What does it mean to abide in Christ?

On the night before the cross Jesus told his disciples, "Remain in Me, and I will remain in you. Just as no branch can bear fruit by itself unless it remains in the vine, neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in Me" (John 15:4). Older English Bibles say "abide", and the word has stayed in Christian speech. The Greek verb is meno, to stay or remain.¹ To abide in Christ is to go on living in dependent fellowship with him, as a branch lives by staying joined to the vine.

The vine and the branches

"I am the vine and you are the branches. The one who remains in Me, and I in him, will bear much fruit. For apart from Me you can do nothing" (John 15:5). A branch does not produce life. It receives it. Andrew Murray began from the gardener's practice: "When a new graft is placed in a vine and it abides there, there is a twofold process that takes place."² The graft grows into the vine, and the vine's sap flows into the graft. So, he wrote, "Christ is in us: our life taken up into His; His life received into ours; in a divine reality that words cannot express, we are in Him and He in us."² Ed Miller drew the plain lesson: "Don't try to be the vine, because then you will not be able to produce."³

More than a beginning

Abiding follows conversion; it does not replace it. "Therefore, just as you have received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to walk in Him, rooted and built up in Him" (Colossians 2:6-7). Paul describes the life that results: "I have been crucified with Christ, and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me" (Galatians 2:20). A. B. Simpson put the consequence simply: "Christ becomes purity and grace and strength in us."⁴ It is not a state reached once for all. Miller said, "Abiding is just coming back to that place where you recognize, without Him, I can do nothing."³

Rest, not strain

Simpson noticed what Jesus does not say in John 15. He does not tell the branches to produce fruit by effort: "There is no constraint about it, except that we must abide in Him."⁴ The letter that opened Hudson Taylor's eyes made the same point: "Not a striving to have faith, but a looking oft to the faithful one seems all we need."⁵ This is the rest Jesus offers: "Come to Me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me" (Matthew 11:28-29). A yoke is for work. Abiding is not idleness. It is work done from his strength and at his side.

How a believer stays

Richard Bieber gathered the practice into four sentences, spoken as from Christ: "Stay in me by continuously bringing your thoughts back to me, centering them on me." "Stay in me by listening to the word which I have put in your heart." "Stay in me by walking with me under my yoke, learning from me, laboring at my side." "Stay in me by unbroken fellowship with my body on earth."⁶

Keith Daniel pressed the cost in ordinary life: "God will give you a better job, but don't you dare neglect God for work or money, business or money."⁷ And he warned against activity that leaves Christ out: "Don't try to do anything for Jesus apart from abiding in him."⁷

His words in us

"If you remain in Me and My words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you" (John 15:7). Jesus had said earlier, "If you continue in My word, you are truly My disciples" (John 8:31). Gareth Evans defined abiding in these terms: "Abiding in Christ means a commitment to his word, it means obedience to his word, it means the walk of faith, which is obedience to the word of God spoken to our hearts by the Spirit of God."⁸ John writes, "let what you have heard from the beginning remain in you. If it does, you will also remain in the Son and in the Father" (1 John 2:24).

Prayer

The promise of John 15:7 is not a blank cheque. It is given to those in whom Christ's words live, whose desires are being shaped by him. John Piper called prayer the voice of abiding: "So my aim today is to try to help us experience prayer as the vocalization of abiding in Christ."⁹ He described it as "the daily vocalization of the thankful, happy, confident dependence on the vine".⁹ A praying Christian says aloud what a branch says silently: I have nothing of my own.

Love and obedience

"As the Father has loved Me, so have I loved you. Remain in My love. If you keep My commandments, you will remain in My love" (John 15:9-10). "If you love Me, you will keep My commandments" (John 14:15). Abiding is therefore moral and not only inward. Bill McLeod defined it, "To abide in Christ is to walk in a sweet, unbroken fellowship with him", and named what interrupts it: "And of course, the thing that breaks fellowship with him is sin."¹⁰

John gives the remedy: "If we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin" (1 John 1:7). "If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness" (1:9). And he gives the test: "Whoever claims to abide in Him must walk as Jesus walked" (2:6).

Fruit

"This is to My Father's glory, that you bear much fruit, proving yourselves to be My disciples" (John 15:8). Fruit is first of all character: "the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control" (Galatians 5:22-23). It includes love for other believers, "that you love one another as I have loved you" (John 15:12), and lasting results in other lives: "I appointed you to go and bear fruit—fruit that will remain" (15:16).

Miller said, "Nobody bears fruit in any other way than by abiding in the vine."³ Evans described where it comes from: "He is the source of the fruit, he is the sap that flows through the fruit, he calls us to abide in him."⁸ Chuck Smith added, "The only lasting fruit is that which is produced as the result of the relationship with Jesus Christ."¹¹

Pruning

"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). The fruitful branches are the ones pruned. Jesus names the first instrument: "You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you" (15:3). Smith remarked, "What tremendous cleansing power there is in the Word of God."¹¹ The Father also uses hardship. "No discipline seems enjoyable at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it yields a harvest of righteousness and peace to those who have been trained by it" (Hebrews 12:11). Piper turned the verse into prayer: "If there's any disease in me, disenchanting me with this sap, this all-satisfying sap, prune me, do whatever you have to do, don't let me prove to be not your disciple by being fruitless."⁹

The warning

"If anyone does not remain in Me, he is like a branch that is thrown away and withers. Such branches are gathered up, thrown into the fire, and burned" (John 15:6). Preachers read this warning in two ways. Some take it of people who were attached to Christ only outwardly, as John says of others, "They went out from us, but they did not belong to us. For if they had belonged to us, they would have remained with us" (1 John 2:19). Others take it as a real danger for believers who stop abiding. Paris Reidhead applied it to steadfastness in the truth: "To remain steadfast to Christ requires that we resist the seducers, that we recognize truth, that we remain faithful to the truth, and that we rejoice in the prospect of his coming."¹² On either reading the application is the same: no one may rest on a past decision while living apart from Christ.

Not perfection

Abiding does not mean that a believer never fails. "If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us" (1 John 1:8). The abiding believer is the one who, having sinned, comes back at once. The power to go on is not his own: "I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength" (Philippians 4:13). "Walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh" (Galatians 5:16).

Victory

Stephen Kaung connected abiding with standing against the enemy. The believer's ground is Christ himself: "To put it another way, it simply means abide in Christ."¹³ He went on, "Abide in Christ is the only way to apply the victory of Christ to our enemy."¹³ Daniel said the same: "There's no victory in Jesus apart from abiding in him."⁷ Scripture puts it as thanksgiving: "thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ!" (1 Corinthians 15:57).

Joy and assurance

"I have told you these things so that My joy may be in you and your joy may be complete" (John 15:11). Abiding is not grim duty. It is the way into Christ's own joy, which holds in trouble: "In the world you will have tribulation. But take courage; I have overcome the world!" (John 16:33). It also steadies assurance. "Whoever keeps His commandments remains in God, and God in him. And by this we know that He remains in us: by the Spirit He has given us" (1 John 3:24).

Until he comes

John's last use of the word looks ahead: "And now, little children, remain in Christ, so that when He appears, we may be confident and unashamed before Him at His coming" (1 John 2:28). Jesus' promise is larger than the command: "If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word. My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our home with him" (John 14:23). To abide in Christ is to stay where he has placed us, drawing on his life, keeping his word, and bearing the fruit he gives.