Gooding, David: 10 - Highway to Holiness

It should become clear to us at this stage that the chapters thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, and sixteen in the Gospel of John are a planned, integrated whole, and not just an assemblage of odd remarks and conversations. They are dealing with the topic of the development of holiness in a believer's life. And we have now reached halfway in the course of the lessons. Chapters thirteen and fourteen were spoken by our Lord in the upper room. They have to do with our basic cleansing and with our subsequent devotion to the person of God in Jesus Christ. At the end of chapter fourteen, our Lord indicated that they were now to leave the upper room. Scholars differ as to whether they still hesitated a while and he spoke chapters fifteen and sixteen. in the upper room before they left, or whether in fact they got up immediately upon his announcement in chapter fourteen verse thirty one, arise, let us go hence, and the subsequent chapters were spoken perhaps on the way across Jerusalem to the Garden of Gethsemane. The main lesson of chapter fifteen is clear enough, that true holiness will mean the development in the believer of a character that bears the fruits of God's Holy Spirit, and thus not only is a joy for God himself, but is a testimony to God in the world that makes God known to men by the very way the believer lives and behaves. And it is very important to see that, that true holiness can never content itself with a devotion to God privately, but it must also have this public aspect. God is determined to develop in the believer this character of fruitfulness. It is significant that our Lord began to teach it, having said, arise, let us go hence, out into the streets of Jerusalem, out into the hostile world. And the topic of bearing fruit will be immediately followed in the second half of chapter fifteen with a very strong and realistic description of the hatred and the opposition of this world. The fruit of Christian character, then, is to be grown not in some heavenly hothouse where no wind of opposition is ever allow- allowed to blow, and there are no provocations, no disappointments, no frustrations, no injustices, but in this godless, hostile world. For Christ is concerned with the developing a holiness that is not just some psychological, emotional inner experience, but a holiness that does really, uh, result in a practical way of living, uh, a down-to-earth behavior in this world. That then is the first and obvious point of chapter fifteen. and the second major lesson is, as we saw in the last session, that the responsibility for the development of this character, though it is in part with the believer himself, is ultimately and basically, is first and is last God's responsibility. I am the true vine, said Christ, and my father is the husbandman. That is, he doesn't say Israel was a vine but didn't on the whole do very well. You try and do better. He says Israel, yes, was a vine and, uh, didn't on the whole do very well, but now see God's provision, his ultimate provision for growing the grapes of good holy behavior, I am the true vine. The provision by which this true vine has its roots in the unlimited resources of God, and makes available those resources to the Christian believer, that through the believer, the very character, the love, the grace, and the kindness of God might flow out to men and be made available to men in terms that men can grasp. No one has seen God. God wants to make himself known to men, even ungodly men, in terms that they can grasp. And the technique, therefore, is not that the believer has to struggle as hard as he can to reproduce the life of Christ, to show the glories of God, but God is making provision for this whole thing by providing Christ as the true vine, the one that shall be the great intermediary, he, his roots going down into the Godhead and making available to the branches the infinite resources of Almighty God. I am the true vine, says Christ. And secondly, the responsibility to see that the vine and the branches, that combination, does its work properly in the world is not in the first place the responsibility of the individual believer either. He doesn't say, I am the vine and you are the husbandman. But I am the vine and you are the branches. And my father is the husbandman. Now, that is a very interesting feature because our Lord, on another occasion, told a parable about Israel. He said there was a man who planted a vineyard and he let it out to husbandmen. Oh, but what ungodly and inglorious husbandmen they were. They turned the whole venture into one of piracy and embezzlement, as they tried to take the fruit of the vine for their own satisfaction, and even went to the lengths of getting the heir to the vineyard and throwing him out of the vineyard. This particular vine and its branches are not let out to husbandmen of that kind, thank God. I am the vine, you are the branches, and it's my Father that is the husbandman. It's God's own great determination to grow these grapes of Christian character, and he has the first responsibility of seeing that the thing works. And it means, therefore, that right from the very start, we have here a gospel of holiness. It is not that Christ does the work that saves me from the guilt of my sin, but thereafter I have the tremendous responsibility and weight of having to try to produce Christ-like character in this world. It is that Christ does the great work that saves me from the guilt of sin, and Christ is the great provision by which I may be able to bear fruit for God. So let us grasp hold of this. In each of these lessons so far, we have found this pattern recurring, have we not? If it's a question of our cleansing at the very beginning, then there is this once and for all bathing that Christ does. If it's a question that holiness is a matter of devotion to Christ and following Christ through thick and thin, then Christ will make provision of a mansion in his Father's house where eternally we may be where he is, without ever more going out. And if it's a question of having to grow the grapes of Christian character in this ungodly world, then once more it is Christ that makes the provision. He carries the heavy end. This is a gospel of holiness. It is the vine that stands there immovable, perfect in its functioning, and is prepared to carry us as a vine carries the branches. It is the supplier of our need. It is the maintainer of our strength. It is important that we get hold of this. For very often we Christians live like semi-pagans. Uh, we pray, we proceed as if, in a sense, ultimately it is we who bore the responsibility. But if the Jews as a whole have failed, we needn't suppose that we, because we call ourselves Christians, are somehow going to succeed where they failed. We are no better than they in ourselves. If we are to succeed, it will be because we learn this basic lesson that basically the provision is God's, the responsibility is Christ's, it is the Father that is doing it, and what I have to do as a branch is simply to rest and abide within this omnipotent power. Now, just let us take a check upon ourselves to see if we are, uh, rightly interpreting this particular passage of scripture. The Apostle Paul, in his letter to the Galatians, came at one stage to describe the secret of Christian living and the production of the fruit of Christian character. The particular passage is Galatians chapter five. It will help us to start with by defining what kind of fruit we are talking about. Galatians chapter five and verse twenty two says this, but the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, long suffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, meekness, self-control. Against such there is no law. The fruit of the Spirit, vividly contrasted with the works of the flesh in this same context. For sin is, in that sense, hard work. It is what we do. But the fruit of the Spirit is not so much what we do as what God grows within us. It is the fruit of the Spirit. And here Paul points out too that his gospel, that a man is saved by grace without the deeds of the law, is a genuine gospel, because its other half is this, that when a man trusts Christ, he is not only justified by faith without the deeds of the law, but there is a very real provision made for his becoming holy, holy. And moreover, Paul points out that if thus the Holy Spirit is active in a believer's life, producing this fruit of holy living, then please notice that this fruit is being produced by a principle that is not the same as the principle of the law. Let us read verses sixteen and seventeen. But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh, for the flesh lusts against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh, for these are contrary the one to the other, that ye may not do the things that you would. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law. This is a different process of producing fruit. The law gives me an external command, and it tells me that I am to fulfill this command. But not only does it advise me that it would be a good thing and pleasant for all and sundry if I produced such fruit as this. The law as law says, moreover, thou shalt produce this fruit, and if you don't produce it, God will curse you and reject you. If we were responsible to bear fruit in this sense under those conditions, Israel's own experience would tell us that we were in hopeless of- in a hopeless plight. We never would succeed. Our efforts to bring forth fruit, to keep God's commandments, to weave a character by keeping the law of God, would be as bound to fail as Israel failed. Therefore, it is not that God has abandoned the goal that we should bring forth this holy fruit of character, but that he has found a new method of producing that fruit. It is no longer a supply of external laws that we are commanded fo- to fulfill under pain, that if we break them, we shall be rejected of God. That was the principle of law. This new principle is the principle of the life of the Holy Spirit of God in the believer. The Holy Spirit received as a gift, a sovereign gift by the grace of God, given to the man who is already justified by grace and through faith, and becomes a living principle, a living source of power within the believer's life. As Paul puts it in the Epistle to the Romans chapter eight, this principle produces what the law could not produce. For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own son in the likeness of sin and for sin condemned sin in the flesh, that the righteous requirement of the law should be fulfilled in us who walk not after the flesh, but after the spirit. For the law of life, the spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set me free from that law of sin and death. And we do well, therefore, to take time at this juncture to let ourselves for a moment rest back and discover again this tremendous provision that God has made for making us holy. For the opposition is going to be immense and the task difficult. It's got to be in this godless world, full of its provocations and temptations, that we bring forth fruit. If we are going to succeed, we must first discover and constantly rediscover that the basic responsibility is not ours, but God's. He is the husbandman. That the basic task is not ours, but Christ's. He is the vine. It is a question of allowing ourselves merely to be branches, upheld and maintained and supplied by that living Lord. I am the vine, you are the branches. And so we discover that what our Lord talked about in chapter fourteen, about his coming to live in us, is a matter that secures not only our basic peace, but is the secret of our develop- developing and practical holiness. So now let us turn to analyze the verses that follow in detail. And first, verses one to three, and we may entitle those, the Father's Husbandry. I am the vine, says Christ, my Father is the husbandman. Once more, you will notice he doesn't say, I am the vine, you are the branches, now what you want to do is this, and uh, you want to do that, and uh, you want to do something else. No. I am the vine, my father is the husbandman. And so first, what the father does. You see, he it is that begins the process, he it is that maintains it, he it is that tends it. What a lovely thing to know that day by day, as I rise and give myself to prayer or discipline or reading of the word or witnessing to my fellow man, that the whole business didn't begin with me. But as I rose to face another day, the husbandman was already watching, has already been tending the vine, waiting patiently and putting it through its necessary disciplines to bring forth its fruit in due season. I am the vine, my Father is the husbandman, and he does basically two things. Every branch in me that beareth not fruit, he taketh it away, and every branch that beareth fruit, he cleanseth it that it may bear for- bear more fruit. Already ye are clean because of the word which I have spoken unto you. First of all, then, we are to consider the Father's treatment of the branch that does not bear fruit. But here I must trouble you with a translational difficulty. The Greek word that is translated in some versions of the branch that bears not fruit, he takes it away, is translated by other scholars, he lifts it up. And it is the fact that the Greek word can mean either of those two things. The Greek word basically means to lift, and therefore I can say, as of a book, for instance, I lift this book off the table. But because the word means lift up, it can also carry the sense lift up and remove it away, take it away, therefore. And you are faced here with the problem in translation, this branch that doesn't bear fruit, what does the father do to it? Does he lift it up? Or does he lift it up and remove it completely? Does he take it away? Let's take the first possibility, for I will, uh, use both possibilities. They both can't be right, can they, in themselves? One will be the right one and one will be the not right one, though my expositions perhaps will touch on things that in themselves are true. And, but nevertheless, let's see the possibilities, and then let me leave you to decide. Suppose we take the meaning he lifts it up, then perhaps the best way to understand it is to think of vine culture as it is practiced in Palestine very frequently. In many vineyards in Palestine, you will not see vines that stand up straight, you will see vines that run along the ground. And what the farmers do is to let these vines run along the ground, but not completely on the ground. For if they lie completely on the ground, they will get smothered with dirt, and when it rains, the mud will cling to them, and that will injure the vine, and it won't bring forth its fruit. What the farmer does, therefore, the vine dresser, he comes along and he gets big stones, three or four inches high, and he puts them under the, uh, vine as it otherwise would trail upon the ground, and he gently lifts up the vine a little bit. And they are also lifted up that they face the sun and get the maximum benefit of the sun. Now, that is a very common, uh, sight to see i- in Palestine, all over the place. These vines, as I say, don't grow up straight. They grow along the ground, but are lifted up off the ground a little bit by placing stones underneath. And it may be that our Lord is saying that, first of all, the heavenly vine keeper, the husbandman, is concerned about the weak branches that, for some reason or other, have been trailing in the ground, and they've not been bringing forth much fruit, and therefore he comes along to tend the weakest first, and he gently lifts them off the ground, sets them free of the mud, puts the stones underneath them so that they are get the air and the sunlight and then begin to bring forth fruit. Whether or not that is the right translation, I feel in my heart that, uh, the process I have just described is something that God does gently and kindly with those of us that are weak and don't bring forth the fruit that we should. Gently and kindly, and perhaps as number one priority in his work, he helps them by lifting them up and freeing them from the things that would clog and cling to them so that they might bring forth fruit. If, however, the right interpretation is that the Father removes branches that don't bear fruit, then perhaps again we have to think of the thing in a wider context. A husbandman looking after a vine has no time at all for dead wood. It must be cut out. You see, uh, our Lord at work with the Jewish nation. As we saw in our previous session, some of the branches in the Jewish vine brought forth luscious bunches of grapes. There was a lot of dead wood. People that were members of the Jewish religion professed faith in God, but their works declared that they never knew God. They brought forth sour grapes or no grapes at all. And in the end, God, having warned that nation, he removed the dead wood. To change the tree for a moment, you will remember that Saint Paul speaks of a similar thing in his epistle to the Romans, chapter eleven. He talks there of the olive tree, symbol of Israel as the nation that was privileged to bear testimony for God in the world in a very special sense. And he says how that because they rejected their Messiah and have slipped into unbelief as a nation, God has taken away that privilege for them and given it largely to Gentiles. God has no time for Deadwood. And Saint Paul, in that verse, reminds Christendom as a whole that if Christendom apostatizes, Christendom will likewise be removed. Just because we are Christians, it doesn't mean that we have privilege to witness for God in the world on any conditions whatsoever. If Christendom apostatizes, it too will be removed, and the natural branches, as Saint Paul puts it, will be graft back into this tree. And it is a fearful thing in this age to see around us men in the name of Christ, in the name of Christendom, openly preaching and publishing their books to tell the world that God is dead, or he might as well be, that the resurrection didn't happen, that there is no heaven above or hell beneath. Christendom in danger of apostatizing, and it needs to remember that what happened to Judaism will happen to it if it apostatizes. The husbandman will remove the dead wood. Then let us turn to the branch that does bear fruit. Every branch that beareth fruit, he cleanseth it that it might bring forth more fruit. And there you will see the husbandman's standards. A branch that doesn't bear fruit, dead wood, remove it, yes. A branch that is weak, lift it up so that it might bear fruit, yes. But now suppose you've got a branch that is bearing fruit, you'll say, well, jolly good stuff, I'll leave that alone. Oh no, not the husbandman. While he has endless patience with the weak branches, yet his standards are utter perfection. Just bringing forth fruit isn't enough for him. He's going to bring forth prize fruit, the very best fruit, the most possible fruit. And if a branch starts to bring forth fruit, he won't say, well, that's good, leave that alone. No, he will cleanse it that it brings forth more fruit. Oh, how wonderful is the love of God. It will love me when I am a sinner. And while I'm sinner, still a sinner, I am told Christ died for me. Because if only I trust Christ, God will receive me, make me a child of his, will guarantee my eternal. But on the other extreme, God, who is prepared to love me in spite of my, uh, weakness, nevertheless is not satisfied with anything else but utter perfection. And therefore, I shall find that even when I think I'm doing well, experiences come into life that I say, well, I I can't understand this because I thought I was really doing so well. I have known periods in my life when I wasn't doing very well, but um, now I am doing very well. Uh, why has all this happened? It could be. It was because you were bearing fruit, and the husbandman decided that you could stand it, and therefore he got out the pruning knife. For that's what the cleansing is, isn't it? It's the vine keeper using his knife to cleanse, to prune the branches, that everything might go to making grapes and nothing at all, scarcely, to making wood and leaves. We mustn't count it hard when sometimes the husbandman takes out his knife and begins to cut and begins to strip away. It is a sorry sight to see a vine when it's been pruned. It look as though, it looks as though everything that's worth having has been stripped off it, and it's left a naked, bare looking thing. For to get good grapes, you have to prune very severely. But if the pruning is severe, the result is worthwhile. Let's face it. Let's steel our hearts to face it, for it is a father's hand that will do it, but he will do it. He will prune us until we bring forth more fruit, until in the end we bring forth the maximum potential of fruit.