John 15:4

Ver. 4. “ Abide in me, and I in you; as the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it abides in the vine, no more can you, unless you abide in me.

To continue in the vine is for a branch the condition of life, and consequently its only law. All the conditions of fruitfulness are included in this. The imperative proves that one abides in this relation, as one enters it, freely, by the faithful use of the divinely offered methods. John 15:7 will show that the fundamental means is the word of Jesus. ᾿Εν ἐμοὶ μένειν, to abide in me, expresses the continual act by which the Christian sets aside everything which he might derive from his own wisdom, strength, merit, to draw all from Christ, in these different relations, through the deep longings of faith. This condition is so completely the only one laid down for the action of the force of Christ in him, that in the following clause Jesus omits the verb although it would properly be necessary for another person and at another time (I will abide) as if to make them feel that this act on His part is an immediate and necessary consequence of the act demanded of the believer; where the latter is accomplished, the former cannot fail to be realized. In this way, the action of Christ, no less than our own, is boldly placed under the control of our freedom. It is naturally on this second fact (I in you), of which the first: You in me, is only the condition, that the fruitfulness of the branch directly depends.

Hence the end of John 15:4; the duty imposed on the believer results from the immediate unfruitfulness with which his separation from the vine would affect him as a branch. Here, as in John 15:19, ἐὰν μή is an explanation of ἀφ᾿ ἑαυτοῦ, and not a limitation applied to the whole preceding idea: “by himself, that is to say, if he does not abide....”

The theme here formulated is not that of the moral powerlessness of the natural man for any good; it is that of the unfruitfulness of the believer left to his own strength, when the question is of producing or advancing the spiritual life, the life of God, in himself or in others.

After having described the new position and the law which it imposes, Jesus sets forth in the following verses, 5-8, the sanction of this law of life and death which He has just declared. And first, in John 15:5, the glorious results which the fruitful branch will obtain and the opposite result of unfaithfulness.