Abiding: The Mutual Life
In part 1 we began our exploration of one of my favourite Bible passages, John 15:1-17, to better understand our covenant relationship with God in Christ by looking at our connection to Jesus, the True Vine. Next we explore Jesus’ invitation; abiding: the mutual life with a relational God.
The refrain comes again and again: “Remain in me, and I in you.”
I don’t want you to hear what Jesus isn’t saying because His words can come across like an order. In the original Greek, the phrase is written as an imperative sense, but it’s a relational urging from love (don’t leave me), and not barking an order of law (don’t leave me or you’ll regret it). Jesus is using covenant language.
What Does Jesus Mean?
When Jesus says, ” Abide in me, and I in you,” it’s mostly a promise of presence from His side. If anyone does the leaving it would be us and not Him. Even if we withdraw, Jesus won’t, only the branch can let go. Jesus doesn’t threaten to withdraw from us when we falter, He offers His life regardless and He urges us to stay connected, keep grounded in the True Vine so His life can flow through us. This isn’t a pledge we earn through performance but an open invitation to dwell, take up residence, remain grounded in God’s love that’s already at work in us.
Abiding is both passive and active. Not just passive in the sense that you don’t have to do anything and only God does something to you. Neither is it just active in the sense that you have to strive to earn something. It’s closer to the way that your body relates to your brain – the body receives life and direction from your brain, yet it also responds with signals that shape the whole.
This is what I mean when I use the word “mutuality.” Through Christ, it’s a mutual exchange of life. Just as sap circulates unseen through branch and vine, Jesus sustains us with His life. Abiding means staying put in God’s love — even when pruning pains or fruit seems slow. As we remain, we let that life animate our actions, our thoughts, our words and our prayers.
Can You Hear Me Now?
When Jesus talked to His disciples about branches, fruit and life flowing from the vine, they were yet to have the upper room experience with the coming of the Holy Spirit. Instead they only heard Jesus’ words as a call to loyalty and trust. At this very moment, Saul of Tarsus (who we later come to know as Paul), was a young, highly intelligent, Pharisee, an up and coming leader and not yet an enemy of Christ. The disciples could hardly imagine Paul’s dramatic conversion and how he would deepen these metaphors. While we have the benefit of hindsight, for now it was just Jesus and His disciples in this dimly lit room.
As Jesus spoke about abiding, His words would retrieve memories in the minds of His friends – sitting around dinner tables, road trips, camp fires and in synagogue, listening to the Torah, the Prophets and the Psalms, God’s story. In that oral tradition, a righteous life was often pictured as a tree planted by streams of water (Psalm 1), rooted and steady, bearing fruit in season.
Last time we explored how Israel itself was God’s vineyard (Isaiah 5), though it often produced only wild, bitter grapes. Jeremiah also echoed the same Psalm 1 picture:
But blessed is the one who trusts in the Lord, whose confidence is in him.
They will be like a tree planted by the water that sends out its roots by the stream.
It does not fear when heat comes; its leaves are always green.
It has no worries in a year of drought and never fails to bear fruit.
For Jesus’ disciples, then, fruit meant visible covenant faithfulness—a life aligned with God’s will, demonstrated in word, deed, and community.
But now Jesus reframes that image of covenant relationship more deeply, fulfilled through Him. No longer is Torah the water source, nor Israel the vineyard. He Himself is the True Vine, and His disciples are the branches. The same fruitfulness Israel longed to show is now only possible by remaining in Him. What Isaiah once described in terms of judgment (“wild grapes”), Jesus transforms into a promise: if you remain in me, you will bear much fruit. The covenant call to faithfulness is the same—but the way to live it has shifted from loyalty to a law to union with a person.
We’ll explore that a bit further next time.