Remain in Me
"Remain in Me, as I also remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine" (John 15:4). The phrase "remain in Me" or a close variation is repeated 7 times in the first 10 verses of John 10. Makes you think it must have been important to Jesus, huh?
As common as the phrase is, it could be easy to just glance at it and move on - but what does it really mean? What was Jesus asking of His people? What does it mean to remain?
Do you go to church? That's good. Read your Bible every day? Great. Help people? All right. But Jesus was talking with the people closest to Him - I have a hard time believing they were struggling with these basics principles. There has to be more to it.
If we back up a few verses to John 14 we find Him telling the disciples He will be sending the Holy Spirit to them. In John 14:13 He says, "Anyone who loves Me will obey My teaching. My Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them."
The Greek word for "home" is from the word translated "remain." Ah! We might be on to something here. Jesus isn't telling us to focus on our external actions; He's saying we must find a way to stay so close to Him that it can be said we are actually living in Him.
In fact, He said the "remaining" comes before the good deeds we try so hard to produce. It's so easy to get distracted by what we think we are accomplishing and forget our first call is to love and live in Jesus.
It might not seem as straightforward as getting all of our religious stuff done every day so we can feel like we're on the right track. Love takes time. It takes effort. It takes intentionally choosing to getting to know someone.
But this is our call; this is our privilege - to spend our lives getting to know our King, so that we can bring others into a place where we already are, instead of trying to point them to a place we are too busy to go ourselves.
"As the Father has loved Me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love...Love each other as I have loved you."
As common as the phrase is, it could be easy to just glance at it and move on - but what does it really mean? What was Jesus asking of His people? What does it mean to remain?
Do you go to church? That's good. Read your Bible every day? Great. Help people? All right. But Jesus was talking with the people closest to Him - I have a hard time believing they were struggling with these basics principles. There has to be more to it.
If we back up a few verses to John 14 we find Him telling the disciples He will be sending the Holy Spirit to them. In John 14:13 He says, "Anyone who loves Me will obey My teaching. My Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them."
The Greek word for "home" is from the word translated "remain." Ah! We might be on to something here. Jesus isn't telling us to focus on our external actions; He's saying we must find a way to stay so close to Him that it can be said we are actually living in Him.
In fact, He said the "remaining" comes before the good deeds we try so hard to produce. It's so easy to get distracted by what we think we are accomplishing and forget our first call is to love and live in Jesus.
It might not seem as straightforward as getting all of our religious stuff done every day so we can feel like we're on the right track. Love takes time. It takes effort. It takes intentionally choosing to getting to know someone.
But this is our call; this is our privilege - to spend our lives getting to know our King, so that we can bring others into a place where we already are, instead of trying to point them to a place we are too busy to go ourselves.
"As the Father has loved Me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love...Love each other as I have loved you."
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