Do You Produce Fruit?

No More Delay: What Are You Waiting For | Day 9

“I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.” John 15:5, NIV

May God’s peace meet you early this morning. A branch cut from the vine may still look alive for a little while.

It keeps the shape of life, the memory of life, and even the appearance of life to someone walking past. But once separated it lost the source that sustained it, and the green that remains will not last, because a branch was never built to live by itself. This morning we look at that picture, and at the good news that the source was never ours to supply.

Where the Fruit Actually Comes From

Jesus gave us that picture on the night before his suffering and death. He did not send them into the world with a message of self-improvement, personal achievement, or spiritual production quotas. He pointed them to himself. “Remain in me, as I also remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me.” (John 15:4, NIV). Then he named who was who: “I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.” (John 15:5, NIV).

Those words are humbling and comforting at the same time. They are humbling because Jesus leaves no room at all for spiritual pride. Apart from him we do not produce a little less fruit. We produce nothing. That is not a motivational exaggeration. It is the truth about our spiritual condition. By nature we are not partly able to come to God, partly able to please him, or partly able to make ourselves fruitful. Sin leaves us helpless, and we cannot attach ourselves to the vine by our own decision, sincerity, or effort. If there is life in us, Christ has given it. If there is faith in us, the Holy Spirit has worked it through the gospel. If there is fruit in our lives, it is because we have been joined to Jesus.

We are constantly tempted to measure ourselves by what we can see. We look at our words, our service, our patience, our courage, and our witness, and then we begin quietly keeping score, wondering whether we are doing enough, useful enough, growing enough, producing enough. Those questions sound spiritual, and they become dangerous the moment they turn our eyes off Christ and back onto ourselves. That weight is one God never hung on us, and Jesus lifted it off at enormous cost, living the fruitful life we have not lived and carrying every barren season we have ever had to the cross. Assurance never comes from grading our own fruit. It comes from Jesus Christ, who lived for us, died for us, rose for us, and holds us as his own.

This is why fruit in the Christian life never comes before faith. It flows from faith. It does not attach us to Christ; it grows because Christ has already attached us to himself. Good works are the necessary fruit of a living faith, and they contribute nothing whatever to our standing before God. We are justified by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone. Only then, as people who already belong to him, do we begin to bear anything at all.

So the fruit turns out to belong to someone, and Paul names the owner. “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.” (Galatians 5:22-23, NIV). It is grown by the same Spirit who brought us to faith through the gospel and keeps us in it through the Word and the sacraments. Scripture does not reduce that harvest to outward success or visible numbers, and in a season spent thinking about urgency it would be easy to count only the results we can point to. Patience with a difficult relative is fruit. Kindness in a break room where kindness costs something is fruit. A word about Christ said badly to a neighbor is fruit. None of it began with us.

Fruit That Will Last

How a branch ended up on this vine is a question Jesus answers before anyone asks. “You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit—fruit that will last—and so that whatever you ask in my name the Father will give you.” (John 15:16, NIV). There is real comfort in that order. He did not tell them to bear fruit and earn a place on the vine afterward. The gracious choosing came first, and the fruit follows from it. Our purpose flows out of his mercy rather than the other way around.

That is also why the work in us is in no danger of being abandoned partway through. “being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 1:6, NIV). Paul’s confidence rests entirely on the one who started something in them rather than on the Philippians. On mornings when we feel like the least fruitful branch on the vine, that sentence still stands, because its subject is God and not us.

The harvest was never meant to end up as our credential either. “This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples.” (John 15:8, NIV). The fruit of faith glorifies the Father, and it shows us to be disciples of Jesus, not because we generated spiritual life in ourselves but because his life is at work in us. A branch does not boast about grapes. It receives from the vine, and the fruit appears because the vine is living and strong.

All of this holds together in Jesus Christ, the true vine, who died and rose so that lifeless branches could be given a life they had no way of producing. The blessing that closes Hebrews puts his part and ours in order. “Now may the God of peace, who through the blood of the eternal covenant brought back from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great Shepherd of the sheep, equip you with everything good for doing his will, and may he work in us what is pleasing to him, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen.” (Hebrews 13:20-21, NIV). He equips. He works in us. What is left to us is not manufacturing anything but remaining, and even that remaining is his doing, as he keeps us near the Word and the sacraments where Christ hands himself over to us and does through us what he has been doing since the day he chose us.

Prayer

Lord Jesus, thank you for being the vine and for making me a branch when I had no life of my own. Thank you for choosing me long before I knew enough to choose anything, and for holding me on mornings when I have contributed nothing at all. Forgive me for measuring myself by what I have produced instead of resting in what you have already finished for me.

Holy Spirit, grow in me the fruit that only you can grow. Give me love where I feel none, patience where I have run out, and kindness for the person standing in front of me today. Keep me near the word that feeds me, and let whatever grows in my life point back to my Savior rather than to myself. In Jesus’ name I pray. Amen.

A cut branch is easy to spot after a week or two, once the leaves finally catch up to the news. The reverse is much harder to see, because a branch that is quietly being fed does not announce that either. You may not feel connected to much of anything this morning, and feelings are poor evidence in both directions. The vine holds the branch, never the other way around, and Christ has not once loosened his grip on you. Stay where he gives himself, and leave the grapes to him. Tomorrow we look at what happens when the growing takes far longer than we hoped and weariness sets in, and at why the promise of a harvest at the proper time is a kindness rather than a warning.

To God be the glory.

Pray, praise, and give thanks, for God is good and His mercy endures forever.

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