heaven; it is only the soul wholly and intensely abiding in it, can
reach into Heaven with power to prevail much. Our faith in the
teaching and the truth of the parable, in the truth and the life of
the Vine, must prove itself by power in prayer. The life of abiding
and obedience, of love and joy, of cleansing and fruit-bearing, will
surely lead to the power of prevailing prayer.
Whatsoever ye shall ask–The promise was given to disciples who were
ready to give themselves, in the likeness of the true Vine, for their
fellow men. This promise was all their provision for their work; they
took it literally, they believed it, they used it, and they found it
true. Let us give ourselves, as branches of the true Vine, and in His
likeness, to the work of saving men, of bringing forth fruit to the
glory of God, and we shall find a new urgency and power to pray and to
claim the “whatsoever ye ask.” We shall waken to our wonderful
responsibility of having in such a promise the keys to the King’s
storehouses given us, and we shall not rest till we have received
bread and blessing for the perishing.
“I chose you, that ye may bring forth fruit, and that your fruit may
abide; that whatsoever ye shall ask of the Father in my name, he may
give it to you.” Beloved disciple, seek above everything to be a man
of prayer. Here is the highest exercise of your privilege as a branch
of the Vine; here is the full proof of your being renewed in the image
of God and His Son; here is your power to show how you, like Christ,
live not for yourself, but for others; here you enter Heaven to
receive gifts for men; here your abiding in Christ has led to His
abiding in you, to use you as the channel and instrument of His grace.
The power to bear fruit for men has been crowned by power to prevail
with God.
“I am the vine, my Father is the Husbandman.” Christ’s work in you is
to bring you so to the Father that His Word may be fulfilled in you:
“At that day ye shall ask in my name; and I say not that I will pray
the Father for you; for the Father himself loveth you.” The power of
direct access to the Father for men, the liberty of intercession
claiming and receiving blessing for them in faith, is the highest
exercise of our union with Christ. Let all who would truly and fully
be branches give themselves to the work of intercession. It is the one
great work of Christ the Vine in Heaven, the source of power for all
His work. Make it your one great work as branch: it will be the power
of all your work.
In My name. Yes, Lord, in Thy name, the new name Thou hast given
Thyself here, the true Vine. As a branch, abiding in Thee in entire
devotion, in full dependence, in perfect conformity, in abiding
fruitfulness, I come to the Father, in Thee, and He will give what I
ask. Oh, let my life be one of unceasing and prevailing intercession!
Amen!
_________________________________________________________________
Indexes
_________________________________________________________________
Index of Scripture References
Psalms
[1]1:3 [2]92:13 [3]92:14
Jeremiah
[4]17:7 [5]17:8
John
[6]15:1 [7]15:1 [8]15:1-16 [9]15:2 [10]15:2 [11]15:2
[12]15:2 [13]15:3 [14]15:4 [15]15:4 [16]15:5 [17]15:5
[18]15:5 [19]15:5 [20]15:5 [21]15:6 [22]15:7 [23]15:7
[24]15:8 [25]15:8 [26]15:9 [27]15:9 [28]15:10 [29]15:10
[30]15:11 [31]15:12 [32]15:12 [33]15:13 [34]15:14
[35]15:15 [36]15:16 [37]15:16 [38]15:16
Colossians
[39]1:10 [40]1:26 [41]1:27
_________________________________________________________________
Index of Scripture Commentary
John
[42]15:1 [43]15:1 [44]15:2 [45]15:2 [46]15:2 [47]15:3
[48]15:4 [49]15:4 [50]15:5 [51]15:5 [52]15:5 [53]15:5
[54]15:6 [55]15:7 [56]15:7 [57]15:8 [58]15:8 [59]15:9
[60]15:9 [61]15:10 [62]15:10 [63]15:11 [64]15:12 [65]15:12
[66]15:13 [67]15:14 [68]15:15 [69]15:16 [70]15:16 [71]15:16
_________________________________________________________________
This document is from the Christian Classics Ethereal
Library at Calvin College, http://www.ccel.org,
generated on demand from ThML source.
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47. file://localhost/ccel/m/murray/true_vine/cache/true_vine.html3#ix-p0.1
48. file://localhost/ccel/m/murray/true_vine/cache/true_vine.html3#xi-p0.1
49. file://localhost/ccel/m/murray/true_vine/cache/true_vine.html3#x-p0.1
50. file://localhost/ccel/m/murray/true_vine/cache/true_vine.html3#xii-p0.1
51. file://localhost/ccel/m/murray/true_vine/cache/true_vine.html3#xiii-p0.1
52. file://localhost/ccel/m/murray/true_vine/cache/true_vine.html3#xiv-p0.1
53. file://localhost/ccel/m/murray/true_vine/cache/true_vine.html3#xv-p0.1
54. file://localhost/ccel/m/murray/true_vine/cache/true_vine.html3#xvi-p0.1
55. file://localhost/ccel/m/murray/true_vine/cache/true_vine.html3#xvii-p0.1
56. file://localhost/ccel/m/murray/true_vine/cache/true_vine.html3#xviii-p0.1
57. file://localhost/ccel/m/murray/true_vine/cache/true_vine.html3#xix-p0.1
58. file://localhost/ccel/m/murray/true_vine/cache/true_vine.html3#xx-p0.1
59. file://localhost/ccel/m/murray/true_vine/cache/true_vine.html3#xxi-p0.1
60. file://localhost/ccel/m/murray/true_vine/cache/true_vine.html3#xxii-p0.1
61. file://localhost/ccel/m/murray/true_vine/cache/true_vine.html3#xxiii-p0.1
62. file://localhost/ccel/m/murray/true_vine/cache/true_vine.html3#xxiv-p0.1
63. file://localhost/ccel/m/murray/true_vine/cache/true_vine.html3#xxv-p0.1
64. file://localhost/ccel/m/murray/true_vine/cache/true_vine.html3#xxvi-p0.1
65. file://localhost/ccel/m/murray/true_vine/cache/true_vine.html3#xxvii-p0.1
66. file://localhost/ccel/m/murray/true_vine/cache/true_vine.html3#xxviii-p0.1
67. file://localhost/ccel/m/murray/true_vine/cache/true_vine.html3#xxix-p0.1
68. file://localhost/ccel/m/murray/true_vine/cache/true_vine.html3#xxx-p0.1
69. file://localhost/ccel/m/murray/true_vine/cache/true_vine.html3#xxxi-p0.1
70. file://localhost/ccel/m/murray/true_vine/cache/true_vine.html3#xxxii-p0.1
71. file://localhost/ccel/m/murray/true_vine/cache/true_vine.html3#xxxiii-p0.1