Benito Z. Swu
When Jesus said, “I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener,” we are assured that Jesus is our source. And yet our lackluster faith usually betrays the source. We estimate our difficulty in the light of our own resources and thus attempt very little, and no wonder, they fail. To become fruitful, we have to tap into the right source.
The Book has told us that we have potential for fruitful living not only because of our source which is the vine, but because of who is our care, and that is the Father Himself. The Father who is the gardener and therefore the owner. And we all know that, ownership makes all the difference. A piece of rust covered junk of a machine, which we see as fit only for scrap, could be seen as a machine with possibilities in the eyes of the owner.
The potential for becoming fruitful remains only in partnership because it is written, “As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, so neither can you unless you abide in Me.” The theology of thinking that righteousness is in the isolation of what is perceived as right, can never be right, because there is no partnership and therefore no fruitfulness in it.Our potential for fruitful living is great because Jesus, the son of God, is our source. The fact the God is our caretaker and owner adds even more to that potential. And one of the thing made known to us, and which God does as the gardener, is to purge us. His purging greatly increases our potential for fruitful living. It is written, “Every branch that bears fruit, He prunes it so that it may bear more fruit.” Obviously, He knows that if He doesn’t cut back the dead wood, all of our resources will go towards producing more wood and not fruits.
Again, we are made seen of our potential for fruitfulness when we are told, “If you abide or remain in me and My words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.” Here we can make study of two observations. Firstly, the saying is clearly conditional: if we abide in Him. Secondly, our asking needs to be according to his word. This points to the fact that if we abide in him, our delight will be in him, so much that we will ask all things according to his will. It is the same as the Scripture verse which says, “Delight yourself in the Lord, and He will give you the desires of your heart.” Delight comes before desire. If we delight, what we delight in, determines what we desire. If we delight in God, our desire will be to do things according to his will, and to ask according to His will. We cannot, and should not try to make this principle work in reverse.
It has been said that, it is only when we live by the right principles that we begin to love the right principles. Most of the time we, of course, want to love first. We want to fall in love with what is right and then have it happen to us. That’s backward – it is when we learn what’s right and live according to it that we begin to want to be right.
