Thread by @ThomasCoutouzis

1/ Just reading through John 15 this morning. There is so much packed into that passage.

Christ makes a distinction between His children and those who conform to the world who are children of Satan. He makes it clear that He is the true vine and like any vine...

2/...the branches on it cannot bear fruit apart from Him. "Fruit" denoting those who have been saved by His grace and made into a new creation and it is God who bears the fruit through them. The Christian is a vessel that He uses to show His grace & all the credit belongs to Him.

3/ Christ also shows that there will be apostates among us. He says in v2, "Every branch in Me that does not bear fruit, He takes away;"

Note "in Me". This is talking about those who profess to follow Christ but are really unbelievers. Christ is saying that God will cut those...

4/...dead branches off and throw them into the fire (John 15:6). This is metaphorical for Hell (Lake of Fire). This means these people posed as Christians, but stood for everything that God was against.

These people claimed Christ, but the fruit they bore wasn't from God.

5/ These people are malicious gossips, slanderers, they repay evil for evil, they are unforgiving, filled with rage, full of hate, view pornography, have sex before marriage, homosexuals, support pedophilia, exalt themselves, are lovers of money, etc...

6/ Scripture is consistent that these and a multitude of other things are sin and the Christian must flee from them because they were redeemed out of them. As a believer they were unshackled from their old slave master (sin) and purchased by a new Master (Christ).

7/ As a slave to a new Master who is good and holy we must now conform our wills to His will. This means that we have to give up the old things we once chased after like, drunkness and partying, drugs, sexual immorality, railing or perverse speech, hatred, unforgiveness, etc...

8/ God begins to remove these things from our lives. In order from us to be free from sin our nature has to change. This is what God does when saves us. He gives us a new nature, though the sin nature remains, and begins to prune those evil sins from our lives.

9/ God is removing the dead parts of our life when He prunes us. What is interesting is that pruning is actually a way to make a branch bear more fruit because you are removing the unproductive parts, allowing new growth to occur that will be productive. See John 15:2b,5

10/ Christ commands the believer to abide in Him and keep His commandments. When we sin we are showing contempt for Him and grieve Him (See Ephesians 4:30).

When we are obedient to God we are in fact showing Him love. He loves us even when we stumble, but we must still repent...

11/...when we choose to sin against Him. As sanctification goes on we will still sin until our last breath, but as every year goes by we should be sinning less and less, keeping His commandments, disobeying them more.

Christ then exhorts the believers to love one another.

12/ He does this in v12 and v17. Why would He command believers to love one another twice?

Because if we love God and keep His commandments then we will love those whom He has redeemed and keep His commandment to love them, which shows our love for Him.

13/ Not only that, but you have to take into consideration that apostates will come among us and will lead believers astray. They are sowers of discord. Also, our sin nature will naturally want to show contempt for those in the faith who have wronged us or disagree with us.

14/ What sets us apart from the world is our love for other Christians. We should love those believers who have gone astray or have wounded us, and not hate them because they are of the faith.

15/ What is interesting is that after Christ's command to love one another is John 15:17 he immediately goes into hate:

"If the world hates you, know that it hated Me before it hated you"

The world hates those who don't conform to it. Unredeemed people see God's word as...

16/...foolishness

1 Corinthians 2:14 says, "But a natural man does not accept the things of the spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually appraised."

We shouldn't get mad when an unbeliever rejects the gospel...

17/...or any of Scripture because they have not been redeemed, therefore they do not have a new spirit and they do not have the Holy Spirit in them to help them to understand God's truth. They are in fact blind.

They get angry at us and see us as the fools.

18/ This wicked world is ruled by Satan, so it will oppose any teaching of Scripture. So, if the world sides with your "biblical" beliefs, then those beliefs aren't biblical. They are fodder to God. That is why Christ says,

"If you were of the world, the world would love its own

19/ The world loves only those who stand with them.

Christ reminds the disciples in v20 "a slave is not greater than his master. If they persecute Me, they will also persecute you."

Christ uses slave terminology (doulos). If He was hated, then naturally His slaves...

20/...whose wills are now unified with God's will, will be hated because they do the will of their Master.

The world cannot merely disagree with you and move on. You must assimilate or pay the penalty, which could go as far as job loss, financial loss, or martydom.

21/ Those who stand w/ the world will be shown as frauds and will be burned up by God's wrath. Those Christians who endure & do not waver will endure to then end because the Holy Spirit gives them the strength and courage to do

Beloved, do not conform to the world. Hold the line