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Life and Godliness, Part 1

September 9, 2026 at 10:36 AM 6 comments

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John 15 is the famous chapter in which Jesus points to Himself as the Vine, the true and only Source of life and godliness for all believers. Without Him we are nothing. Often even with Him, we fail to rise to what God fully wants for us.

“I am the true vine, and My Father is the vinedresser.” (John 15:1 NKJV)

In John 15:1, Jesus directly and clearly states that He is the true vine and implies that without Him, there is no life or godliness. It is important to understand that Jesus is speaking to believers here, not unbelievers. This is key to grasping the truth of John 15.

Because Jesus is the giver of life and helps believers live godly lives, the natural question arises for the believer whether or not they can actually be “cut off” and destroyed in the fire? This has led many to erroneously believe that salvation, once given, can be removed or lost. This is completely untrue biblically, yet the false narrative continues to exist today.

In truly understanding what Jesus is saying here, we conclude that not only can salvation not be lost, but it is the duty of each and every believer to look to Jesus continually for life and to live godly lives in this world. The other problem here is seen within the Lordship Salvation (LS) camp where living the Christian life is often seen as do this, don’t do that, feel this, don’t feel that, etc. It is putting the cart before the horse in my opinion. While yes, Christians are to live a certain way, LS makes it seem like we are to do it and God will help us get there, but they seem to leave out one very large component, which we will get to.

Note Jesus also says that His Father is the Vinedresser. It is extremely important to understand and not gloss over this truth. We need to discern His meaning and what that meaning says not only about God the Father, but His demeanor toward believers. In other words, it is clearly the Father’s job to work in and through the believer to produce fruitfulness in that believer. Without the Father operating in our lives to fine tune, prune and produce fruit, there would be little life or godliness in us, period.

Many believers are surprised to learn that God himself is responsible for, and deeply committed to, their spiritual growth. They have been told that they are responsible and that they must make a commitment to grow, as if that were possible. What a relief to discover that your salvation and security rest on God’s faithfulness, not yours, and that “he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ” (Php. 1:6).[1]

Note the above. Those within the Lordship Salvation (LS) camp tell us that it is our responsibility for our spiritual growth as though God has nothing to do with it. In my opinion, it is a mistaken understanding of how believers grow and what our responsibility is in the matter.

Verse 2 provides more detail and insight and also creates a concern for many believers.

Every branch in Me that does not bear fruit He takes away; and every branch that bears fruit He prunes, that it may bear more fruit. (John 15:2)

This is an interesting verse here and please notice that it is God the Father who has the responsibility for our growth. Unfortunately, due to one reason or another, the translation from the original language to English gives a different impression than what is actually meant. When Jesus states “every branch,” He is clearly once again talking about believers. Only believers united with Christ are said to be “branches.”

The next part of the first phrase – “does not bear fruit He takes away” – is a bit problematic due to the translation. It seems to indicate that if a believer is not bearing fruit in his/her life, then God the Father has the option of removing that branch (from life itself), in punishment. In reality, the original languages provide a slightly different slant on the meaning. The phrase “He takes away,” is more accurately translated, “He takes up.” So what does that mean?

In viticulture, a branch connected to the vine that’s lying on the ground in the dirt, would be lifted off the ground so that it cannot send out roots of its own into the ground.

The original verb airō means “to lift or take up.” It can also mean “take away,” but “take up” fits the context. Vinedressers don’t cut off unfruitful branches as doing so would harm the vine. Instead, unfruitful branches are lifted out of the dirt so they cannot take root and grow independently. They are raised and trellised so that their only source of life remains the vine.[2]

Many believers tend to live their lives with at least one foot in the world. They are actually “in the dirt,” developing their own source of life that impedes their spiritual progress in Christ. Those believers (and we’ve all done it!), tend to draw life from the world around them instead of depending upon Jesus, the True Vine, the true source of life and godliness. Here is a link to more reading on this subject of God taking/lifting up the branches that are lying on the ground.[3]

Please also note in the last portion of John 15:2, that believers do not produce fruit. We bear the fruit that God produces in and through us. Understanding this should actually take a huge load off of us. Christ can only produce fruit in us when we continue to abide in Him. Abiding means continuing to seek fellowship. It is the difference between living for Jesus and living in Jesus. Does that make sense? Becoming a believer means coming into union with Jesus. We learn to be mindful of His Presence within us through the indwelling Holy Spirit. It is this union that produces fruit that we bear. Those believers who are not mindful of our union with Jesus are often too enamored and involved in things of this world. They lose sight of the fact that He lives within us and seeks to produce fruit in us that we bear.

We need to understand that the fruit Jesus speaks of is the fruit of the Spirit that Paul outlines to the Galatians in Galatians 5:22 (love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness). We cannot create that within us. We can do things that might outwardly seem to be those things, but the reality is found within our hearts. Do we actually love as He loves? Are we filled with a joy that only He provides? Do we exercise a supernatural peace or patience in difficult circumstances? Are we kind, good and faithful as Jesus is?

If you’re like me, I’ve tried to put those things on, at least what I think they look or feel like. The problem is that I’m using self-effort to achieve what I think that fruit looks like. In reality, what I’m doing is a poor representation of what Jesus actually provides and produces within. The more I understand, comprehend and realize that I am “in Christ,” the more I will take each and every situation and give it to Him so that He can work in and through me regarding that situation. That is my job as a believer – to go to Him in submission regarding each and every situation in my life. My job is not to try to create a reasonable facsimile of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness or faithfulness. If I try, my efforts may fool some folks and even myself into thinking I’m loving, full of joy, patient, kind, good or faithful, when in reality, these things created by my self-effort are anathema to God. They do not actually create in me what only God can create and my efforts do not bring Him glory.

Here’s the point: the New Testament is filled with commands about how we should live, correct? Paul says we should work out our salvation with fear and trembling (Philippians 2:12). In other writings, he point blank tells believers how they are to live, what they are to do, how they should think and speak. The problem with these commands is that we think we need to pull ourselves up by our boot straps and just “get to work” or “get busy” doing those things that we are commanded to do. NO! We cannot create or produce what only God can produce. We bear that fruit that He creates within us. And the only way that He can produce this fruit is when we come to Him confessing that we cannot produce what He wants within ourselves. THAT is our daily job. We must understand that while we want that fruit in our lives, we cannot achieve it by putting SELF in gear and expecting SELF to create what only God can create.

God will do whatever He needs to do in the life of the believer to unhitch us from the world so that we learn to focus on Him and Him alone. He will “lift” or “take us up” from lying on the dirt so that we do not become thoroughly ensconced in the world’s ways so that we gain motivation from the world around us. God wants us to focus completely on Him, so He will remove us from those things that want to become our gods.

In John 15:2, when Jesus speaks of pruning unfruitful branches, He means that He will remove sucker shoots, which serve no purpose except to drain life from a person. Please look at the photo here. You can see a space of dirt in the grass. That dirt used to have a tree in it that had been topped years ago from a tornado that came through. It also was likely struck by lightning because the bottom portion of the trunk was hollowed out and blackened. We had the tree removed because if it fell over onto our well house, it would have resulted in thousands of dollars worth of damage to repair things.

After the tree was cut down, we had the same company grind the stump so that it was down to the dirt. Please notice though that even though the tree does not exist anymore, the root ball (or vine, if you will), keeps sending out sucker shoots in an effort to grow another tree. I have to spray those sucker shoots with weed killer that will eventually get to the root ball and kill that root ball. It will eventually stop sending out sucker branches and you can see how many and how far those sucker shoots extend on top of the ground.

Every believer has sucker shoots that God must deal with and sometimes that loving discipline/chastisement does not feel good. But the purpose is so that our focus will again be placed on God alone. He knows of course that as He turns our focus and attention back toward Him, we will become more submissive and knowingly connected to the vine (root ball). Every time an issue or circumstance comes my way, I can do several things. First, I can ignore it and try to push through it. Second, I can try to create within myself what I think God wants me to create. Third, I can go to Him in prayer asking that He will provide an answer and a godly demeanor to the situation. Most of the time I do either the first or second. I try to imitate what I think should be my response. That’s nuts because I’m only trying to produce something that I think will bring Him glory when in fact, He actually wants me to give it to Him and let Him create what only He can create (fruit), so that I simply bear what He creates.

You are already clean because of the word which I have spoken to you. (John 15:3)

Here, Jesus is once again pointing out that believers are already clean. Why? Because we have received His Words by faith in Him and His life and death on our behalf. That was totally by faith. We believed Him and it was counted for us as righteousness. Yet, too often, we try to live out our Christian lives using our own strength to produce something we cannot produce. From the very moment we believed Jesus, He cleansed us from unrighteousness (Hebrews 10:2, 1 John 1:7, 9).

We cannot make ourselves clean. Only God can do that and He does that when He sees faith in Him within the life of the believer. We are clean because of God’s Word. What is His Word? It is Jesus Himself, the very Word of God (John 1:1).

Are you tired of trying to live the Christian life? Are you tired of attempting to produce the fruit that you know God wants to see in you? You get frustrated because of all the effort you put into living the Christian life. You hear sermons and read books on just how to live it and what believers are to do so that God is pleased with us. Within the Lordship Salvation (LS) camp, it seems to me that the major emphasis is only SELF. We are always looking to SELF to see if we are doing things correctly.

Instead, we should be ignoring SELF and looking to Jesus, the Author and Finisher of our faith (Hebrews 2:12). If we focus on what we are doing or attempting to do, we will be defeated from the start. Anything we do will be done through self-effort. The more we focus on Jesus, our union with Him and His power within us to produce fruit (that we cannot produce), the more we will see streams of living water rise up from within us. Those streams will actually carry us along in living the way we ought to live. The effort will seem minimal because we are living in the energy of the Holy Spirit, versus trying to live the Christian life from our own strength.

I’ll be back next time with the second part of this in dealing with John 15 and what it means to abide in Jesus for life and godliness and I want to look at two incidents from the life of King Hezekiah to show what I’m talking about regarding walking with the Lord in an attitude of submission. Join me then.

[1] https://thegracecommentary.com/john-15/

[2] Ibid

[3] https://escapetoreality.org/2018/05/02/are-unfruitful-branches-lifted-up/

Entry filed under: christianity, Religious - Christian - Prophecy, Religious - Christian - Theology, salvation, sanctification. Tags: abide in christ.