Our Deep Dependence
ORDINARILY with our fruit trees the small and delicate twigs do most; for from those thin branches you pick in autumn the best fruit. Thus what neither the heavy trunk nor the thick branches could do, this, when summer is over, those freshly budded twigs have done; they have produced the grape-bunches; and from that thin twig the muscatel is plucked.
Those little twigs therefore can do very much; yet under one condition, and that is, that those small, thin twigs are fixed firmly to the tree. For when in some moment of carelessness you break that little twig, it is ended at once, it withers, and there is nothing more it can do.
Thus every tree in nature speaks to all its little twigs and branches, saying: Without me ye can do nothing. Cut off from me, or just broken off, you feel no more the flow of my life-sap. Firmly grown in me, you can make fruit ripen, which fruit, when presently fully ripe, will fall into man’s lap. But broken away from me, at once all your strength is gone, you can make no single blossom bud, no single fruit can longer set itself. Remaining fixed in me, as a fruitful branch, you can do all things, but without me, because I am your tree, as twig or branch you can do nothing.
This, especially with regard to the vine, is what our highest Prophet and Teacher has observed. Being in the vine, the branches can bear abundant fruit, but without the vine, outside of the vine, and loosened from the vine, they are nothing but kindling-wood, and as regards bearing fruit, they can absolutely do nothing.
This was not something which, as a new discovery, Jesus told His disciples. On the contrary, that this was so, the disciples also knew; as every boy among us knows this now. Who would think of picking up a little twig, broken off by the wind, and keep it in expectation of fruit that it might bear.
With this, therefore, Jesus said nothing new. He rather supposed that each of his disciples knew this well, and thought of it as He did.
And the new only came in when Jesus applied to Himself this very ordinary thing from the life of tree and branch, of vine and twig, and in other words said to his disciples, in them to all His church, and in His church to each of His elect: “Ye are the branches, and on your twigs fruit must bud, set itself and ripen, and this is possible, for this you have been made able. Abundantly to bring forth fruit, and presently when it is ripened, to cast it off for the honor of your God and for the salvation of your neighbor. This you can do; provided … and this condition is inexorable … provided with the spiritual fibers of faith you continue fixed in Me as your Vine. For, and consider this with all seriousness, if once you are removed from Me, or have broken away from Me, so that from Me the life-sap ceases to flow out to you, no single fruit can ripen any more on your twig. Without the life-sap from the Vine the branch, and on that branch the twig, can absolutely do nothing.”
FROM this you see, how often this definite and striking word of Jesus: “Without me ye can do nothing,” is misunderstood.
In many instances it is taken by itself, apart from the connection in which Jesus said it, and then it is made to point to the Divine assistance, which of His grace Jesus is bound to lend us, that our plan may prosper and succeed.
It then obtains the like meaning, as though some one said: “Without God I can do nothing.”
It is then understood of our creaturely impotence; and the powerless creature can never succeed in anything, except the almighty and everywhere present power of God supports and carries him.
So this beautiful, rich saying: “Without me ye can do nothing” (St. John 15, 5), is taken in the sense of Providence-faith, and so seems to urge us, in nothing to forsake prayer and supplication, but with everything we undertake, to invoke the mighty help and unconquerable assistance of our God in Christ.
But however true all this is, it has nothing to do with what Jesus here says.
He does not speak of this.
He speaks of something altogether different.
Not of your plans and purposes, but exclusively of your high calling, to bear fruit, for the honor of your God.
Not of His gracious help, as to Whom all power is given in heaven and on earth; but exclusively of the life-sap of the soul, that must flow out to you from Him, as your Vine.
Neither also of your creaturely limitation and impotence as creature; but exclusively of your absolute inability, as believer, to bring forth any fruit of faith, outside of the spiritual tie of life, wherein with Him, as the Head of the Body, your soul must stand.
He who is one planting with Me, Jesus means to say, of himself bears fruit; but likewise, he who as a broken off twig or branch comes to lie alongside of Me as his plant, is absolutely incapable of bearing any fruit.
“Without Me ye can do nothing” means: Without vital communion with your Savior, you lack every capacity to produce even the very smallest fruit of faith.
THE correct and sharp insight of this clear meaning of Jesus’ saying is by no means a matter of indifference.
If you take the word amiss, and in connection with it think of the gracious help of Jesus toward the success of what you undertake, it only comes to mind, when you prepare yourself for the execution of a new plan.
But if you take it in the clear sense, in which Jesus intended it, then it is a word of faith for every day, which every morning at waking is sounded in your ear, and which every evening, at retiring, either comforts or pronounces judgment against you.
For faith must bear fruit by no means merely with what you undertake for the church, for missions, for schools or for the care of the poor; but you must bear fruit, even first of all, in your daily life, in your calling and in your home.
No day, what say I, no morning, no midday and no evening may pass by that you bear no fruit for the honor of your God.
All of your life, on Sunday and in the week, and all those days long in every occurring event, that bearing of fruit must go on.
There must be a fruit bearing of faith in everything. In all your labor, in all your associations, in all your difficulties, even in all trouble and all suffering that overtakes you.
Fruit of faith, fruit to the honor of God in your association with yourself, in the forming of your character, in the development of your spirit, in the bridling of your passions, in the restraint of your hot temper and mood, in the renunciation of vanity, in subduing your haughtiness and pride, in purifying of your heart.
Fruit of faith, fruit to the honor of your God, there must be in your relation to your husband or wife, in your care for the children God gave you, in your association with your brothers and sisters, in your relation to your employees, or, if you are an employee yourself, in your attitude toward those that have been placed over you.
And so also, fruit of faith, fruit to the honor of your God, must blossom and ripen on the twigs of your soul, in the acquittance of your life’s task, in caring for everything committed to your keeping, in accomplishing the task of daily life, in bringing to a finish what each day is laid upon you as a task.
In and with all this, as believer, as a child of God, you will not satisfy yourself with a fruit of civil righteousness, but you will bear a fruit of faith. And each day is played away and sinned away, on which the heavenly Husbandman does not find this fruit of faith on your branches.
SO with this deep word: “Without Me ye can do nothing,” Jesus turns in to you, in your house. He looks you up with it in your home. He calls it out to you every morning and every evening. He accompanies you with it at your work. He whispers it to you in every difficulty, which you come to face in everyday life.
Nothing without relation of life with me. You, as believer, have no standing by yourself alone. You are not yourself a tree, with a root of your own, but only a branch, a twig, a shoot. Not in yourself, in me alone is the root, and from that root alone can the life-sap of faith come to you. What would ye do without Me?
Be it thus, that you live a moderate life, and quietly do your work, and keep peace with those that are about you, yet all this, when it springs up from yourself, when in your own strength you wrought it, is never a fruit of faith.
You then produce nothing else than a sour, bitter, wormy fruit, which your God does not pick to His honor, but as unusable casts away; just as in autumn you throw away the unripe, the spoiled fruit, to gather only the good, ripe fruit in your baskets.
And therefore, if yours shall be a life of faith, and bear a fruit of faith, all this work of your own shall not once come into consideration. Only that will count what from Jesus came into you, and through Him, by His fellowship, by the life-sap from Him flowing out to you has been made into a fruit of faith.
FROM this it follows, that all your zeal and all your endeavor cannot prosper, unless daily that communion with the Vine is sought by you and established.
You do not lead the life of a Christian, of a child of God, when you confess that Christ is your Savior, and for the rest direct your life, spend your day and finish your task outside of Him, and without His fellowship.
Christian is he alone, who is implanted in Christ, and once implanted in Him considers this implanting every day, counts with it, and lives from it.
And therefore it does not avail, whether, at some individual difficult matter that presents itself to you, you take refuge with your Jesus. For then you are not accustomed to Him. Then He is to you as a stranger. As a Savior, Who is far distant from you, and now, for this one moment, must come to your help.
No, to live as a child of God, your life must flourish every day from the root, which is in Christ. All day long it must be dominated by the superior power which the Vine has over the branch. The fact that you are implanted in Christ must all your life long carry you.
Without Me ye can do nothing is not merely a warning, not to begin anything without Jesus, but also a stimulus, which enters into your soul, to say to you, that there must be fruit of every day, and that therefore every day of your life you must seek that intimate fellowship of life with your Savior, from which alone the power comes to you, to bear fruit to the honor of God.