“I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit, for without Me you can do nothing.” John 15:5
There is no doubt that the highest calling of man by God is to know fellowship, or communion with the Father and the Son, by the Spirit. When Adam fell, the most grievous part of the result was not God’s judgment upon sin, and the suffering which resulted. It was the “separation” from God, the “dying” of the spirit, that very window of the soul by which God reveals Himself to the heart. When God told Adam that he would die if he ate of the “tree of the knowledge of good and evil” in the Garden of Eden, He was speaking of the greatest cataclysmic event that man, created in the image of God, would experience, for by that act and the fulfillment of God’s word concerning it, man would die spiritually. God would become a dead thing, or person to him. The intimate, profound, and true knowledge of the life of God would no longer flow freely through his spirit, soul, and body. There would be an eternal separation between the life of God and the soul of man. It would have forever remained like this were it not for God’s provision, declared from the time of Adam’s sojourn in the Garden of Eden until this day. That sole, unique, perfect and eternal provision was His only begotten Son, the Beloved of His heart. Only by the shed blood of Christ on the cross of Calvary, the evidence and means by which all the sins of men could be forgiven and removed, would man be afforded the opportunity in this life to appeal to the mercy of God, and receive grace from Him to repent of his sins, trust wholly in the perfect bearer of sins,” the Lamb of God, which takes away the sin of the world. That sacrifice given because of the love of God for the whole world, would be the only and sufficient response and provision of God for the salvation of man from sins, his sin nature, Satan, and the world. It would be after the resurrection of Christ, that the Spirit of God would be poured out upon all flesh, the provision made available to all men, whereby Christ would enter the hearts of believers by His Spirit, there to dwell, reign, and fill with his Life. The way had been made, established for time and eternity, whereby every individual man, could be reconciled to God, restored to communion with Him, and know the reality of Christ’s life within the spirit, soul, and body by the Spirit. The great purpose of the sacrifice of Christ, the message of it revealed in the Gospels by the Spirit, was to give Life to a lifeless soul. That Life was the very Life of Christ by the Spirit. Thus, the call comes ringing out and down the centuries to this very day, calling men to see and embrace the fact of the believer’s union with Christ, Christ being the eternal VINE, and every believer being a branch of that Vine, having been grafted into it, there to receive the Life-giving sap from the Vine. The Life is one and the same today, for Christ is one, as is God the Father and Holy Spirit. The placing of the believer into living union with Jesus Christ is the very act of salvation, for in that act the Life of Christ by His Spirit comes into the heart, there to reveal Himself by the fruits of His life increasingly revealed.
So, what is the believer to do? He is first to give thanks to God for such a great salvation, one where not only sins are forgiven, and the wrath of God has been replaced by His peace, but where God the Father, and the Son, can be known eternally by means of the Holy Spirit. We are to set our lives in Christ, faithfully deriving all from Christ.
Dear Father, Strengthen us to abide. In Jesus’ name, Amen.