Fruit or Fire

 

“He cuts off every branch in Me that bears no fruit, and every branch that does bear fruit, He prunes to make it even more fruitful.” John 15:2

This metaphor of pruning branches that Jesus used has an overarching idea most people would understand. God removes unfruitful people. He grows fruitful people so they will become more fruitful. God enables fruitful people to advance His purposes more.

To understand this verse better, we must understand why a fruit farmer would cut tree branches. Jesus plainly explained the first reason. Farmers cut off dead branches from a tree to cause healthy growth of the rest of the tree. Without cutting off the dead branch, the tree will continue to send nutrients toward the dead branch instead of extending its nutrients to parts of the tree that will grow. Cutting off dead branches leads to more growth in other parts of the tree. This illustrates the metaphor's beginning.

Pruning the healthy parts of a fruit tree has several benefits. First, it strengthens the tree. Where before the tree’s sap was to grow fruit, pruning allows the tree sap to make the branch harder and stronger. Instead of sap going to grow fruit, it goes toward growing the branch. Going through hardships can cause a person to grow stronger in his faith and relationship with God.

Second, pruning a healthy branch can improve fruit production and fruit quality. Pruning stimulates new growth—offshoots—so more branches grow. As a result, each of those branches produces fruit instead of just the unpruned branch growing fruit. God’s pruning of His child causes that person to grow in many areas, so new spiritual fruit and Christian offspring grow from that believer. Pruning grows a person’s relationship with God. The deeper relationship with God causes growth of spiritual fruit, like patience, wisdom, compassion, joy, and peace. The deeper relationship with God grows the quality of that fruit, causing a deeper faith, greater peace, etc. Growth from a closer relationship with God leads to sharing the gospel and a personal testimony about God more. These lead to other people believing in Jesus and His saving them. Pruning may cause brief pain mental, heart, and/or physical. This pain is worth it to see more people saved by Jesus and experience a deeper relationship with God.

Third, pruning a branch helps a tree become more pest and disease resistant. Pruning causes growth in strength and resilience. Like a person’s health, outside influences can cause a tree to grow stronger so the tree can withstand forces that would cause it to shrivel, produce less fruit, and/or die. God allows a person to confront challenges for growth, not destruction. By going through trials, like the burnishing of metals, God removes impurities from His children. His strength alone is how they withstand adversity. Christians can progress despite adversity. James, Peter, and Paul wrote about perseverance, endurance, testing, patience, and building Christian character in James 1, 1 Peter 1, and Romans 5:3-5. Trials, though unwanted, have benefits just like pruning healthy branches has benefits.

Fourth, pruning trees opens the tree canopy so sunlight can reach more limbs and fruit. For this reason, fruit trees are wide and not very tall. More sun causes more fruit to grow on the tree. Also, by pruning the canopy, fruit does not grow higher in the tree. This makes it easier to reach all fruit during harvest season. A person who knows the Bible can only withstand some storms or temptations. A person whom Jesus saves and who grows in his relationship with God through daily prayer, Bible study, meditation, worship, and obedience to Him has a faith that has grown deep and wide. Temptations, trials, storms, and disease might assail a believer and might cause him to stall in his growth, but these can cause growth in his relationship with and faith in God. These occurrences can strengthen a believer, cause new growth on branches, and result in the growth of new and larger fruit. The outcome of God's gospel is evident in one's life. People see the gospel’s impact on people around the strengthening and growing Christian as he shares his testimony and God’s gospel.

Without removing dead limbs on a tree, diseases and/or pests kill the tree or cause it to become stunted and produce minimal fruit. By pruning healthy branches, trees become stronger and produce more and better fruit. Pruning stops the spread of diseases and pests that could harm the fruit or the sap (testimony) in the tree. It allows more sunlight, which causes more fruit to grow and makes the branches more accessible to harvesters.

When we face trials and hardships, we can grow stronger and produce more and better fruit. Instead of growing stronger through trials, we can freeze up and then get hurt or killed. God prefers us to grow stronger and bear more and better fruit. He allows or causes things to grow our relationship with Him and our trust in Him. God allows hardships to confront us to prune the dead branches from our lives. We should aim to grow, so we ask God what He wants us to learn from our situations. God wants us to grow to trust Him more, to have a deeper relationship with Him, and to become more Christlike. He will send you through fires to remove impurities and strengthen you. When strengthened by God, you, too, can say, “No weapon formed against us will prosper” (Isaiah 54:17).

Fruit or Fire.

Faith or Fruitlessness.

Which do you choose? I pray you choose to grow in your relationship with God and to produce more and better fruit within you that leads to more fruit—Christians—for God’s kingdom.

“No weapon formed against you shall prosper, and you will refute every tongue that accuses you. This is the heritage of the servants of the LORD, and their vindication is from Me,” declares the LORD. (Isaiah 54:17)

 (Bible verse picture from You Version Bible app)

Reflection and Reaction

 

“You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you.”

— John 15:3

 

Why would Jesus change metaphors here? First, He speaks about pruning then cleaning then returns to the vine image. 

 

In this passage, pruning the vine means removing the portions that aren’t producing fruit either because it’s dying because it’s not connected to its original source or because that portion of the vine (the branch) is producing bitter fruit not sweet. 

 

Jesus, when He said, “You are already clean,” means two things and they are both the same. The first obvious sense of the metaphor is that He meant, “Because of your faith in Me, you are cleansed from your sins.” That is the easy, obvious understanding. Each Gospel writer uses this analogy. And here, Jesus still means that, but why mix the metaphors?

 

So why did Jesus seem to mix His metaphors in this passage. The vine is pruned to remove that which isn’t producing or growing like the vine. When Jesus used the “clean” analogy, He referred to the same process of salvation. Just as removing the dead, non-producing, or bitter producing branches removes any negative admixture to the produce, cleansing a person through salvation removes any admixture in a person of his/her old way of life. That old way of living would taint the spiritual fruit of his/her life from his/her past bitter, sinful way of living. It would cause the fruit of the person’s new saved life not to reflect the sweetness of Jesus. 

 

The pruning and cleansing metaphors both were very understandable to the people of Jesus’ time. The people could relate, reflect, and then react to Jesus’ message because it made sense to their first century Middle eastern lives. Pruning and cleansing are about removing from the believer any admixture from their old life that would taint, make bitter, or dirty his/her new life, which should show only the fruits that come from living a Christlike life indwelled by the Holy Spirit.

 

Does your life reflect only Jesus? Are there shoots or fruit in your life that are bitter, tainted, or dead that don’t produce sweet and pure fruit that reflect the new life Jesus gave you? Of what do you need to confess to God and repent? Each of us have shoots and fruit that need pruning because we each sin. You are not alone.

Ripe Fruit

 

“Therefore I say to you, all things for which you pray and ask, believe that you have received them, and they will be granted you.”

— Mark 11:24

 

Jesus’ teaching about prayer in this verse goes back to when he and the disciples were walking to Jerusalem. Jesus wanted something to eat. He saw a fig tree and wanted its fruit but none was on it. Though the season for figs was over, Jesus expected fruit. 

 

Take this thought a step further in our understanding. Jesus Christ expects fruit in season and out of season for His purposes. God expects this of His children, those whom Christ has redeemed. If a person does not bear spiritual fruit, that person is dead spiritually. He is not ready for use by God.

 

Jesus taught in vs. 24 that Christians do not have to be like the fig tree, nor does He want them to be. He wants and expects them to bear fruit. How does that happen? By being in an active relationship with God. How did Jesus teach His followers to be with God? By His example. 

 

Regularly, Jesus went to be with the Father in and through prayer. For Him, prayer was being with God and talking freely with Him. When the disciples asked Jesus how they should pray, He gave them the Lord’s Prayer as the prime example. This prayer leads Jesus’ followers to ask for God’s kingdom to come on earth as it is in heaven. It asks for God’s will to be done. The Lord’s Prayer puts God and spiritual matters as primary concerns for life. Jesus’ prayer in the garden before His arrest gives His followers another example of the primary-ness of serving spiritual ends when He said, “Not My will but Yours be done,” to the Father.

 

These big examples of prayer from Jesus’ life and teaching along with others teach the disciples that praying in accordance with God’s will is important. Secondly, praying for God’s will on earth as it is in heaven means praying for God to work on earth to occur by any means, even through His creation. Praying for God’s will means praying for spiritual things. It means praying for Jesus’ disciples to be spiritually gifted and bear fruit for Him, in and out of season. Bearing fruit out of season implies not be constrained by the confines of the boundaries of the world, but doing God’s will—being ready to be picked by Him—regardless of when He wants to use you for His will. No time is a bad time (out of season) for God to work in people’s lives. He can intervene and direct how He wills at any time. 

 

How does this relate to verse 24? The “all things for which you pray and ask,” if prayed for as Jesus taught, are spiritual things—the things God desires to be done. This prayer grows the pray-ers relationship with God and so grows that believer’s faith in God. It also leads to God bestowing other spiritual fruit on the pray-er so that he/she is prepared in and out of season—ripe and ready for God to choose and use to help prepare to bring “His kingdom on earth as it is in heaven.”

 

When a Christian prays and asks “for all things” (vs.34), Jesus meant he/she prays for spiritual things. By the faith God gives you, believe that God answers your prayers (because you asked according to His will as Jesus taught in the Lord’s Prayer) and “they will be granted to you.”

 

Praying isn’t the act of giving God your “gimme list.” It’s being in a growing and close relationship with Him. It involves being so connected with God’s heart that the believer wants what He does and prays for it. It leads the believer to ask God to make you what He wants to bring to pass what He desires on earth as in heaven. This asking by the believer is asking for spiritual things—asking for God’s spiritual gifts—so He can use you for His purposes and grow you ever closer to Him.  

 

This brings to mind another of Jesus’ teachings from Matthew 7:7-8, “Ask and you shall receive. Seek and you shall find. Knock and it shall be opened to you.” Ask God, seek for Him, knock on His door and you will receive from Him what you are lacking and what He wants you to have.

 

Are you asking for God’s fruit, His growth of you? Are you asking for His kingdom to come and His will to be done? Seek God and His kingdom, then His righteousness and all else will be given to you (Matthew 6:33). 

 

Today, seek God and the salvation He paid for you through the sacrificial death of His Son, Jesus. Believe in Him and ask for salvation. Draw close to God  and be made like Jesus. 

 

Be made into fruit and be ready for Him in and out of season.