The Seven I AM Statements Series #7: Jesus Christ, the True Vine
He gave them a promise to hold on to which is the Holy Spirit who would be His replacement when He goes back up to heaven to prepare a home for all believers, followers, and disciples of Christ.
After the last supper with His disciples, Jesus told them the last I AM statement that wraps everything up and synthesizes what we must do even after Jesus has already been taken up to heaven.
Everything that Jesus said about the Holy Spirit and about this last I AM statement works in conjunction to give us hope for the day that He will return once again and also to impart to us a command that we need to firmly and wholeheartedly fulfill in our lives with the help of the Spirit of truth.
Let us look into John 15 to see what Jesus says:
"I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit He prunes so that it will be even more fruitful.
Remain in Me, and I will remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in Me."
So in this passage of Scripture, Jesus makes it clear that for us to bear fruit or to experience changes and miraculous transformations in our lives, we need Him.
For us to live a full and meaningful life just as Jesus has promised us in John 10:10, we need to remain in Him or in other translations, we need to abide in Him.
As we Christians live in this troubled world, we definitely need to have dependence on God and on His Son Jesus Christ for us to be able to overcome.
Jesus had given us a model or an example to follow and we need to depend on His strength and power for us to be victorious as well in our lives because the fact is, left on our own devices and abilities, we cannot overcome much less survive and live fully.
It is God who provides air for us to breathe each day and brings the rains in time for the harvest. He helps us to soar high above the storms that we face in life and causes the sun to shine the very next day.
Truly, our God loves us and that is why we need to cling and clasp to Him with such tenacity so that we would endure our struggles much stronger and more mature than ever before with a deep indwelling of God in our lives and a closeness to God that would make us inseparable from Him.
We need to stay close to God because He wants to be close to us but we sometimes make the wrong decisions and stray from His presence.
All that we would ever need in life will be provided by God as He has even made the birds in the sky an example of His faithfulness since He said that even they fly above the clouds without a hint of worry for tomorrow because God will give them what they need.
Remember what God said in Matthew 6:34: "Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own."
So, do not worry about your struggles or the anxieties of tomorrow that may or may never come. All we have to do is to remain in God and to abide in His faithfulness and trust Him with all our hearts and our minds.
It has to be both the heart and the mind because you must trust Him with your heart but if your mind keeps on thinking about your worries, then you will not fully enjoy God's peace.
Then, Jesus speaks further about the true vine and indicates our relation to Him being the branches:
"I am the true vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in Me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from Me you can do nothing.
If anyone does not remain in Me, he is like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned.
If you remain in Me and My words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be given you. This is to My Father's glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be My disciples."
When we were ushered into this world, we knew nothing and had no capability to do anything to suffice our daily needs and so we needed someone to take care of us and teach us the lessons of life.
When we grew up and developed our mind, body, and emotions, we started to take our own initiative to do what needs to be done and to seek to help others grow and to be productive with our lives.
In the same way, as we became Christians and accepted Jesus as our Lord and Savior, we become children of God and so we need to be trained and taught by the Father through the Spirit the ways of God and walk in the path of righteousness and follow the example of Christ.
As we remain in Christ, we start to grow and mature spiritually.
The evidences of that growth would be the changes in our attitude, in our perspective about life and struggles, in our faith in God especially despite the attacks and persecution of the world against those who believe in Jesus, and also in our relationships with other people and how we deal with them.
As you start to live for Christ, God starts to use the talents and gifts that He has given you for His mighty purpose in your life so that you can become a good servant and a mighty warrior for the kingdom of God.
As you continue to mature in spirit and as God changes you inwardly, people will begin to notice the changes that happen outwardly and God can use you to touch other people's lives as He has touched yours.
That is what Jesus means by those branches that bear fruit because not only has He planted a seen in you and changed you but He also plants seeds in other people's hearts through the way the interact with you and see how much God has changed you.
In stark contrast to this, Jesus says that those branches who do not remain in Him or those who do not keep His words and follow His commands to live a life of righteousness, they will be like branches that are thrown away and wither. Those branches will be picked up, thrown into the fire, and burned.
If you remain steeped in sin and cannot seem to get out of the bondage, then that may mean that you have not surrendered that part of your life to Jesus yet and you still hold back and hesitate to allow His light to pierce through the darkness that encroached you before.
Know that God wants to help you and that He can clean you and restore your soul. He will pour out His Spirit on you so that you can have the power to be changed but only if you lay it down before Him, turn away from your sin, and follow Christ.
In consequence of remaining or abiding in Jesus, He gives us a promise that whatever we ask, it will be given to us. Of course, this is aligned with having the desires of God's heart as our own and seeking to do His will as our will.
Know that the context by which Jesus says this was laid out in John 14:12-14 when He said: "I tell you the truth, anyone who has faith in Me will do what I have been doing. He will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father.
And I will do whatever you as in My Name, so that the Son may bring glory to the Father. You may ask Me for anything in My Name, and I will do it."
Jesus refers to doing the same miraculous signs that He did while He was on earth and isn't that a great promise to take hold of? Isn't it a great privilege that Jesus promised us that He will do anything that we ask of Him especially to help out those who are sick, poor, and hurting?
For me, that is truly amazing that Jesus enables us to speak just as He spoke and drive out sickness and demons by His Name.
In conclusion, Jesus further elaborated on the command to remain in Him and in the next verses in John 15, Jesus told us to remain in His love as He remained in the Father's love and we can do this by obeying His commands.
The promise that we have in following this command is that His joy may be in us and that our joy may be complete. He told us to love each other as He has loved us and this means that we should be ready at any point when God speaks in our hearts to lay down our lives for others.
Jesus tells us here to have the same kind of compassion and love as He has for the people who are in need of encouragement and restoration.
We need to go and do what Jesus did - preaching and healing the sick, poor, disabled, impoverished, unfortunate, and every person who has nothing left in their lives and give them love and share them whatever God has given us and share Jesus with them.
So, that is it with regard to the I AM statements of Jesus and I hope that we can all put these words to heart and really meditate on them and be moved to action when God calls us to do something for His glory because His love compels us to obey His commands and to love others as He loves us.
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