Growing in the Kingdom: Part 2 "Pruned"

1 “I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser.2 Every branch of mine that does not bear fruit he takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes, that it may bear more fruit.
4 Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me.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.6 If anyone does not abide in me he is thrown away like a branch and withers; and the branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned.7 If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.
16 You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you. (John 15: 1-2, 4-7, 16)

It is clear from these verses that we are called as Christians to bear fruit out of our faith in Christ. Christ assures us that we are chosen by Him and, abiding in Him, we will bear fruit and this fruit will also abide. Only when we live out of Him and His nourishing grace do we blossom and grow.

However, it is also very clear that we are not just left to grow on our own, sending forth a shoot here and a side branch there—those who live in Christ as the Vine are also under the care of the Father the Vinedresser. One of the consequences of bearing fruit out of Christ is that God will work in our lives in such a way that we will be forced to bear more.

We are loved by the Father so much that He wants to make us better and more fruitful members of His Kingdom. We must have faith that this painful pruning is for our good.

The fact that God disciplines his children means he loves us enough to correct us.  . . . Love does not equal unconditional affirmation. Love entails the relentless pursuit of what is for our good. And our good is always growth in godliness.  

(Kevin deYoung, The Hole in our Holiness 73)

This is sanctification as process (deYoung), and it is painful. The Reformers made this clear right at the beginning of the Heidelberg Catechism. Lord's Day 1, where they wrote: 

1 Q. What is your only comfort in life and death? 

A. That I am not my own,
but belong with body and soul,
both in life and in death,
to my faithful Saviour Jesus Christ.
He has fully paid for all my sins
with His precious blood,
and has set me free
from all the power of the devil.
He also preserves me in such a way
that without the will of my heavenly Father
not a hair can fall from my head;
indeed, all things must work together for my salvation. 

Therefore, by His Holy Spirit
He also assures me of eternal life
and makes me heartily willing and ready
from now on to live for Him.

"All things must work together for my salvation."  

No matter what happens, what kind of pruning He does in our lives, it is ALWAYS for our good.

[38] And they shall be my people, and I will be their God. [39] I will give them one heart and one way, that they may fear me forever, for their own good and the good of their children after them. [40] I will make with them an everlasting covenant, that I will not turn away from doing good to them. And I will put the fear of me in their hearts, that they may not turn from me. [41] I will rejoice in doing them good, and I will plant them in this land in faithfulness, with all my heart and all my soul.

(Jeremiah 32:38-41 ESV)

Despite Israel's sin and continual turning away, God always had their good in mind. 

And so He does ours. 

Much Fruit 

It is the branch that bears the fruit,
That feels the knife,
To prune it for a larger growth,
A fuller life. 

Though every budding twig be lopped,
And every grace
Of swaying tendril, springing leaf,
Be lost a space. 

O thou whose life of joy seems reft,
Of beauty shorn;
Whose aspirations lie in dust,
All bruised and torn,   

Rejoice, tho' each desire, each dream,
Each hope of thine
Shall fall and fade;
it is the hand
Of Love Divine 

That holds the knife, that cuts and breaks
With tenderest touch,
That thou, whose life has borne some fruit
May'st now bear much. 

~ Annie Johnson Flint

Growing in the Kingdom: Part 1 "Grafted"

[17] But if some of the branches were broken off, and you, although a wild olive shoot, were grafted in among the others and now share in the nourishing root of the olive tree, [18] do not be arrogant toward the branches. If you are, remember it is not you who support the root, but the root that supports you. [19] Then you will say, “Branches were broken off so that I might be grafted in.” [20] That is true. They were broken off because of their unbelief, but you stand fast through faith. So do not become proud, but fear. [21] For if God did not spare the natural branches, neither will he spare you. [22] Note then the kindness and the severity of God: severity toward those who have fallen, but God's kindness to you, provided you continue in his kindness. Otherwise you too will be cut off. [23] And even they, if they do not continue in their unbelief, will be grafted in, for God has the power to graft them in again. [24] For if you were cut from what is by nature a wild olive tree, and grafted, contrary to nature, into a cultivated olive tree, how much more will these, the natural branches, be grafted back into their own olive tree.

(Romans 11:17-24 ESV)

A plant grown from seed or as a cutting has to rely on its own roots and leaves to get the nutrients and water that it needs to grow. A grafted shoot relies on the roots and leaves of its new “parent” plant for nutrients and water.

As Christians, grafted shoots in Christ the Vine, we are not responsible for providing our own nutrients. Christ has become our Root, the source of all our sustenance. He takes care of our growth (and pruning when needed to help us to grow more productively).

You cannot graft an entire plant on to the new host—only a branch. This means cutting and also means pain, since our “own” plant is left behind, and we are pulled away from everything that we are comfortable with.

This idea of being grafted from Romans 11 not only applies to the blessing given to New Testament Gentiles being grafted into God's church, but also can apply to the battle between new man and the old man-- we are in Christ, but still in the flesh. Paul speaks to this battle in Romans 7:

For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am of the flesh, sold under sin.

(Romans 7:14 ESV)

[22] For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, [23] but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. [24] Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? [25] Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin.

(Romans 7:22-25 ESV)

The difficulty is that so often we act as though we are still part of our own plant; we are grafted onto the new one, but still attached to the old one. It is as though we have roots in two places, and we keep reaching backwards to our old root system, wasting our energy on fleshly concerns when we should be concentrated on growing more strongly into the True Vine.

The plant (the First Adam) we originally came from was dead, and we were only saved by grace and grafted into Christ by His blood, His death, and resurrection. It is interesting to note that in order for a graft to be successful “the vascular cambium tissues of the stock and scion plants must be placed in contact with each other. Both tissues must be kept alive until the graft has 'taken', usually a period of a few weeks. Successful grafting only requires that a vascular connection take place between the grafted tissues” (GraftingWikipedia). If we take Paul's grafting metaphor a step farther, we can see that we have been put vein to vein with Christ, as it were, and He shares his life-giving blood with us, causing us to be made alive in Him.

We must heed Paul's warning though, “[R]emember it is not you who support the root, but the root that supports you” (Romans 7:18). It is so easy to forget that we cannot live in our own strength. We take our new roots for granted and think that we are responsible for everything. We cannot forget that it is only through grace that we have been saved from ourselves. We must remember that we have been grafted into Christ and all we have to do is cling to the Vine.

Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. John 15:4

Refining

Behold, I have refined thee, but not with silver; I have chosen thee in the furnace of affliction. Isa 48:10

For he hath not despised nor abhorred the affliction of the afflicted; neither hath he hid his face from him; but when he cried unto him, he heard. Ps. 22:24

And though the Lord give you the bread of adversity, and the water of affliction, yet shall not thy teachers be removed into a corner any more, but thine eyes shall see thy teachers: And thine ears shall hear a word behind thee, saying, This is the way, walk ye in it, when ye turn to the right hand, and when ye turn to the left. Isa. 30:20-21

It is good for me that I have been afflicted; that I might learn thy statutes. Ps. 119:71

“Affliction is both a medicine if we sin, and a preservative that we sin not.”
–Richard Hooker, The Works of Richard Hooker: Tractates and Sermons

Affliction is a tool of punishing, but also one of teaching. God’s people suffer in the world because they, as C.S. Lewis pointed out, were made for another world. We don’t belong here. We are “strangers and pilgrims on the earth”(Heb 11:13) and as such, we do not have a place of our own, a place to hunker down in and stay put. Nothing here on earth can fill the place of God. 

We are temples of Christ here on earth, but we must abide in Him as well.(Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine; no more can ye, except ye abide in me. John 15:4) We are to be anchored in Christ. Our sustenance comes from the Vine: He is the One with roots, we are the wanderers, who find our place in Him.

Too often we attempt to fill the God-shaped hole in our hearts with things, be they people, money, possessions, sports, or food. God commands us to worship Him alone, forsaking idols. When we do, we will grow in grace under God’s protection and produce fruit.

Ephraim shall say, What have I to do any more with idols? [And God says] I have heard him, and observed him: I am like a green fir tree. From me is thy fruit found. Hosea 14:8

I’ve been doing a lot of reading lately and the thing that keeps coming up is the fact that having possessions and having a desire for certain things (such as marriage) is not wrong, rather it is when we begin treating them like the answer to our emptiness that they become our idols and stumbling blocks.

 A. W. Tozer puts it this way, in his book, The Pursuit of God:

There is within the human heart a tough fibrous root of fallen life whose nature is to possess, always to possess. It covets `things’ with a deep and fierce passion. The pronouns `my’ and `mine’ look innocent enough in print, but their constant and universal use is significant. They express the real nature of the old Adamic man better than a thousand volumes of theology could do. They are verbal symptoms of our deep disease. The roots of our hearts have grown down into things, and we dare not pull up one rootlet lest we die. Things have become necessary to us, a development never originally intended. God’s gifts now take the place of God, and the whole course of nature is upset by the monstrous substitution.

It is difficult, since very often these things are comfortable and comforting, a refuge from the blows of the world. Just like a child must give up sucking his thumb/soother (or face the inevitable laughter of his school mates), we must give up these false comforters and find our Refuge in the true Comforter. Sometimes, it is necessary to cut ourselves off entirely from these things (Ephraim shall say, What have I to do any more with idols?) in order to break our dependence on them. We may be able to reintroduce some things back into our lives, but we have to be aware that it will easy to fall back into old habits. The old nature is, as Joanna Weaver says in her book Having a Mary Spirit, our default mode and when we “crash” (as we will do–we’re not perfect after all), it will be the program that turns up most often.

However, we do not have to do this on our own–indeed, we cannot–God places the will and the strength in our hearts to divorce ourselves from these petty “lovers.” In C.S. Lewis’s The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, Aslan tells Eustace, who has, through loving dragon hoard, turned into a dragon, that before he can enter the pool and become human again,”first you must undress”–remove the dragon scales that cover him. Eustace scrapes away gamely, but each layer removed reveals another underneath. Finally, Aslan offers to help him and Eustace accepts (remaining afraid of the Lion’s sharp claws). The skin Aslan pulls off is much thicker than those Eustace had shed by himself and it hurt when it was removed.

The same thing happens when we scrape away at our old nature, we take away single layers, but God can remove much more with a single “claw”– affliction — in any guise Him choses. Not everyone requires a world-shattering tragedy to remove their dependence on “things.” God uses affliction in our lives to refine us,burning away the dross in our lives in “the furnace of affliction.” God knows how much we can stand and He will adjust the “temperature” to our individual requirements.

There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man: but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted [also can be translated "tested"] above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it. 1Cor 10:13

God also uses affliction to guide us and bring us closer to Himself.

And though the Lord give you the bread of adversity, and the water of affliction, yet shall not thy teachers be removed into a corner any more, but thine eyes shall see thy teachers: Isa. 30:20

If we, instead of complaining, humble ourselves under His Hand and allow God to show us His working, we will see how “all things work together for good to them that love God” (Romans 8:28).

And He will not leave us alone to struggle on blindly, but “will instruct thee and teach thee in the way which thou shalt go: [He] will guide thee with [His] eye” (Ps.32:8). Not only will He guide us with His eye, but He will speak to us in a “still, small voice”–

And thine ears shall hear a word behind thee, saying, This is the way, walk ye in it, when ye turn to the right hand, and when ye turn to the left. Isa. 30:21

We may not be aware at the time how God is working, but we may be sure that His purpose is to our future good–we have already been redeemed, now we are just waiting for our Bridegroom to come and take us home.