- Overcomer Literature Trust
- Swindon
- Wiltshire
BRANCH-LIFE.
From an old magazine.
“I am the Vine, you are the branches” (John 15 v5).
A branch has no independent life, apart from the vine it can do nothing. Independence means death, the channel of life is severed by separation. The only life of the branch is a life of abiding, drawing strength and vigour from the Vine.
The earthly life of Jesus was a branch-life, lived in entire dependence upon the Father. All Jesus teaching is illustrated in detail in His earthly life.
The life of God cannot be independently communicated or received apart from Christ, He is that life. To be a Christian is to be Christ-possessed, and this can only be by branch-like union in the Vine.
The branch is lost in the Vine. It remains unnoticed, does not push itself forward, and receives no praise, neither does it call for attention save from the Husbandman. The Vine is One, it is a complete and perfect whole. Therefore, to be joined to the Vine is to lose one’s own life, to hate that old life (John 12 v25), and to lay it down by an act of definite surrender.
This is the cost which we do well to count. In receiving Christ we receive the Divine life, a life that is death to the life of the fallen nature. The fatal mistake of so many is in trying to live in two worlds at the same time. It cannot be in nature and in God, in self and in Christ, in independence and by faith, by self-effort and by abiding. To have life is not enough, the life of Christ demands the death of the self life, if His new life is to be fully developed and become fruitful in us.
The branch life is a life of oneness. There can be no dual control. To be grafted into the true Vine, I must be cut off from my own source of life, becoming no longer an independent stock but a dependent branch. This is no new doctrine, we find it throughout the Bible. Adam found severance from the life of God by disobedience, a life of independence and sin, and we can only find the life of God by a complete severance from the life of self and sin.
Having parted with its own life and being grafted into the life of the Vine by the Husbandman, there takes place a double union. The bleeding of the parent stock goes to form an outer coating by which the graft is structurally united to the vine, teaching us that our very need fastens upon God’s fulness and unites us to Him. Then as the sap of the vine rises and presses upward to its farthest shoots, it gradually supersedes the sap of the old life that was failing. This is a beautiful picture of the Spirit’s working, bringing the life of Christ into every part and thus excluding the old. This spiritual sap is the life of God flowing through the Son and being made our own by the Holy Spirit.
What a wonderful fulfilment of our Saviour’s prayer, ‘“That all of them may be one, Father, just as You are in Me and I am in You. May they also be in Us . . . I in them, and You in me. May they be brought to complete unity” (John 17 v21 & 23).
“This is life eternal that they may know You”. Within, as the life-giving force of the soul. Within, a fountain springing up into everlasting life. Within, the sap of the Tree of Life in the midst of the Paradise of God. Within, God Himself, the purging, quickening, fruit-bearing life. Dependent life, branch life, is the limitless, more abundant life of God.
One life, one nature (2 Pet. 1 v4). To be partakers of Christ (Heb. 3 v14) is to have the nature of Christ made to grow within us by the Holy Spirit. A nature that is perfect and right and pure and good. By becoming partakers of His holiness, fruit unto God becomes natural and easy. But we cannot have the nature of God apart from the person of Christ. It is for this that the power of the Highest works in the soul until Christ is formed in us, the hope of glory (Luke 1 v35, Col. 1 v27). “I in them and You in Me, that they may be perfected in one”.
If one in Christ, then all the life of Christ must displace my fallen nature, changing me continually in desire and will to the mind and heart of God. It is God’s will to free us from the law of sin and to rule and direct us that we may enter into the liberty of the glory of the sons of God.
If one in life and nature, so also one in fruit. The source being the same, the fruit must also be the same. Fruit for God proceeds from God. Spiritual fruit is the product of the Holy Spirit.
To depend is to hang onto another, to live at the expense of another, a pauper as regards one’s own ability and powers, but a life of abundant fruitfulness as regards God. We must depend for all or nothing, as self-dependence will interrupt the blessed inflow of God’s fulness, and grieve the Holy One.
The branch is never so active as when wholly dependent on the Vine, drawing all from Christ, but we will never depend upon Him until we accept our own powerlessness. Dependence is not the mere acknowledgement of weakness but the resting upon His strength and qualities. It is to be flung onto God, and though “lame on both our feet”, yet to “‘eat continually at the King’s table” (2 Sam. 9 v13).
The union of every branch is a union of absolute surrender. It is a surrender to receive all, to draw on and use the all of God. No longer to limit His working in and through us, but to accept all that He gives and never to hinder the mighty inflow of His Spirit.
God unfolds to us the mystery of this abiding, “I in you, and you in Me” (John 15 v4-7). As the life-sap rises and flows through the smallest branch, so His Word (v7), His joy (v11), His life, He Himself abides in us, and as we, as a branch, abide in His love (v9-10) through keeping His commandments, He abides in us.
To abide is to stay in the same place, to remain in the same attitude, in the stillness of trust and the patience of hope. It is to cease from self-effort and to enter into His rest (Heb. 4 v10). To both hope and quietly wait for the Lord, yielding to all the discipline of the pruning knife. Being open to all the action of the sap, to be fully absorbed into the Vine, ignoring oneself. It is to rest, to take no thought of one’s own life or fruitfulness, but to seek the rule of God through every fibre of our being (Matt. 6 v28-33).
I do not abide by self-effort, seeking to bear some small fruit by my own ability, but rather by abiding I become fruitful. The natural result of abiding is fruitfulness. The Husbandman works to make every branch that abides fruitful. In the True Vine, every soul that has been cut off from its own life and grafted into Christ, shares in the one life of God, living a life of dependent abiding, responsive to all God’s dealings. Such a branch shall not fail in bearing fruit, more fruit, much fruit. Fruit, not works; growth, not effort; the blossoming and development of the abundant life. This is the fruit of the Spirit rather than the works of the fallen nature (Gal. 5 v19-23).
“Herein is my Father glorified, that you bear much fruit, so shall you be My disciples” (John 15 v8).