85 - How to Know You're in Fellowship

Spiritual Life: Abiding in Christ; Joy

We have seen in this chapter that Jesus is using the imagery of the grape vine to indicate the principle of remaining in fellowship with Him—abiding in Him. Walking by means of the Spirit is the term that Paul uses; they are comparable to one another. When Jesus talks about abiding in Him what He means is to remain in fellowship with Him. Abide is the Greek word MENO [menw] meaning to remain, to stay with, to abide, to continue, and it indicates being in active, continuous relationship with our Lord. Secondly, we saw the term "in Me" which differs from the Pauline term "in Christ; they are not the same. "In Christ" is a judicial tem referring to our position in Christ which takes place at the instant of salvation when we are identified with Christ in His death, burial and resurrection, a doctrine known as positional truth. "In Me" is used by the apostle John to describe close relationship. So it is a fellowship term, not a judicial term. Putting all of that together, what we see in this passage is that growth in the Christian life, which is the unique spiritual life in this Church Age is uniquely based on the believer's day to day relationship with Jesus Christ. Jesus said, "Without Me you can do nothing." We must continuously abide in Him. The next thing we have noticed is that the necessary condition for growth and production in the Christian life is abiding in Christ. We need to make the observation that in this John 15 passage we have the command to abide in Christ. This is the necessary condition for producing fruit. Production in the Christian life is the result of abiding in Christ. In Galatians chapter 5 we see that the necessary condition for producing the fruit of the Spirit was walking by means of the Holy Spirit. That produces fruit. It becomes obvious that in biblical terminology the concept of abiding in Christ is comparable/synonymous with walking with God the Holy Spirit. That in itself is instructive of what is involved in this. It is not only a relationship with the Holy Spirit—defined as the filling of the Spirit in some passages; walking by the Spirit in others—but here in John 15 it is abiding in Christ.

There is a claim that abiding really means faith, believing in Christ as saviour. Assuming that to be true for the sake of argument, if abiding is equivalent to walking that would mean that belief in Christ as saviour would have to be equivalent to walking. Since it is clear that walking by the Spirit is a spiritual life concept and not a salvation concept it shows that it is false to make abiding equivalent to belief. This is an important argument to show that abiding cannot mean belief, it has to mean spiritual life fellowship, not justification faith. We have seen that abiding in Christ is accomplished by walking by means of God the Holy Spirit. So the Christian life is a unique life, a supernaturally empowered life, empowered by God the Holy Spirit. We have seen that failure to abide in Christ means that we are a failure in the spiritual life, we are useless to Christ, and discarded in divine discipline and the sin unto death. It doesn't mean that we lose our salvation but that we become useless in God's plan.

In the spiritual life what we have is the Holy Spirit operating to help us learn doctrine. He stores it in our memory and reminds us of the doctrine that is there. So when we go through life and have to make a decision where we can apply doctrine or not apply doctrine, the Holy Spirit brings to our memory that doctrine stored in our minds. He reminds us. Now we have a decision to make. It becomes clear what the issues are and we have to decide whether to apply doctrine or not. In the decision to apply doctrine we have "opened the gate", as it were, and what happens on the other side is that the Holy Spirit takes that doctrinal decision you have made to apply doctrine and uses that to strengthen your soul. It then produces endurance and develops toward spiritual maturity so that you can eventually, as you reach maturity, produce fruit. That is the dynamic. The Holy Spirit helps the believer learn doctrine, helps understand it, stores it in the memory, brings it to his consciousness where the appropriate doctrine can be recalled. The believer makes the decision, and then on the other side, after the decision is made, the Holy Spirit uses that to strengthen the soul—called edification in the Scriptures. It produces endurance, maturity, and production in the spiritual life.

In verses 7-12 we see that there are three benefits to abiding. The first is that abiding in Christ is necessary for a successful prayer life. A successful prayer life does not mean that prayers are always answered the way we want them to be answered. A successful prayer life is defined as a prayer life that gets your petition heard at the throne of grace. If you are out of fellowship your prayers aren't going to be heard, so you are unsuccessful in making your petition. Verse 7 – "If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, as whatever you wish, and it shall be done for you." The "if" is a 3rd class condition, indicating it is a conditional clause—EAN MEINETE [e)an meinhte], "If you abide in me, maybe you will and maybe you will not." It is up to your volition. This is pure contingency and emphasizes the importance of the believer's volition as to his continuation and growth in the spiritual life. He has to exercise his volition and the Holy Spirit will do the rest.

Two conditions are given in this verse for answered prayer. The first is the believer's fellowship with Christ: "If you abide in me." But it is not enough to simply be in fellowship, to confess your sins and be in fellowship. There is one other condition, and this is knowledge of doctrine. His Word is to abide in us. Now if to abide means continuous relationship it means that there is something going on dynamically in the mentality of our soul in relationship to the Word of God. It is not just a sitting down and passively learning doctrine in Bible class. There is a learning process that goes on, and once you have acquired the information, the GNOSIS [gnwsij], the academic knowledge, then there is meditation and contemplation on the doctrine, your volition is engaged again so that it become EPIGNOSIS [e)pignwsij] (you believe it), and then you apply it. Your thinking is renovated, transformed. You exchange the old way of thinking for the new way of thinking. So the two conditions are fellowship with Christ and knowledge of doctrine. You have to have some doctrine to be able to know what to pray for and what not to pray for. The first condition emphasizes being in fellowship and it reminds us of the passage in the Old Testament: "If I regard iniquity in my heart the Lord will not hear me." We must be in fellowship with Him. We see from this that the believer is to maintain an ongoing relationship with Jesus Christ if he is going to have his prayers heard. Also, the believer has to maintain an ongoing relationship with Bible doctrine, with the Word of God, if he is going to have his prayers heard. If you don't know what God says, you don't know anything about what to pray for. Third, believer is to maintain an ongoing relationship with God the Holy Spirit—Galatians 5:16. In some sense these are all synonymous, there is an overlapping with all of them. If the believer is not walking by the Spirit then he is living according to the sin nature and that means that he is regarding iniquity in the heart; therefore prayers go unheard and unanswered. The idea of abiding is continuous relationship.

The main verb here is the aorist middle imperative, second person plural of AITEO [a)itew], meaning to ask or to request. The plural He is talking to is specifically the eleven disciples. He may be talking through them to all Church Age believers but primarily He is talking to the eleven. He is telling them that there is a mission that is about to be accomplished and about to be delegated to them to go out and scatter throughout the world carrying the gospel. If they are going to be successful in that they have to maintain an intimate fellowship with the Lord, and this will be revealed in their prayer life. There is a parallel passage to this in 1 John 5:14-15 and it utilizes the same verb. The phrase "according to His will" is His revealed will, consistent with all the mandates, prohibitions, directions and procedures that God has outlined in the Scriptures. Because we know that we are consistently praying according to these principles in the Scriptures we know that He hears us. The issue in applying this particular principle is that we need to understand the Word of God. The better we understand the Word of God, the more we let the Word of God dwell in us, the more we will be able to ask consistent with His revealed will. The only way that we can know His will is to assimilate the doctrine into our souls so that we are thinking as Christ thinks. That way we can evaluate the circumstances based on doctrine and then pray accordingly.

Conclusion: To have an effective prayer life we must stay in fellowship with the Holy Spirit, and we must fill up our souls (saturate our thinking) with Bible doctrine. The result of that eventually is fruit production.

The second result of abiding is glorification of God, John 15:8. This is the goal of the spiritual life. God's will, plan and purpose is for Him to be glorified in the angelic conflict. "My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit." The main verb here is DOXAZO [doxazw], aorist passive indicative indicating past tense, but it is a future aorist indicating the certainty of the action in the future. So it is viewed as a past tense. It means to glorify or to honour someone. We honour God when we show respect for Him in terms of the angelic conflict by producing fruit. But we don't produce the fruit, it is the Holy Spirit who produces the fruit in us. What we do is focus upon abiding in Christ, walking by the Spirit, staying in fellowship, learning doctrine; then eventually it is the Holy Spirit who produces the fruit. It is the fruit that is the basis for glory.

Notice: Verse 2 talks about fruit, then more fruit. Here in verse 8 it is "much fruit." There are three different stages of Christian adulthood manifested here: those who produce fruit, those who produce more fruit, and those who produce much fruit. The difference is related to abiding in Christ, but the goal is to produce fruit. A plant doesn't produce fruit until it reaches maturity, so we have to go through that growth stage from infancy to maturity before fruit appears and begins to be produced. 1 Peter 2:2—Peter caught the message that it in only by feeding the sheep that growth is produced. That is the focus of the pastor; that was the focus of the apostolic ministry. It is only through the nourishment of doctrine that we can grow and mature in the spiritual life.

"… and so prove to be My disciples" – the verb is the aorist passive of GINOMAI [ginomai], which can mean to become. The NASB translation "prove" is a translator's interpretation, maybe because he thought the passage deals with salvation. A disciple does not necessarily mean a believer but a believer who is advancing to spiritual maturity. The word for "disciple," MATHETES [maqhthj] means a learner, a student. This passage should be" "that you will become disciples." It is talking about spiritual maturity, not proof but the fact that you will become a mature disciple through bearing much fruit—the evidence of discipleship.

Abiding in Christ is necessary to be the beneficiary of God's personal love for the believer. God will still exercise impersonal love toward the carnal believer, but not as he will an advancing believer. You have to be in fellowship, filled with the Spirit, abiding in Christ, in order to be a beneficiary of God's personal love. This is measured through objective standards. Verses 9, 10: the Scripture gives us a criterion for measuring how well we love the Lord. "As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you: continue ye in my love." Here He is viewing them, not simply as believers in terms of impersonal love because the Father does not have impersonal love toward the Son. Why? Because the Son is perfect righteousness. Impersonal love is that which we exercise toward someone who may be, at the time, offensive to us, obnoxious to us, not doing what we want, but we are still going to do what is best for them. It is unconditional love. The Father does not have that kind of love for the Son because they are in perfect harmony, perfect fellowship, perfect intimacy. Here he is viewing the disciples as abiding disciples, at that point. The pattern is the Son's relationship to the Father. Jesus Christ has set the precedent for the spiritual life, so "abiding in My love," therefore, indicates relationship. It indicates the relationship of the believer to our saviour. The standard is given in verse 10. "If [3rd class condition: maybe yes, maybe no] keep my commandments." These are all the mandates and prohibitions given in the Scriptures for the spiritual life of the believer. How do we know if we love the Lord? It is measured by obedience. 

The next thing we notice is that abiding in Christ continually results in the completion of divine joy, verse 11, "…so that your joy may be made full." The word "full" is from PLEROO [plhrow] which indicates in this context something that is filled up or brought to completion—"so that your joy may be filled up." It indicates that there is a progressive nature here to joy. "These things" refers to doctrine; "that I have spoken to you, that My joy may be in you." This tells us that joy is not emotion. The joy that Jesus is talking about is based upon learning certain principles and looking at life in a certain way, and responding to situations in life based upon those principles.

The doctrine of joy

1. Joy, CHARA [xara], is the biblical term for the inner stability, contentment and tranquility which belongs to God and is bequeathed to men, and is radically different from human happiness.
2. Human happiness is based on circumstances, people and emotion. Believers and unbelievers cam all have human happiness.
3. The joy of Christ is based upon the internal absolutes of God's character and His plan, not on people circumstances and emotions.
4. In terms of His own character God's joy is related to His own attributes/essence. For example, joy is related to God's eternality. God is eternal life. That means that God always has had maximum joy, so it never is dependent on the successes or failures of His creatures. It has always been the same, it does not increase or diminish. Joy is related to His immutability, which means that it never increases or  diminishes. It is related to His omniscience. From all eternity He has known all the knowable, so our successes and failures have never shaken His happiness.
5. Therefore in eternity past God determined in the counsel of divine decrees to share His joy with mankind. That is the plan of salvation. This meant that if joy is related to His mental attitude, His omniscience, His knowledge, that He must first share His thinking with mankind. 1 Corinthians 2:16 tells us that we have the mind of Christ, the thinking of Christ. So the way to have the joy of Christ is to appropriate His thinking.
6. The basis for true joy, then, in this life begins at the cross. It is impossible for an unbeliever to have this kind of joy, tranquility and stability. At the cross the believer does not get it all, only the potential. It is based upon growth, based on the assimilation of doctrine and abiding in Christ. Psalm 51:12—"the joy of salvation" is the starting point. Through carnality David had lost the joy that he had from his salvation.
7. Human happiness is always based upon transitory circumstances, the superficial, temporary, an unable to sustain through times of adversity. What sustains is the doctrine in the believer's soul, not the religious experiences that are misinterpreted.
8. The key to maintaining divine joy is to make the spiritual life the highest priority in life. John 15:11 ^NASB "These things I have spoken to you so that My joy may be in you, and {that} your joy may be made full. It is related to the "these things," the Bible doctrine that Jesus taught. . We have to make our relationship with Jesus Christ which is based on knowledge of doctrine the highest priority in life. That is the only way that we can abide in Christ.
9. The joy is the by-product of abiding—application of doctrine. We make the decision to abide, to walk by means of the Spirit, to apply doctrine. It is God the Holy Spirit Who produces the fruit in our life. This is the by-product of application of doctrine.