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“YOU ARE THE BRANCHES” (John 15 v5).

By Andrew Murray.


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 and there it lives and grows and in due time bears fruit. It has no responsibility except to receive from the root and stem, sap and nourishment, and if we, by the Holy Spirit, fully experienced this relationship with Jesus Christ, our vine, our work would be changed into a wonderful thing. Instead of there being weariness or exhaustion our work would be a new experience linking us to Jesus, but too often our work comes between us and Jesus. 

Many labourers in the vineyard have complained that there is too much work and no time for close communion with Jesus, and that the work weakens the inclination for prayer and that contact with others darkens the spiritual life. It’s a sad thought that the bearing of fruit should separate the branch from the vine because we have looked upon our work as something other than the branch bearing fruit.

The Branch Life.

Branch life is a life of absolute dependence. The branch has nothing, it depends upon the vine for everything. If we could only learn every moment of the day to depend upon God for everything. Let every bunch of grapes remind us that it was absolutely dependent on the vine, and so should we be on Jesus. The vine had the work to do and the branches had to depend upon the vine and receive what it gave in order to produce fruit. I need to understand that when I have got to work, when I have to preach a sermon or address a Bible class or to go out to visit, the responsibility for the work is Christ’s. That is exactly what Christ wants us to understand. Christ wants us to realize that all our work must rest upon the foundation that He cares for everything. 

And how does He meet the trust of that dependence? He does it by sending down the Holy Spirt, not now and then as a special gift, for remember the relationship between the vine and the branches is such that hourly, daily, unceasingly, the living connection is maintained. The sap does not flow for a time and then stop, and then flow again, but from moment to moment the sap flows from the vine to the branches. And just so, our Lord Jesus wants us to take that blessed position as a worker, and hour by hour, day by day and step by step, in every work we have to do, to abide in Him, in the simple utter helplessness of one who knows nothing and is nothing and can do nothing. 

If I am something then God is not everything, but when I become nothing God can become all, and the everlasting God, in Christ, can reveal Himself fully. Oh to become nothing, to become poorer and lower and more helpless that Christ may work in us. Absolute dependence upon God is the secret of all power in work. The branch has nothing but what it gets from the vine, and we can have nothing but what we receive from Jesus. 

Secondly the life of the branch is not only a life of entire dependence but of deep restfulness. The first thing we need is to come and rest in the Lord Jesus. If we would be a true branch of Christ, the Living Vine, we must rest on Him, and let Christ bear the responsibility.

The Lord Jesus wants to work through us. If we feel a lack of fervent love, it will come from Jesus. He will give the divine love into our hearts with which we can love those around us. That is the meaning of the assurance, “God has poured out His love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit”, and of that other word “Christ’s love compels us”. Christ can give us a fountain of love so that we cannot help loving the most wretched, and  ungrateful of those who have wearied us in the past. Rest in Christ, who can give wisdom and strength, and that restfulness will often prove to be the very best part of our message.

A third thought. The branch teaches a lesson of much fruitfulness. The Lord Jesus repeated the word fruit often in the parable. He spoke first of fruit, then of more fruit and then of much fruit. Yes, we are chosen not only to bear fruit but to bear much fruit, “This is to My Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit”. In the first place Christ said, “I am the Vine and My Father is the Gardener”. My Father is the Gardener who has charge of Me and you. He is the one who will watch over the connection between Christ and the branches, and it is in the power of God, through Christ, that we are to bear fruit.

We would agree that there is a great deal of work, a great deal of preaching,  teaching and visiting, a great deal of earnest effort of every kind, but there is often not much manifestation of the power of God in it. Why? Because there is lacking the close connection between the worker and the heavenly Vine. Christ, the heavenly Vine, has blessings that He could pour on tens of thousands who are perishing. Christ, the heavenly Vine, has power to provide the heavenly grapes, but “you are the branches”, and we cannot bear heavenly fruit unless we are in close connection with Jesus Christ. Do not mistake work for fruit. There may be much work done for Christ that is not the fruit of the heavenly Vine. Do not seek for work only. Fruit bearing means the very life and power, the very Spirit and love within the heart of the Son of God, it means the heavenly Vine Himself coming into our hearts.

Stand in close connection with the heavenly Vine and say, ‘Lord Jesus, nothing less than the sap that flows through You, nothing less than the Spirit of Your divine life is what we ask. Lord Jesus, we pray, let Your Spirit flow through us in all our work for You’.

The Holy Spirit is the life of the heavenly Vine, and what we must receive from Christ is a strong inflow of the Holy Spirit. Do not expect Christ to give a bit of strength here and a bit of blessing there, and a bit of help over there. As the vine does its work in giving its own peculiar sap to the branch, so expect Christ to give His own Holy Spirit into our hearts, and then we will bear much fruit. And if we have only begun to bear fruit, and are listening to the word of Christ in the parable, “more fruit”, “much fruit”, remember that in order that we can bear more fruit we just require more of Jesus in our life and heart. Seek today to understand that the life of the branch is a life of much fruit, because it is a life rooted in Christ, the living, heavenly Vine.

A fourth thought. The life of the branch is a life of close communion. The word that Christ used was “remain”. Our life is to be a ‘remaining life’. It is to be just like the branch in the vine. There the branches in close communion, in unbroken communion with the vine from January to December. We may have ten hours hard work daily during which our brain has to be occupied with things of every-day life. God orders it so. But the abiding work is the work of the heart, not of the brain, the work of the heart, clinging to and resting in Jesus, a work in which the Holy Spirit links us to Christ Jesus. Deeper down than the brain, deep down in the inner life we can abide in Christ, so that every moment we are free the consciousness will come, ‘Blessed Jesus I am still in You’.

And my last thought. The life of the branch is one of entire surrender. What is meant by entire surrender? It means that just as literally as Christ was given up entirely to God, I must be given up entirely to Christ. Just as Christ entirely and absolutely gave up His life to do nothing but seek the Father’s pleasure and depend on the Father absolutely and entirely, so I am to do nothing but to seek to do the pleasure of Christ. Christ Jesus came to breathe His own Spirit into us to make us find our very highest happiness in living entirely for God, just as He did, so that day by day Christ may be able to do with us as He will. We who have been bought with the blood of Christ, have been bought to live day by day with the one thought, ‘How can I please my Master?’

Our relationship to Jesus ought to be such that we are entirely at His disposal, and every day come to Him, humbly and straight forwardly and say, ‘Lord is there anything in me that is not according to Your will, that has not been ordered by You or that is not entirely given up to You?’ If we would wait patiently there would spring up a relationship between us and Christ so close and so tender that we should be amazed. The branch calls us to entire surrender. Bring every thing into relationship with Jesus, let our surrender to Christ be entire.

Jesus says, “I am the Vine, you are the branches”. ‘I am the living One who has so completely given Myself to you. I am the Vine, you cannot trust Me too much. I am the Almighty Worker, full of divine power and you are My branches. I will receive you and draw you to Myself, I will bless you, I will strengthen you, I will fill you with my Spirit. Come, surrender yourself entirely to Me’. 

This is life in Him.


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