The God of Fruition
Commentary
In the sometimes-tiresome debate over science and scripture with respect to creation, it’s easy to become distracted. While the argument typically requires a focus on the how, we may lose sight of the what. And so, for just a moment, let me invite us to think for a moment about what God created.
If we posit that an all-powerful God would be able to make anything he wanted and in any way that he wanted it, then that suggests the revealing proposition that he specifically wanted it this way. In other words, he could have made things altogether differently. This — what is — therefore, must reveal something to us about his will.
Now we have to remove from the present equation sin and its effects, of course. But if we rewind the tape and focus on the creation account in Genesis 1, we see a pre-sin glimpse into his design and thus into his will. And in that opening chapter of scripture, we should be struck by the organic nature of the earth.
At first blush, that sounds so obvious as to be a ridiculous observation. But it’s precisely because it’s obvious that we may miss it. In other words, if the Lord could have made this world any way that he wanted, then I think it is profoundly revealing that he didn’t make it static. This is not like a painting or a sculpture. It is not a “finished” creation in that sense. Instead, he quite deliberately and expressly made a world that is alive, fertile, and reproducing. He made trees and plants, animals and people, with seeds and the capacity — indeed, the instruction — to make more of themselves. To be fruitful and multiply. To fill the earth.
Now the creation story is not one of our assigned texts for this Sunday. But I believe that bit of background puts us in a better position to understand our assigned texts. For we belong to and serve a God whose design and will features a process. It’s a process in which things start small and grow; it’s a process in which things expand, flourish, thrive, and spread.
The Gospel lection resonates most directly with this creation theme. Jesus employs the metaphor of vine and branches, and we recognize in that teaching the God who wants to see fruition. The passages from Acts and 1 John are not as transparent. The former features an account of Philip; the latter features the characteristic Johannine emphasis on love. But if we listen for the design and will of God that are revealed in the creation account — the way he wants things to be — then we’ll recognize in the Philip story and John’s epistle the beauty of Eden.
Acts 8:26-40
The first thing the GPS on my phone wants to know is my destination. Once I enter that and ask for directions, then it asks me about my starting place. Am I wanting directions from somewhere else, or from my present location? And if I am starting with where I am at, no matter where that is, my GPS will figure out the way to get me from here to there.
The Lord had a destination in mind for the gospel, and the Book of Acts records the story of how the gospel made the trip from here to there — that is, from its starting place to its intended destination. The starting place, your recall, was Jerusalem. The destination that Jesus set for his disciples, meanwhile, featured Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and the ends of the Earth. Our selected passage from the Book of Acts is a model of getting from here to there.
The first key to arriving at God's destination is the willingness and availability of his people. Many times, Christians don't feel that they have the skill, or the knowledge needed to be able to share the gospel with other people. Yet, as the saying goes, the most important ability is availability. Philip models that for us, for once the Lord tells him to go somewhere, he picks up and he goes. This episode is one example of it, and when we read the larger chapter we see that it's an exemplary pattern with Philip.
Then Philip came across the Ethiopian, riding in a chariot. The goal is for him to hear the gospel. How do we get from here to there? Well, let's start with what he is already doing — in this case, reading.
As it happened, the eunuch was reading from that marvelous passage in Isaiah 53 about the suffering servant. Interestingly, Philip did not overwhelm the guy with information or doctrines; he simply asked a question. Questions are often an excellent and winsome way to get from here to there when sharing the gospel.
Phillip’s question combined with the eunuch’s reading to launch a conversation. And the narrator tells us that, beginning with the passage that the eunuch was reading, Philip preached Jesus to him. Philip enjoyed a good head start inasmuch as the Ethiopian was already reading scripture. Yet that is not essential. I suspect that Clement of Alexandria could have gotten from here to there if the eunuch had been reading Greek philosophy. C.S. Lewis could have gotten from here to there if the eunuch had been reading Norse mythology. Stephen Meyer could get from here to there if the eunuch were reading a science textbook.
I'm quite sure that the Holy Spirit of God is better than my GPS. Let us follow him, therefore, in helping us get from here to there. In any given conversation or relationship, let us turn to him for directions about how to get from the present location to God's destination. How do we start with what this person is thinking or feeling, reading or singing, experiencing or wondering, and then arrive where we all need to get to: namely, to Jesus!
1 John 4:7-21
I had a woman in a former congregation who had a memorable wish for Mother’s Day. Each year, her children would ask her what she wanted for Mother’s Day. And each year she would answer, “That you three would not fight for just one day!”
She was a little ahead of us in the parenting game. She had more kids at the time, and they were older than ours. When I heard what she said, therefore, I just thought it was funny. As our own family grew, however, I began to recognize the poignancy of her words.
It is a heartbreaking thing for a parent — as well as exhausting — when the kids are continually bickering. Most of us go into parenting with a sweet, innate sense of the way things ought to be. And central to that very pretty picture is love. Love above all is what ought to characterize a home and a family; for love, after all, is why this particular group of people is together. The husband and wife came together in love — indeed, a promise to love for the rest of their lives. And then they began having children, for whom they experience a quality of love they had never known before.
With love as the foundation and primary ingredient, therefore, it is at times bewildering why there is so much rancor in a home. Why so much strife where love is meant to prevail?
And what we know from family and home life puts us in a good position to understand God’s heart and will for the church. For this is, after all, the family of God. And it, above all, should be characterized by love.
The Apostle John writes to encourage that understanding within his particular congregation. Inasmuch as love is the quintessential attribute of the Father, it ought also to be the hallmark of his children. This should be our distinctive family feature. Like hair color or height or blue eyes or some such might tie a family together in a group photo, love is the trait, more than anything else, that we are meant to inherit from our Father.
As with a human family, there is in the church a kind of top-down initiative of love. In other words, the children are not just randomly plopped down in a house together and expected to love each other. No, but rather they are being raised in an atmosphere of love that originates with the parents, not with them. They are learning how to love from the mother and the father. And that love is meant to permeate and define the entire family dynamic.
So, too, in the church. You and I and the people in our pews are not asked to concoct a love for each other out of thin air. Rather, we come together in an atmosphere of love that originates with God. “We love because he first loved us.” We are learning how to love from him. And his love, then, is to be the hallmark of our “family.”
The logic of it is so clear to the apostle that he is even willing to make the opposite sort of statement: namely, that someone who does not love must not be of God. That sounds rather harsh and categorical to us. Within John’s paradigm, however, we see that it is perfectly sensible.
This Sunday is Mother’s Day. But we should have our heavenly Father in mind as we address the church family this Sunday. Let us follow the apostle’s lead in encouraging our people: “Beloved, let us love one another; for love is from God.”
John 15:1-8
Among the several distinctives of John’s Gospel is the collection of “I Am” statements by Jesus. Along the way, he declares that he is the light of the world, the Good Shepherd, and resurrection and the life, and more. And, in our assigned Gospel passage, Jesus tells his disciples that he is the vine.
Vines were familiar territory for the inhabitants of first-century Palestine. Grapes and wine were among the primary agricultural products of that place at that time. And so, just as Jesus’ parables took something already familiar in order illustrate and explain a spiritual reality that might not be familiar, so too with this metaphor.
One of the particular beauties of this specific “I Am” statement is that it proves to be not just about Jesus. It tells us much about him, to be sure, but it also proves to tell us something about the Father and something about ourselves. For in the extended metaphor of the vine, the Father and the disciples also have specific roles. The Father is the vinedresser, and the disciples are the branches.
Those three designations — vine, branches, and vinedresser — are sufficient to anticipate all that follows. The vinedresser, of course, is the one who is responsible for doing what it takes to guarantee the productivity of the vineyard. And specifically in this case, that means pruning.
For those who are not horticulturally minded, pruning seems counterintuitive. Why would I cut off something that is living and growing? Yet we discover that appropriate pruning actually stimulates more and better growth.
Does the plant understand that? Likely not. And perhaps we, too, cannot see and understand the reasons for the pruning that the Lord does in our lives. Cutting doesn’t feel good, and pruning can feel like loss. But I expect that most of us have somewhere in our testimonies the happy, post-facto recognition of how wisely the Lord did his cutting and his pruning with us.
The branches, meanwhile, also have a task, but it is a simple and lovely one: stay connected. The branch is entirely dependent upon the vine, after all. And so, our only hope is in staying connected to him.
The key word in the text is usually translated into English as “remain” or “abide.” It can also mean live, dwell, tarry, and continue. Each word carries lovely implications for our ongoing relation with the Lord, our vine. And taken together, they form the invitation to make sure that we never sever or abandon our connection to him.
The result of our connection is guaranteed: fruitfulness. This is God’s purpose for us, and it is pleasing to him when we fulfill our purpose. Interestingly, if we press the analogy, we recognize that the fruit is not an independent effort of a hard-working or gifted branch. It is, rather, the natural byproduct of the connection. Thanks be to God for that good guarantee!
The “I Am” statement, of course, is ultimately about Jesus himself. It tells us that he submits to God’s will. It shows us that he is essential to the Father’s will being accomplished in our lives. And it effectively illustrates for us the fundamental truth that apart from him, we can do nothing.
Application
We observe that in the creation story God expresses his will in this imperative: Be fruitful and multiply. He says it explicitly to the animals and to the human creatures. And the same will is built into the design of the plants and trees. Notably, the Garden of Eden is especially characterized by fruit trees.
It should be unsurprising to us, therefore, that Jesus would use the image of a vine and branches, including an emphasis on fruitfulness, as a way of illustrating the Father’s will. There is a specific design involved in the natural world that serves to represent this spiritual reality, as well. If we stay connected to our source of life, then we will grow and thrive. And a part of our growing and thriving will be fruitfulness.
When we navigate through a grocery store, one of the large sections is known as the “produce department.” Why? Because the fruits and vegetables are the produce — the natural byproducts — of God’s creation. And the church, likewise, should be like the world’s produce department: filled with the sort of fruition that brings glory to the Father.
The passage from 1 John gives us one aspect of that: namely, the love we manifest toward one another. If we are truly connected to God, John reasons, then we will love. Love, after all, is his chief attribute. Love begins with him and flows to us. And it should naturally flow through us, then, as well. Love, after all, is the first thing the Apostle Paul mentions when listing the fruit of the Spirit.
The passage from Acts, meanwhile, illustrates a different aspect of the same principle. The design of God’s creation is that his living things should grow and expand. The branches that are healthy and attached to the vine do not stay as small nubs or bumps — they grow and stretch and spread. “Fill the earth,” he commanded his deliberately fruitful creation. And so it was that Philip did not simply stay in the church, loving the brethren. No, he went out into the world. His fruitfulness was filling the earth in the form of evangelism. Reproduction, after all, means to make more of what God has made us. And by the end of that conversation on the road from Jerusalem back to Ethiopia, one believer became two believers.
The Father is glorified when we bear much fruit. It is, after all, how he designed us. Creation reveals his will for us. And John shows us that the fruit we bear within the church takes the form of love, while Philip illustrates that the fruit we bear outside the church is winsome evangelism.
Alternative Application(s)
John 15:1-8 — “Gloria Patri”
Any student of the Gospel of John will recognize the prominence of the theme of glory. In the ESV translation, for example, variations on “glory” and “glorify” occur over forty times in John’s 21 chapters. We are introduced to it early as Jesus is said to have the glory of the Father (1:14), and his first miracle/sign is reported as manifesting his glory (2:11).
As we trace this prominent theme throughout the rest of the gospel, we sense that glory seems to belong exclusively to God. If a human being glorifies himself, that has no value. And if human beings glorify one another, that, too, is of very limited value. If God glorifies a person, however, that is the glory that counts.
Meanwhile, we observe that most of the glorifying that takes place occurs between the Father and the Son. The Son glorifies the Father and the Father glorifies the Son. The elevation of glory seems to be entirely above us. It is not of our sphere and not in our reach.
In light of that larger theme and pattern within the Gospel of John, therefore, Jesus’ teaching about the vine and the branches features a startling bit of news. After identifying the roles (vinedresser, vine, and branches), and after describing specifically our relationship to Jesus as branches and vine, he says this by way of conclusion: “My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit.” Apparently, glory is not altogether out of our reach. Apparently, glorifying is not exclusively between the persons of the Trinity. It turns out that you and I are capable of glorifying God.
So it is that you and I are invited to consider with our people what it means to “bear much fruit.” If we do, we glorify God, and that is a high privilege, indeed. So, what does it mean?
From the very beginning of the Bible, the story of creation reveals fruitfulness in terms of reproduction (see, for example, Genesis 1:11-13, 28). Does that mean that we glorify God by having many children? Possibly. But perhaps at a more spiritual level, we acknowledge that we glorify him when we make more of what he has made us. This, I think, is what is at the base of Jesus’ Great Commission — that the ones he has made into disciples should, in turn, go and make more disciples.
In the beginning of the Book of Psalms, meanwhile, we see fruitfulness understood as righteous living (see Psalm 1:1-3). There are the things that the righteous man avoids, and there are the things in which he immerses himself. He is then compared to a fruitful tree. No doubt such righteous living glorifies God.
Early in the Gospel of Luke, we see fruitfulness expressed in terms of repentance (see Luke 3:7-14). To turn away from sin and turn to God is not merely an emotional feeling or an internal decision of the heart. Such repenting must have hands and feet. It ought to make a practical and visible difference in a person’s life. And that difference surely glorifies God.
And then, in Paul’s letter to the Galatians, the apostle distinguishes between the natural byproducts of the sinful nature, on the one hand, and the natural byproducts of the Spirit, on the other (see Galatians 5:17-25). The latter he calls “the fruit of the Spirit.” These Christlike attributes are a blessing and an inspiration to all who come in contact with them, and surely, they bring glory to God as a result.
If he is the vinedresser, then the performance of the vine and its branches is a reflection on him. Just as a flower garden reveals the skill and effort of the gardener, so too with this vine and its branches. And when we, the branches, bear much fruit, it brings glory to the one who cultivates it all from beginning to end.
If we posit that an all-powerful God would be able to make anything he wanted and in any way that he wanted it, then that suggests the revealing proposition that he specifically wanted it this way. In other words, he could have made things altogether differently. This — what is — therefore, must reveal something to us about his will.
Now we have to remove from the present equation sin and its effects, of course. But if we rewind the tape and focus on the creation account in Genesis 1, we see a pre-sin glimpse into his design and thus into his will. And in that opening chapter of scripture, we should be struck by the organic nature of the earth.
At first blush, that sounds so obvious as to be a ridiculous observation. But it’s precisely because it’s obvious that we may miss it. In other words, if the Lord could have made this world any way that he wanted, then I think it is profoundly revealing that he didn’t make it static. This is not like a painting or a sculpture. It is not a “finished” creation in that sense. Instead, he quite deliberately and expressly made a world that is alive, fertile, and reproducing. He made trees and plants, animals and people, with seeds and the capacity — indeed, the instruction — to make more of themselves. To be fruitful and multiply. To fill the earth.
Now the creation story is not one of our assigned texts for this Sunday. But I believe that bit of background puts us in a better position to understand our assigned texts. For we belong to and serve a God whose design and will features a process. It’s a process in which things start small and grow; it’s a process in which things expand, flourish, thrive, and spread.
The Gospel lection resonates most directly with this creation theme. Jesus employs the metaphor of vine and branches, and we recognize in that teaching the God who wants to see fruition. The passages from Acts and 1 John are not as transparent. The former features an account of Philip; the latter features the characteristic Johannine emphasis on love. But if we listen for the design and will of God that are revealed in the creation account — the way he wants things to be — then we’ll recognize in the Philip story and John’s epistle the beauty of Eden.
Acts 8:26-40
The first thing the GPS on my phone wants to know is my destination. Once I enter that and ask for directions, then it asks me about my starting place. Am I wanting directions from somewhere else, or from my present location? And if I am starting with where I am at, no matter where that is, my GPS will figure out the way to get me from here to there.
The Lord had a destination in mind for the gospel, and the Book of Acts records the story of how the gospel made the trip from here to there — that is, from its starting place to its intended destination. The starting place, your recall, was Jerusalem. The destination that Jesus set for his disciples, meanwhile, featured Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and the ends of the Earth. Our selected passage from the Book of Acts is a model of getting from here to there.
The first key to arriving at God's destination is the willingness and availability of his people. Many times, Christians don't feel that they have the skill, or the knowledge needed to be able to share the gospel with other people. Yet, as the saying goes, the most important ability is availability. Philip models that for us, for once the Lord tells him to go somewhere, he picks up and he goes. This episode is one example of it, and when we read the larger chapter we see that it's an exemplary pattern with Philip.
Then Philip came across the Ethiopian, riding in a chariot. The goal is for him to hear the gospel. How do we get from here to there? Well, let's start with what he is already doing — in this case, reading.
As it happened, the eunuch was reading from that marvelous passage in Isaiah 53 about the suffering servant. Interestingly, Philip did not overwhelm the guy with information or doctrines; he simply asked a question. Questions are often an excellent and winsome way to get from here to there when sharing the gospel.
Phillip’s question combined with the eunuch’s reading to launch a conversation. And the narrator tells us that, beginning with the passage that the eunuch was reading, Philip preached Jesus to him. Philip enjoyed a good head start inasmuch as the Ethiopian was already reading scripture. Yet that is not essential. I suspect that Clement of Alexandria could have gotten from here to there if the eunuch had been reading Greek philosophy. C.S. Lewis could have gotten from here to there if the eunuch had been reading Norse mythology. Stephen Meyer could get from here to there if the eunuch were reading a science textbook.
I'm quite sure that the Holy Spirit of God is better than my GPS. Let us follow him, therefore, in helping us get from here to there. In any given conversation or relationship, let us turn to him for directions about how to get from the present location to God's destination. How do we start with what this person is thinking or feeling, reading or singing, experiencing or wondering, and then arrive where we all need to get to: namely, to Jesus!
1 John 4:7-21
I had a woman in a former congregation who had a memorable wish for Mother’s Day. Each year, her children would ask her what she wanted for Mother’s Day. And each year she would answer, “That you three would not fight for just one day!”
She was a little ahead of us in the parenting game. She had more kids at the time, and they were older than ours. When I heard what she said, therefore, I just thought it was funny. As our own family grew, however, I began to recognize the poignancy of her words.
It is a heartbreaking thing for a parent — as well as exhausting — when the kids are continually bickering. Most of us go into parenting with a sweet, innate sense of the way things ought to be. And central to that very pretty picture is love. Love above all is what ought to characterize a home and a family; for love, after all, is why this particular group of people is together. The husband and wife came together in love — indeed, a promise to love for the rest of their lives. And then they began having children, for whom they experience a quality of love they had never known before.
With love as the foundation and primary ingredient, therefore, it is at times bewildering why there is so much rancor in a home. Why so much strife where love is meant to prevail?
And what we know from family and home life puts us in a good position to understand God’s heart and will for the church. For this is, after all, the family of God. And it, above all, should be characterized by love.
The Apostle John writes to encourage that understanding within his particular congregation. Inasmuch as love is the quintessential attribute of the Father, it ought also to be the hallmark of his children. This should be our distinctive family feature. Like hair color or height or blue eyes or some such might tie a family together in a group photo, love is the trait, more than anything else, that we are meant to inherit from our Father.
As with a human family, there is in the church a kind of top-down initiative of love. In other words, the children are not just randomly plopped down in a house together and expected to love each other. No, but rather they are being raised in an atmosphere of love that originates with the parents, not with them. They are learning how to love from the mother and the father. And that love is meant to permeate and define the entire family dynamic.
So, too, in the church. You and I and the people in our pews are not asked to concoct a love for each other out of thin air. Rather, we come together in an atmosphere of love that originates with God. “We love because he first loved us.” We are learning how to love from him. And his love, then, is to be the hallmark of our “family.”
The logic of it is so clear to the apostle that he is even willing to make the opposite sort of statement: namely, that someone who does not love must not be of God. That sounds rather harsh and categorical to us. Within John’s paradigm, however, we see that it is perfectly sensible.
This Sunday is Mother’s Day. But we should have our heavenly Father in mind as we address the church family this Sunday. Let us follow the apostle’s lead in encouraging our people: “Beloved, let us love one another; for love is from God.”
John 15:1-8
Among the several distinctives of John’s Gospel is the collection of “I Am” statements by Jesus. Along the way, he declares that he is the light of the world, the Good Shepherd, and resurrection and the life, and more. And, in our assigned Gospel passage, Jesus tells his disciples that he is the vine.
Vines were familiar territory for the inhabitants of first-century Palestine. Grapes and wine were among the primary agricultural products of that place at that time. And so, just as Jesus’ parables took something already familiar in order illustrate and explain a spiritual reality that might not be familiar, so too with this metaphor.
One of the particular beauties of this specific “I Am” statement is that it proves to be not just about Jesus. It tells us much about him, to be sure, but it also proves to tell us something about the Father and something about ourselves. For in the extended metaphor of the vine, the Father and the disciples also have specific roles. The Father is the vinedresser, and the disciples are the branches.
Those three designations — vine, branches, and vinedresser — are sufficient to anticipate all that follows. The vinedresser, of course, is the one who is responsible for doing what it takes to guarantee the productivity of the vineyard. And specifically in this case, that means pruning.
For those who are not horticulturally minded, pruning seems counterintuitive. Why would I cut off something that is living and growing? Yet we discover that appropriate pruning actually stimulates more and better growth.
Does the plant understand that? Likely not. And perhaps we, too, cannot see and understand the reasons for the pruning that the Lord does in our lives. Cutting doesn’t feel good, and pruning can feel like loss. But I expect that most of us have somewhere in our testimonies the happy, post-facto recognition of how wisely the Lord did his cutting and his pruning with us.
The branches, meanwhile, also have a task, but it is a simple and lovely one: stay connected. The branch is entirely dependent upon the vine, after all. And so, our only hope is in staying connected to him.
The key word in the text is usually translated into English as “remain” or “abide.” It can also mean live, dwell, tarry, and continue. Each word carries lovely implications for our ongoing relation with the Lord, our vine. And taken together, they form the invitation to make sure that we never sever or abandon our connection to him.
The result of our connection is guaranteed: fruitfulness. This is God’s purpose for us, and it is pleasing to him when we fulfill our purpose. Interestingly, if we press the analogy, we recognize that the fruit is not an independent effort of a hard-working or gifted branch. It is, rather, the natural byproduct of the connection. Thanks be to God for that good guarantee!
The “I Am” statement, of course, is ultimately about Jesus himself. It tells us that he submits to God’s will. It shows us that he is essential to the Father’s will being accomplished in our lives. And it effectively illustrates for us the fundamental truth that apart from him, we can do nothing.
Application
We observe that in the creation story God expresses his will in this imperative: Be fruitful and multiply. He says it explicitly to the animals and to the human creatures. And the same will is built into the design of the plants and trees. Notably, the Garden of Eden is especially characterized by fruit trees.
It should be unsurprising to us, therefore, that Jesus would use the image of a vine and branches, including an emphasis on fruitfulness, as a way of illustrating the Father’s will. There is a specific design involved in the natural world that serves to represent this spiritual reality, as well. If we stay connected to our source of life, then we will grow and thrive. And a part of our growing and thriving will be fruitfulness.
When we navigate through a grocery store, one of the large sections is known as the “produce department.” Why? Because the fruits and vegetables are the produce — the natural byproducts — of God’s creation. And the church, likewise, should be like the world’s produce department: filled with the sort of fruition that brings glory to the Father.
The passage from 1 John gives us one aspect of that: namely, the love we manifest toward one another. If we are truly connected to God, John reasons, then we will love. Love, after all, is his chief attribute. Love begins with him and flows to us. And it should naturally flow through us, then, as well. Love, after all, is the first thing the Apostle Paul mentions when listing the fruit of the Spirit.
The passage from Acts, meanwhile, illustrates a different aspect of the same principle. The design of God’s creation is that his living things should grow and expand. The branches that are healthy and attached to the vine do not stay as small nubs or bumps — they grow and stretch and spread. “Fill the earth,” he commanded his deliberately fruitful creation. And so it was that Philip did not simply stay in the church, loving the brethren. No, he went out into the world. His fruitfulness was filling the earth in the form of evangelism. Reproduction, after all, means to make more of what God has made us. And by the end of that conversation on the road from Jerusalem back to Ethiopia, one believer became two believers.
The Father is glorified when we bear much fruit. It is, after all, how he designed us. Creation reveals his will for us. And John shows us that the fruit we bear within the church takes the form of love, while Philip illustrates that the fruit we bear outside the church is winsome evangelism.
Alternative Application(s)
John 15:1-8 — “Gloria Patri”
Any student of the Gospel of John will recognize the prominence of the theme of glory. In the ESV translation, for example, variations on “glory” and “glorify” occur over forty times in John’s 21 chapters. We are introduced to it early as Jesus is said to have the glory of the Father (1:14), and his first miracle/sign is reported as manifesting his glory (2:11).
As we trace this prominent theme throughout the rest of the gospel, we sense that glory seems to belong exclusively to God. If a human being glorifies himself, that has no value. And if human beings glorify one another, that, too, is of very limited value. If God glorifies a person, however, that is the glory that counts.
Meanwhile, we observe that most of the glorifying that takes place occurs between the Father and the Son. The Son glorifies the Father and the Father glorifies the Son. The elevation of glory seems to be entirely above us. It is not of our sphere and not in our reach.
In light of that larger theme and pattern within the Gospel of John, therefore, Jesus’ teaching about the vine and the branches features a startling bit of news. After identifying the roles (vinedresser, vine, and branches), and after describing specifically our relationship to Jesus as branches and vine, he says this by way of conclusion: “My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit.” Apparently, glory is not altogether out of our reach. Apparently, glorifying is not exclusively between the persons of the Trinity. It turns out that you and I are capable of glorifying God.
So it is that you and I are invited to consider with our people what it means to “bear much fruit.” If we do, we glorify God, and that is a high privilege, indeed. So, what does it mean?
From the very beginning of the Bible, the story of creation reveals fruitfulness in terms of reproduction (see, for example, Genesis 1:11-13, 28). Does that mean that we glorify God by having many children? Possibly. But perhaps at a more spiritual level, we acknowledge that we glorify him when we make more of what he has made us. This, I think, is what is at the base of Jesus’ Great Commission — that the ones he has made into disciples should, in turn, go and make more disciples.
In the beginning of the Book of Psalms, meanwhile, we see fruitfulness understood as righteous living (see Psalm 1:1-3). There are the things that the righteous man avoids, and there are the things in which he immerses himself. He is then compared to a fruitful tree. No doubt such righteous living glorifies God.
Early in the Gospel of Luke, we see fruitfulness expressed in terms of repentance (see Luke 3:7-14). To turn away from sin and turn to God is not merely an emotional feeling or an internal decision of the heart. Such repenting must have hands and feet. It ought to make a practical and visible difference in a person’s life. And that difference surely glorifies God.
And then, in Paul’s letter to the Galatians, the apostle distinguishes between the natural byproducts of the sinful nature, on the one hand, and the natural byproducts of the Spirit, on the other (see Galatians 5:17-25). The latter he calls “the fruit of the Spirit.” These Christlike attributes are a blessing and an inspiration to all who come in contact with them, and surely, they bring glory to God as a result.
If he is the vinedresser, then the performance of the vine and its branches is a reflection on him. Just as a flower garden reveals the skill and effort of the gardener, so too with this vine and its branches. And when we, the branches, bear much fruit, it brings glory to the one who cultivates it all from beginning to end.
