How to Abide in Christ
Here I pair verses from John chapter 15 with Murray's commentary. Thanks to Dr. Todd Pokrifka and Dr. Junia Pokrifka of https://www.communitytransformation.org/ for introducing me to Andrew Murray's vintage devotional, The True Vine.
John 15.1 (ESV) — “I am the true vine . . .”
Andrew Murray in The True Vine — “all the vines of earth are pictures and emblems of Himself . . . ‘All that the Vine can ever be to its branch, I will be to you.’”
John 15.1 — “and My Father is the vinedresser.”
Murray — “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 [gardener] as His Father, He could enter death and the grave.”
John 15.2 — “Every branch in me that does not bear fruit he takes away . . .”
Murray — “A branch is simply a bit of wood, brought forth by the vine for the one purpose of serving it in bearing its fruit. . . . What a life would come to us if we only consented to be branches!”
John 15.2 — “and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes . . .”
Murray — “The one object God had in making you a branch is . . . that I bear the fruit of the heavenly Vine for dying men to eat and live.”
John 15.2 — “that it may bear more fruit.”
Murray — “As churches and individuals we are in danger of nothing so much as self-contentment.”
John 15.2 — “he prunes . . .”
Murray — “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.”
John 15.5 — “I am the vine; you are the branches . . .”
Murray — “You are the branch.—You need be nothing more. . . . the character of a branch, its strength, and the fruit it bears, depend entirely upon the Vine.”
John 15.5 — “Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit . . .”
Murray — “Work implies effort and labor: the essential idea of fruit is that it is . . . the restful, natural outcome of the Spirit’s operation within us . . . If you would bear fruit, see that the inner life is perfectly right, that your relation to Christ Jesus is clear and close.”
John 15.5 — “for apart from me you can do nothing.”
Murray — “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 . . . Abiding in Me is indispensable, for . . . of yourselves you can do nothing to maintain or act out the heavenly life . . . Apart from me—nothing!”
John 15.9 — “As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love.”
Murray — “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 . . . Lord Jesus, I see it, it was Thy abiding in Thy Father’s love that made Thee the true Vine . . .”
John 15.11 — “These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full.”
Murray — “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 . . . His joy is nothing but the joy of love, of being loved and of loving . . . 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.”
John 15.12 — “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.”
Murray — “The very first thought of the true Vine is love — living only to impart His life to the branches . . . 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.”
John 15.16 — “I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide . . .”
Murray — “Fruit reveals the nature of the tree from which it comes.”
