how to bear fruit (that will remain)

“I am the true vine, and My Father is the vinedresser. Every branch in Me that does not bear fruit, He takes away; and every branch that bears fruit, He prunes it so that it may bear more fruit. You are already clean because of the word which I have spoken to you. Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, so neither can you unless you abide in Me. I am the vine, you are the branches; he who abides in Me and I in him, he bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing. If anyone does not abide in Me, he is thrown away as a branch and dries up; and they gather them, and cast them into the fire and they are burned. If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit, and so prove to be My disciples. Just as the Father has loved Me, I have also loved you; abide in My love. If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love; just as I have kept My Father’s commandments and abide in His love. These things I have spoken to you so that My joy may be in you, and that your joy may be made full.

“This is My commandment, that you love one another, just as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends. You are My friends if you do what I command you. No longer do I call you slaves, for the slave does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all things that I have heard from My Father I have made known to you. You did not choose Me but I chose you, and appointed you that you would go and bear fruit, and that your fruit would remain, so that whatever you ask of the Father in My name He may give to you. This I command you, that you love one another."

John 15:1-17

Though it's now one of my most-beloved (and by far the most annotated) pages in my Bible, I once had a very negative understanding of this passage - one shrouded by the dark shadows of guilt and fear. I looked at the requirement of fruitbearing as a threat (what would happen if I didn't bear enough fruit?), not a loving call to walk with Jesus and allow Him to work through me.

Key to this unfortunate misinterpretation was one central issue, which I have slowly come to recognize as I've studied God's Word for the last half-decade: I had a very limited definition of what “fruit” really was.

In my mind, fruit could only mean evangelism. New converts. Revivals and altar calls, Billy Graham style. Or handing out tracts, or having "intentional" (that word always sounds a bit salesy to me) conversations with the cashier, or preaching on the streetcorners, like John the Baptist. Maybe I was alone in this assumption, but even now, rarely do I hear the word "fruit" mentioned in Christian circles without implications toward sharing the Gospel with unbelievers. It was foreign to me for the first 18 years of my life that it could mean anything else.

But when I actually read the Bible I found (as so often happens) that I was wrong. While evangelism obviously does make up an important part of the reproductive process of Christianity, I can't find any indication that Jesus looks for a mere tally of “decisions for Christ” in our harvest. This is about more than fruit—it is about fruit that will remain.

My fear is that we tend to teach and model evangelism disproportionately, under-representing the vital role of discipleship, so that what we end up with is a whole lot of fragile baby grapes that are never given the tools they need to grow bigger and stronger, and won't even be able to withstand the first frost.

The Apostle Paul, by far one of Christianity's most prolific fruit-bearers, seemed well aware of this hazard, and outlined his goal for the harvest like this:

We proclaim Him, admonishing every man and teaching every man with all wisdom, so that we may present every man complete in Christ. For this purpose also I labor, striving according to His power, which mightily works within me.

Colossians 1:28-29

Notice that he does begin with the declaration of Jesus Christ, which we would call “evangelism.” We proclaim Him. But the sentence does not end there, because evangelism is not the end goal. A “man complete in Christ” is the goal! Evangelism is only the beginning, and to reach the point of completion, every man must be admonished (warned of the depths of his sin nature so that he can choose life in the righteousness of Christ) and taught with all wisdom (retrained in the Word of God so that he can navigate a hostile world without wavering). This can't be done in a weekend retreat or a single conversation; it takes, without exception, a lifetime.

This process, empowered by God, of taking a baby Christian and tending him to maturity in the faith is the whole purpose of Paul’s life of ministry. It is also the exact pattern of biblical discipleship as shown and spoken by Jesus. Compare Paul’s statement with one of the most familiar discipleship passages in Scripture, the Great Commission:

Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.

Matthew 28:19-20

Go therefore. This short phrase is one of the most-quoted snippets of Scripture in promoting missions, but mistakenly so. Go therefore is not the imperative of the sentence, but rather the qualifier—it answers the “When?” and “Where?” of this command, but does not embody the command itself. This technicality gets a bit muddied in the text’s translation from Greek to English, and might be more accurately phrased “In your going . . .” or “As you go your way . . .”

And make disciples of all the nations. Here, finally, the actual command—and in fact, the only active verb in the sentence—surfaces: make disciples. We have been given the where and when (“in our going”); now is the “What?” and the “Who?” This is where we find the actual task at hand, the fruit-bearing ministry to which we have all been called as followers of Jesus and branches of the Vine. It's not a call to get more people through the door or to get more hands raised during the altar call; it's a call to invest wholeheartedly in the health and growth of another person's soul as a bondslave of Christ.

Baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. A two-part answer is given to the remaining question, “How?”, and this is part one - the part that might fall under our common term of evangelism in the church today. This is the “We proclaim Him” that Paul declared in Colossians, and it is more than mere street preaching. It is the demand upon every sinful heart to make a choice. Christianity, by its very nature, is is an ultimatum: a choice between Jesus and the world, between eternal life and spiritual death, between the truth and the lie. Those who choose Christ are asked to publicly reject all else and root themselves henceforth in the Truth of the Triune God.

Teaching them to observe all that I commanded you. And here is part two, the essence of discipleship itself: the building up, the training and edifying and carving and shaping of a rough-cut soul into a beautiful temple of the Holy Spirit. The tending and watering and nourishing of a delicate sprout into a healthy fruit-bearing plant. The presenting of “every man complete in Christ” that Paul labored for. And this is by far the piece that demands the most time, energy, perseverance, and focus - which might be why it's the piece that sometimes gets overlooked, or passed off as a job limited to those in full-time ministry, when in reality it's part of the commissioning of us all.

Contrary to what I thought for many years of my life, it takes the whole Great Commission to create a picture of the fruit that the Church was intended to bear. It is the kind of fruit that will remain steadfast and reproduce in like manner through trial and hardship, through cultural rejection and social isolation and family ridicule, and even through the deceptive waters of prosperity and blessing.

The Great Commission isn't summed up in evangelism. Christian fruit isn't measured in how many people we can persuade to pray a prayer. There is so, so much more to this immense calling than just shouting down the world with the Gospel - it's so much bigger, so much harder, so much more beautiful. We're called to abide in Christ and to feed ourselves from His life-blood (apart from which we can do nothing), to allow God to lovingly trim away the things that dilute our effectiveness, to walk in obedience to Him by sacrificially loving one another, and to proclaim His Name with the intent of patiently cultivating the soil of every softened heart with the incredible story of the Word of God.

All of this is part of bearing fruit.

As any farmer can tell you, there is no way to rush the production process, and the imperative tasks aren't the same in all seasons of the year. Sometimes it's the preparation of the soil, sometimes it's the seeding of the earth, sometimes it's the watering of the crops, sometimes it's the harvest. And other times, the only thing to do is wait and rest and trust that God is still at work even while the ground lies dormant.

And I'll say it again: all of it is part of the fruit-bearing.

We, believers, are farmers. And evangelism is just one tiny piece of the vast, patient process of bearing hardy and prolific fruit; both before and after it come times of waiting and tending and weeding - and never giving up.

Jude 17-25 - a call to fight back

Welcome to Part Three of our in-depth study of the book of Jude. We've covered Jude's call to vigilance (in Part One) and his call to discernment (in Part Two) - now, we learn how to respond, how to fight back against the threat of the enemy and the deceptions of "these men."

A study in Jude - part three

“But you, beloved, ought to remember the words that were spoken beforehand by the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ, that they were saying to you, “In the last time there will be mockers, following after their own ungodly lusts.” These are the ones who cause divisions, worldly-minded, devoid of the Spirit. But you, beloved, building yourselves up on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in the love of God, waiting anxiously for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ to eternal life. And have mercy on some, who are doubting; save others, snatching them out of the fire; and on some have mercy with fear, hating even the garment polluted by the flesh.

Now to Him who is able to keep you from stumbling, and to make you stand in the presence of His glory blameless with great joy, to the only God our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion and authority, before all time and now and forever. Amen.”

— Jude 18-25

Our battle plan

In the beginning of his letter, Jude urgently called the Church to vigilance, because deception was creeping in and going unaddressed. Godless men disguised as believers - wolves in sheep's clothing - were perverting God's grace and denying Christ's mastery in a way that imperiled souls.

Then he told the Church what traits to watch for in order to pick these men out from the crowd: they would be revealed by their disdain for authority, their reckless reliance on feelings above the truth, and their ultimate fruitlessness for the kingdom of God.

This letter is no less important for us today than it was for the churches of Jude's era. It may even be more so, because the wolves we are dealing with now have the ability to take their deception to a far higher platform - a worldwide audience. They are turning the grace of God into licentiousness by misusing sacred words like love, grace, and judgment; they are teaching, more loudly every day, that "it doesn't matter" what you do or what name you use for God or how you choose to identify yourself.

Now we know we must be watchful. We know what to be watching for. But what's the battle plan?

Remember the truth

But you, beloved, ought to remember the words that were spoken beforehand by the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ, that they were saying to you, “In the last time there will be mockers, following after their own ungodly lusts.” These are the ones who cause divisions, worldly-minded, devoid of the Spirit.

If we are to have victory in this war, if we are to fight the good fight of the faith in a way that honors our Lord and Master, then a firm knowledge of and reliance on the truth of His Word is a nonnegotiable. If we have that, then we will not be surprised by the brutality of the fight, by the shrewdness of the enemy, or by the vileness of the worldly and Spiritless. We'll see it coming and we'll be able to make ourselves ready.

The truth will also help us to come into the battle from a right perspective, knowing that it is the mockers who cause the divisions, not we who fight back. So many times we back down from the battle in the name of preserving unity, but all we achieve is unification around the wrong thing. Going to war for the truth is not what divides us - the deceivers are already doing that. Yes, the call to war will inevitably divide the disciples from the deceivers, but that is the nature of truth - that's truth doing its job, and we can't be afraid of it.

Remember who you are

But you, beloved, building yourselves up on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in the love of God, waiting anxiously for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ to eternal life.

Jude started his letter with a reminder of our true identities if we are followers of Christ, and he makes it part of his concluding call, too - because this matters. It is vitally important that we remember who we are, and our rightful role in the war.

But you, beloved: Jude just finished describing the mockers as those who are "devoid of the Spirit," and then says the word but. But you, beloved. Some are Spiritless, but we are loved - there is something different about who we are because we are in Christ, and beloved. That is powerful.

Building yourselves up on your most holy faith: Our foundation is faith - but it's not static. We are building on it. If we're good soldiers, we are growing, day in and day out, in our faith - in the ability to see things (including ourselves) the way God says they are, not the way our eyes see them.

Praying in the Holy Spirit: We have a weapon in hand that the Spirit-devoid mockers do not: access to God Himself in prayer. When the war is overwhelming and we are weak, do we remember that we are those with the unique privilege of access to God's throne?

Keep yourselves in the love of God: In verse one, Jude called us "the called, beloved, and kept." Here it is again: We have the opportunity to be kept (watched over, guarded) in God's love. Regardless of what is going on around us, we are safe.

Waiting anxiously for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ to eternal life: I love that phrase "waiting anxiously." In the Greek it communicates not just of waiting, but of expecting, and of opening oneself to eagerly receive. We have already benefited so much from God's grace, but there is more to come - and we are the recipients of mercy as vast as eternity!

We're loved, firmly founded, privileged with God's presence. We are carefully guarded by God's love and we are still waiting for the rest of His mercy to be showered on us. When we remember that this is who we are, and that this is how He has transformed us, we can do battle well - not because we need the affirmation or revel in the bloodshed, but because we see the value of what we have in Christ, and feel honored to contend earnestly for it.

Remember who you were

And have mercy on some, who are doubting; save others, snatching them out of the fire; and on some have mercy with fear, hating even the garment polluted by the flesh.

But we were not always whole in Christ. We were once lost just as these deceivers and their prey are lost, and we don't fight them ruthlessly, but compassionately - because we know what it is to stand exactly where they are. We need to remember who we were, and thereby remember who to look out for:

The doubting: Those who doubt don't need to be bludgeoned by our sense of certainty or self-righteousness, they need our mercy. Doubt is a very desperate place, because it becomes difficult to tell what is true from what is false, and our fears often muddy the waters and leave us feeling alone, unsure, and terrified. As we do battle compassionately, we need to reach out to the doubting not with a stack of Scripture verses to convince them of the truth, but with a mercy that actively demonstrates the truth of God's mercy toward us.

The lost: The lost, meanwhile, need straight-up saving. They are already in hell's clutches and it is imperative that we have the boldness and courage to run into the burning building and rescue them. It's dangerous and it's not pretty, but it is a crisis. These people don't need to be sermonized on how much better their lives will be with Jesus, they need to be snatched from the sinking talons of hell itself! 

The unwise: These are the people who play perilously close to the cobra's den. They indulge the flesh and make poor choices, and every day they become more vulnerable and more deeply entrenched in the bondage of sin. Like the doubters, these souls need our mercy - but with fear, which is actually closer to the word "terror," and with a hatred for the flesh. Why? Because they are not the only ones who are tempted by the flesh. We all are. Even we who are new creations carry around the "old man" with us, and if we don't tread carefully as we offer mercy to the unwise, we too can get trapped in its grip. When we try to strip the "garment polluted by the flesh" away from someone else, we must hate it so much - and fear our God even more - that we fling it away before it can defile us, too.

If we want to fight this fight with the compassion it demands, we have to remember where we came from. We need to be able to empathize with the doubting. We need to recognize what's really at stake for the lost. And we need to know ourselves and our weaknesses, so that we don't track the same muck we were saved from back into the Church after trying to pull out someone else.

Remember who our God is

Now to Him who is able to keep you from stumbling, and to make you stand in the presence of His glory blameless with great joy, to the only God our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion and authority, before all time and now and forever. Amen.

Finally, and most importantly, Jude's battle plan against deception ends with a simple picture: This is who God is. This is who we have on our side, fighting with us and for us.

He is able. When we don't have the strength to carry on, He can keep us from stumbling and make us stand firm. When we keep screwing up and feel lost in our shame, He still welcomes us into His presence, sees us as blameless, and offers us His joy. When we forget who we are in Him, we can look to who He is, because He is always the same - the only God, our Savior.

To Him be glory, majesty, dominion and authority, before all time and now and forever.

He will be glorified. He will be King. He will dominate and rule over everything we are battling against - we cannot lose this war, because He is on our side. We need only to contend earnestly for the faith.

Remember the truth. Remember who you are. Remember who you were. And remember who He is.

That's the battle plan. That's the strategy that has already changed the world, and will continue to do so until the day that the King Himself returns to claim the victory.

Are you ready?

Jude 8-16 - a call to discernment

Last week we studied the first seven verses in Jude - his call to vigilance to all believers, a plea to "contend earnestly for the faith" in light of the enemy's sneaking deceptions. Today, we continue into verses 8-16 - this time, a call to the discernment that we will so desperately need if we are to hold the line that divides truth from falsehood.

A study in Jude - part two

“Yet in the same way these men, also by dreaming, defile the flesh, and reject authority, and revile angelic majesties. But Michael the archangel, when he disputed with the devil and argued about the body of Moses, did not dare pronounce against him a railing judgment, but said, “The Lord rebuke you!” But these men revile the things which they do not understand; and the things which they know by instinct, like unreasoning animals, by these things they are destroyed. Woe to them! For they have gone the way of Cain, and for pay they have rushed headlong into the error of Balaam, and perished in the rebellion of Korah. These are the men who are hidden reefs in your love feasts when they feast with you without fear, caring for themselves; clouds without water, carried along by winds; autumn trees without fruit, doubly dead, uprooted; wild waves of the sea, casting up their own shame like foam; wandering stars, for whom the black darkness has been reserved forever.

It was also about these men that Enoch, in the seventh generation from Adam, prophesied, saying, “Behold, the Lord came with many thousands of His holy ones, to execute judgment upon all, and to convict all the ungodly of all their ungodly deeds which they have done in an ungodly way, and of all the harsh things which ungodly sinners have spoken against Him.” These are grumblers, finding fault, following after their own lusts; they speak arrogantly, flattering people for the sake of gaining an advantage.”

— Jude 8-16

Identifying "these men"

We must come into these verses fresh from the seven that precede them - the ones we studied last week - because of two key phrases: "in the same way" and "these men."

In the same way - as what? Jude is referring back to verses 5-7, in which he reminded us of the historic consequences of disobedience and unbelief. The lies we are called to watch for and discern are of the same breed as the blasphemy of the Egyptians, the rebellion of the angels, and the perversion of Sodom and Gomorrah. They are that serious.

And "these men" points back to verse 4: "For certain persons have crept in unnoticed, those who were long beforehand marked out for this condemnation, ungodly persons who turn the grace of our God into licentiousness and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ."

Within the first seven words of this new paragraph, Jude reminds us again of the urgency of the cause. These men, these "certain persons," are headed for the same destruction, eternal bondage, and eternal fire as some of the most heinous peoples in the Bible - and they are trying to take others with them.

So how, practically, do we discern and identify these men when they are - God forbid - among us?

They are arrogant

 Yet in the same way these men, also by dreaming, defile the flesh, and reject authority, and revile angelic majesties.

By dreaming: This is not nighttime dreaming or even daydreaming, but a reference to their trust in their own personal "revelations." They follow their own minds, even when they lead far away from the standards of holiness.

Defile the flesh: Both physically and morally, they literally "pollute" or "stain" themselves as a direct result of the licentiousness they claim as God's grace. They have made up their own rules about what grace is and what good is.

Reject authority: Just as it sounds, and just as Jude said earlier: they deny the Lordship and Mastery of Jesus Christ, along with His chosen leaders in the church. They think they know better.

Revile angelic majesties: Even the truly sacred and holy things, beings that they cannot even begin to understand, they profane and pretend to have authority over.

We will know them by their arrogance. They will not submit to the Lordship of Christ or the leadership of the church or the authority of Scripture; instead they will follow their own minds, feelings, and "rights." In their self-aggrandizement they will try to speak things even Michael the Archangel would not dare to speak outside of the authority given to him by God!

They are beyond reason

... The things which they know by instinct, like unreasoning animals, by these things they will be destroyed. Woe to them! For they have gone the way of Cain, and for pay they have rushed headlong into the error of Balaam, and perished in the rebellion of Korah.

Have you ever watched, brokenhearted, while an animal destroyed itself by its own instincts? I remember a bird whose toe was caught in a wire on the fenceline when I was a kid. I could have helped it get free, but its instincts said that I was a predator, and so it struggled so hard to escape me that it broke its leg beyond repair. Eventually it did fly free, but whether it was able to survive with such a handicap, I don't know.

These deceivers are like that bird. They follow their own feelings to the point of total lack of reason. Their actions and choices clearly point to destruction, but they - and often the ones they deceive - are too blind to see it.

They have gone the way of Cain: Cain lost control of himself by letting his anger and bitterness rule over him, and it led to the tragic murder of his own brother and a life of exile for himself (Genesis 4).

For pay they rush headlong into the error of Balaam: Balaam was a prophet who tried to get away with disobedience for personal benefit. He let his sinful desires control him and as a result, he became a pawn of the enemy (Numbers 22).

And perished in the rebellion of Korah: Korah, a Levite in the days of Moses, self-importantly tried to redefine God's values for the leadership of Israel. He blindly followed his desire for authority and renown in spite of what he knew of God's holiness, and God allowed the earth to swallow him up (Numbers 16).

We will know them by their distorted thinking. They will not submit their instincts to the ultimate authority of our Master, Jesus, for reshaping and redemption. In their delusion they will find their destruction.

They are fruitless

These are the men who are hidden reefs in your love feasts when they feast with you without fear, caring for themselves; clouds without water, carried along by winds; autumn trees without fruit, doubly dead, uprooted; wild waves of the sea, casting up their own shame like foam; wandering stars, for whom the black darkness has been reserved forever.

The descriptions Jude has given us so far make these deceivers sound terribly obvious. Wouldn't someone so blatantly arrogant and unreasoning stick out like a sore thumb? Not necessarily. They are called hidden reefs in your love feasts - they are among us, they are breaking bread with us, and though the sea looks safe - it isn't. This is why the call to discernment is so vital: we must be able to spot that perilous kind of self-importance that can be hidden, disguised, camouflaged under words and actions that are almost-right.

A third characteristic that will help us spot them, even when their arrogance and delusion are well-hidden, is their fruitlessness.

Clouds without water: A cloud that doesn't produce any rain is useless to the thirsting earth. Deceivers tend to talk a big game and act like they have all the answers, but they leave many hurt, disillusioned, and increasingly needy people in their wakes.

Autumn trees without fruit, doubly dead, uprooted: An autumn tree is useless for fruitbearing because its season has passed, but if it didn't even produce fruit while it had the chance, it's worse than dead - for it has failed to preserve its kind with a next generation of trees. Deceivers are dead and uprooted themselves, but even worse, they are effectively killing the faith for the next generation.

Wild waves of the sea, casting up their own shame like foam: The waves crash and churn restlessly, but achieve nothing more than a little foam - light, empty, a weak result for so much violence. Likewise, deceivers tirelessly pursue their fleshly passions and convictions and the end result is only weakness and shame.

Wandering stars, for whom the black darkness has been reserved forever: More accurately, this refers to planets, which produce no light of their own and wander through the skies in irregular patterns. Deceivers are the same way: they have thrown out the compass of truth, and so there is no way to measure their choices beyond the urging of their own lusts. They don't produce any light with which to guide those around them.

Even if we miss their arrogance and don't notice their delusion, we should have the discernment to know these deceivers by their fruit - or, in Jude's argument, by their fruitlessness. A healthy and God-fearing believer knows the way to the Living Water that truly satisfies, plants seeds of the faith for the next generation, follows the clear direction of God's Word, and shines with the brilliant light of Christ. A deceiver produces only emptiness, confusion, and darkness.

In conclusion

It was also about these men that Enoch, in the seventh generation from Adam, prophesied, saying, “Behold, the Lord came with many thousands of His holy ones, to execute judgment upon all, and to convict all the ungodly of all their ungodly deeds which they have done in an ungodly way, and of all the harsh things which ungodly sinners have spoken against Him.” These are grumblers, finding fault, following after their own lusts; they speak arrogantly, flattering people for the sake of gaining an advantage.

Ultimately, we are called to discern the ungodly from the godly - the condemned from the convicted and the sin-slaves from those who are set free. Sometimes, on the surface, they look alike, but Jude says to watch for the complainers. Watch for the criticizers. Watch for those who follow their own desires and who claim an authority that is not their own and who try to take advantage of other people.

And remember: they are among us, hidden reefs that make the safe-looking sea into a death trap. Souls are at stake. We must be vigilant, and we must be discerning. And we must fight back. Next week, we'll learn how.