Lesson 2: To be a branch
John 15:5 I am the vine; you are the branches.
What a simple thing it is to be a branch, the branch of a tree, or the branch of a vine! The branch grows out of the vine, or out of the tree, and there it lives and grows, and in due time, bears fruit. It has no responsibility except just to receive from the root and stem sap and nourishment. And if we only knew, by the Holy Spirit, our relationship to Jesus Christ, our work would be changed into the brightest and most heavenly thing upon earth. Instead of there ever being soul-weariness or exhaustion, our work would be like a new experience, linking us to Jesus as nothing else can. Is it not often true that our work comes between us and Jesus? What folly! The very work that He must do in me, and I for Him, I take up in such a way that it separates me from Christ. Many a laborer in the vineyard has complained that he has too much work, and not time for close communion with Jesus, and that his usual work weakens his inclination for prayer, and that his too-much-interaction with men darkens the spiritual life. Sad thought, that the bearing of fruit should separate the branch from the vine! That must be because we have looked upon our work as something else than the branch bearing fruit. May God deliver us from every false thought about the Christian life.
Everything depends on our being right in Christ. If I want good apples, I must have a good apple tree; and if I care for the health of the apple-tree, the apple-tree will give me good apples. And it is just so with our Christian life and work. If our life with Christ is right, all will come out right. There may be the need of instruction and suggestion and help and training in the different departments of the work; all that has its value. But in the long run, the greatest essential is to have the full life in Christ; in other words, to have Christ in us, working through us. I know how much there often is to disturb us, or to cause anxious questionings; but the Master has such a blessing for every one of us, and such perfect peace and rest, and such joy and strength, if we can only come into, and be kept in, the right attitude towards him.
Very importantly, it is a life of absolute dependence. The branch has nothing; it just depends upon the vine for everything. That word absolute dependence is one of the most solemn and large and precious of words. A great German theologian wrote two large volumes some years ago to show that the whole of Calvin's theology is summed up in that one principle of absolute dependence upon God; and he was right.
Verse to memorize: John 15:5 I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in Me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing.