Watch Sermon Here: https://www.sermonaudio.com/solo/rbcchurch/sermons/213222013388097/
A few weeks back someone asked me, “How love could be both
the root and the fruit of the Christian life?” It is a very good question. Today
I hope to describe how love and be the root, growth, and fruit of the Christian
life. To illustrate this, I am going to use the analogy of an apple tree. I am
holding in my hand here an apple seed. And in my other hand an apple. Now we
can understand how this can become this over time. This analogy is useful in
understanding love of God and how it can be the seed, root, growth, and fruit
of our lives.
Another way to examine love is to look at it grammatically.
“Love loves love!” is a complete sentence. Love is the subject, action, and
object. In this way we can look at love as being a complete package. It is the
fullness of love that is lived out in the Christian life.
As I mentioned in last week’s sermon God is the source and
author of love. God is love. In this way when we come to Christ God plants the
seed of love in our heart and lives that is His Holy Spirit. When we allow this
love to mature in our lives it is the action of this love to produce
sanctification in our lives. By loving God and others well the seed of love
grows into maturity. In the flesh we simply love those who love us. Jesus says
“What good is it to only love those who love you. Even sinners do the same.” So,
then the higher mature love is to let God through His process of sanctification
work in your heart to put to death selfish and unloving ways. As we mature then
God uses our lives to produce mature fruit. This fruit of love is then a
witness to a lost world, but also a ministry to the brothers and sisters in
Christ.
In this way love can be both the source and the fruit. And
this should not come as a surprise to us. The Bible frequently describes how we
reap what we sow.
Don’t be deceived: God is not mocked. For whatever a
person sows he will also reap, because the one who sows to his flesh will reap
destruction from the flesh, but the one who sows to the Spirit will reap
eternal life from the Spirit. Let us not get tired of doing good, for we will
reap at the proper time if we don’t give up.
Why should we expect anything different when it comes to the
greatest spiritual virtue of love?
The point is this: The person who sows sparingly will
also reap sparingly, and the person who sows generously will also reap
generously.
Let’s dig into God’s Word!
“I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener.
Every branch in me that does not produce fruit he removes, and he prunes every
branch that produces fruit so that it will produce more fruit. You are already
clean because of the word I have spoken to you. Remain in me, and I in you.
Just as a branch is unable to produce fruit by itself unless it remains on the
vine, neither can you unless you remain in me. I am the vine; you are the
branches. The one who remains in me and I in him produces much fruit, because
you can do nothing without me. If anyone does not remain in me, he is thrown
aside like a branch and he withers. They gather them, throw them into the fire,
and they are burned. If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever
you want and it will be done for you. My Father is glorified by this: that you
produce much fruit and prove to be my disciples. “As the Father has loved me, I
have also loved you. Remain in my love. If you keep my commands you will remain
in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commands and remain in his love. “I
have told you these things so that my joy may be in you and your joy may be
complete. “This is my command: Love one another as I have loved you. No one has
greater love than this: to lay down his life for his friends. You are my
friends if you do what I command you. I do not call you servants anymore,
because a servant doesn’t know what his master is doing. I have called you
friends, because I have made known to you everything I have heard from my
Father. You did not choose me, but I chose you. I appointed you to go and
produce fruit and that your fruit should remain, so that whatever you ask the
Father in my name, he will give you. “This is what I command you: Love one
another.
I have already talked about the second part of that passages
in the past two sermons. Jesus has laid down His life for our sins. He is
talking about those that place their faith in Him the ones that listen and obey
Him. Jesus is calling them friends. This is what happens when we turn from
living a sinful and selfish life to trusting in Christ as our Lord and Savior.
What a friend we have in Jesus.
This command to love is connected then to the sacrifice that
Jesus has made. Jesus also is a commanding us to “love one another.” This
command to love one another is connected then to the first part of this passage
with an important phrase. Jesus says in John 15:9
““As the Father has loved me, I have also loved you. Remain in my love.” The
phrase “remain in my love” establishes a clear connection between the visual of
vine and branches and His teaching on loving obedience to God and sacrificial
love toward others. Taking it a step further I believe that the description the
follows the metaphorical language is one of Jesus’ explanations to his
disciples (See Matthew 13:10-17). We know that Jesus would use the
metaphorical language of parables and then pull His disciples aside to explain
what the parables meant.
The Source of Love
Ultimately Jesus is our source of Life and Love. In this
passage Jesus refers to himself as the vine and refers to us as branches. God
the Father is the gardener. We see then that it is our connection to and
abiding in Christ that gives us life and fruitfulness. We often look at our
salvation experience through the lens of getting a ticket to heaven. However,
if we take the metaphoric language seriously there is a life sustaining
connection to Christ that is needed. It also says that those that are not
fruitful are cut off and thrown into the fire.
The question might be what causes a branch to be unfruitful?
There is a verse I want to zero in on here. John 15:6
“If anyone does not remain in me, he is thrown aside like a branch and he
withers. They gather them, throw them into the fire, and they are burned.”
I recall when we used to have rose bushes that I would cut
back once a year. In the spring as the bush would grow there were on occasion
branches on the bush that although they were connected to the base of the rose
bush physically, they were not connected in a life-giving way. This is referred
to as die back. It is important to cut out the die back when it is detected as whatever
is causing it can infect the health tissue in the rose bush and cause it to
die. I bring this up because Jesus seems to be saying that there is a
difference between being physically connected to the vine and abiding in the
vine. When we are merely physically connected, we do not produce fruit because
we are dead. In the same way a dead rose branch will never produce a rose and
needs to be cut off if we are not connected to abiding in Christ then we will
likewise be cut off. That is dead in a spiritual sense. This has eternal
consequences. This passage also says that these branches will be burned up.
This is a clear representation of eternal punishment in hell in my opinion.
John 3:16 “For God loved the world in this way: He gave his
one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have
eternal life.” This is a familiar verse to most church goers. It also can be
familiar to the world at large. Less familiar is John 3:18
“Anyone who believes in him is not condemned, but anyone who does not believe
is already condemned, because he has not believed in the name of the one and
only Son of God.” It is this condemnation that leads to branches being burned
up.
Notice the connection to love though. In John 3:16
we read “For God so loved the world.” In John 15:9
we read “remain in my love.” The Gospel is an expression of God’s love for us.
We experience and are connected to God’s love when we believe in Jesus Christ
as our savior.
Jesus is the source of our love. It is his love that flows
into our lives and enables us to bear the fruit of love.
Using the picture then this apple seed is symbolic of the
gospel of God’s love. If this gospel it received and planted then it grows up.
Love, more specifically God’s love is that seed.
The Growth of Love
Pruning
It would seem that there is more to this than simply
believing in Christ. In this metaphorical language Jesus also says that God the
Father is pruning those that remain in Christ. There is not only salvation, but
also a process of sanctification that is occurring as God removes those parts
of you that are getting the way of being fruitful. As followers of Christ then
we must be willing to respond to God to remove those barriers. Jesus not only
describes the action of being cleaned, but also the method of being cleaned.
Notice John
15:3 “You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you.”
It is the Word that God uses to do His pruning. Our Heavenly
Father is the Gardener and His Word is the pruning shears. God’s word is often
represented as an instrument that cuts.
For the word of God is living and effective and sharper
than any double-edged sword, penetrating as far as the separation of soul and
spirit, joints and marrow. It is able to judge the thoughts and intentions of
the heart.
There are so many things that get in the way of the fruit of
love. None greater in my estimation than the thoughts and intentions of the
heart. Truly as I think about the times that I have failed to love well it is
nearly always one of these two. On the one hand the way that I think about the
other person has a huge influence on how I treat them. It is also possible that
when it comes down to it, I really never intended to love them in the first
place. My thoughts about the other person simply become a way to soothe my
conscience for acting in an unloving manner toward them. I can justify being
unloving because they deserve it.
One more point before moving on. I realize that we can push
metaphors too far so as to lose their meaning, but if you will indulge me just
a bit. Pruning shears are no good to us if they simply sit in the shed
collecting dust. It is only when we take them out and use them to prune that
the purpose of the shears is fulfilled. Can I just say an unopened Bible is
like pruning shears stored away in a shed. As we talked about last week it is
only by being in the Word of God that we can know what it is that we are to
obey. This week I would extend that to say that it is only by studying the Word
of God that God can actively remove those things that God wants out of our
lives. If you wonder why God is not producing fruit in our life individually or
in the collective lives of our church is it possible that we do not spend
nearly enough time in His Word if we spend any time at all?
So back to my analogy then. The seed of the gospel grows up
into a tree. This apple tree is cared for by God. He loves and cleans the
believer so that they will be fruitful. At times this cleaning is unpleasant.
No discipline seems enjoyable at the time, but painful.
Later on, however, it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who
have been trained by it.
We often consider suffering and discipline as being the
opposite of love. But it is not so God genuinely cares for you and longs for
good in your life. Submitting to His discipline is for our ultimate well-being.
Apathy that is a lack of care or concern is the opposite of love.
Do not despise the Lord’s instruction, my son, and do
not loathe his discipline; for the Lord disciplines the one he loves, just as a
father disciplines the son in whom he delights.
So then love is the growth of the apple tree toward
maturity.
The Fruit of Love
Keep my commands / Love one another
I know we discussed this last week. One of the key ways that
we express love toward God is through obedience to His commands. Jesus tells us
that keeping His commands is the way that we remain in His love. This truth can
generally apply to all the commands of God. In the New Testament there are over
300 commands of Christ. Admittedly not all the commands apply to us. Some apply
to the disciples alive at the time of Christ. Jesus in this passage focuses on
one command in particular. In John 15:9 “As the Father has loved me, I have also loved
you. Remain in my love.” He then redirects the command to focus on others in John 15:12
“This is my command: Love one another as I have loved you.” He repeats the
command again saying John 15:17 “This is what I command you: Love one another.”
The command to “Love one another” placed so closely to the
Vine metaphor and the keep my commands statement would make this particular
command of primary importance. The fact that Jesus says it twice would make
this an especially important emphasis of His teaching to “remain in his love.”
It seems that to remain in Christ’s love that we are obliged to love one
another. This is consistent with other passages in scripture as well. I have
covered many of these “love one another” commandments in my previous two
sermons. Just to highlight a couple of them:
Above all, maintain constant love for one another, since
love covers a multitude of sins.
Dear friends, if God loved us in this way, we also must
love one another.
Love one another deeply as brothers and sisters. Take
the lead in honoring one another.
Truthfully, I could go on and on with the multitude of
verses that command us to love one another that are in God’s Word. The command
to love is an unambiguous teaching of God’s word. If we are to remain in Christ
then Love ought to be central theme of our relationships. Further Love that is
our ability to love one another is the central evidence that God’s love is in
us.
The primary purpose of abiding, pruning, obeying, and loving
is found in John
15:8 “My Father is glorified by this: that you produce much fruit and prove
to be my disciples.” The aim is to glorify God through being fruitful and
proving to be Jesus disciples.
In Galatians and Ephesians, we find a good summary of what
this fruit is to look like.
But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace,
patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. The
law is not against such things.
Ephesians
5:8–10 (CSB)
Walk as children of light—for the fruit of the light
consists of all goodness, righteousness, and truth—testing what is pleasing to
the Lord.
Love is a sort of shorthand for all these things. Notice
that the in the Fruit of the Spirit that Love is the first thing that is
mentioned. It is not a stretch to suggest that Love is the premier fruit.
Notice also that the Fruit of Light which is goodness, righteousness, and truth
is consistent with Loving God which is to say obeying His truth. Fruitfulness
in the Christian life necessarily involves love both loving God and loving
others. That is why Jesus said:
Matthew
22:37–40 (CSB)
“Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all
your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and most important
command. The second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself. All the Law and
the Prophets depend on these two commands.”
Love also is how we prove that we are Jesus’ disciples as
well:
“I give you a new command: Love one another. Just as I
have loved you, you are also to love one another. By this everyone will know
that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”
When the people outside the church look in, they don’t say,
“Oh those people sure are smart!” Nor do they say, “Those Christians they are
so righteous.” No Jesus says it plainly, “Everyone will know that you are my
disciples, if you love one another.” Love is our witness to a dark world. Love
is our witness when everything around us is violence. Love is our witness when
contempt is the way of the times. Love is our witness while the world is
tearing itself apart. Love, it is love that is our witness. It is love that
shows others that we are abiding in Christ. In short if you want to Glorify God
then you must love Him and love one another.
This apple is the fruit of the seed and the tree of the
apple. In this same way Love in particular the love of Christ is the seed of
love in our lives. As we abide in Christ the love and life-giving sap allows us
to grow up and mature like an apple tree. God prunes us with His word. Finally,
this same love become the fruit that glorifies our Heavenly Father. Love
sustains love.
Love Sustains Love
As we draw to a close this series of messages on love, I
want to challenge you all to consider a few things.
First are you in Christ? This message only makes sense if
you are in Christ. If not then I want to encourage you to seek to be in Christ.
Truthfully Jesus is seeking for you this morning. If you want to be found in
Christ then in a few minutes we will be having a time of commitment. I would
love to have a chance to share with you about how to abide in Christ. Our staff
would also be available after the service if you want to pull one of us aside
to learn more about this.
Second, if you are in Christ are you in God’s Word? As we
have learned the only way, we can know what is pleasing to God is to study His
message to us found in the Bible. We also learned today That God prunes the
dead things in our lives using the Word found in scripture.
Finally, Are you fruitful in love? This is a burden for me.
Everywhere I look in our times there is contempt, mean spirited words, hate,
and violence. Brothers and Sisters, we must present ourselves different from
the world. We cannot fall into the darkness of the world or follow the ways of
the world. Let our love that is love for God and love for others shine brightly
in a dark dark world. Further let’s not make this love mere lip service. Let’s
not make this love be a simple attitude adjustment. No let’s serve God with all
our heart, mind, soul, and strength. Let’s sacrificially love and build up one
another. Let’s take the greatest love story humanity has ever known to a world
that desperately needs His love. That is the heart our Lord Jesus Christ. Let’s
pray!
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