Friday, March 2, 2012

Abiding in Jesus: A Lesson from the Teensy-Weensy Spider

By David Ryser

…apart from Me you can do nothing.  (Jesus of Nazareth; John 15:5c NASB)

I am often amazed, and sometimes dismayed, by what passes for news these days.  For example, right now I am sitting at my desk looking over a news story about a spider with a detachable penis.

I am not making this up.

The male orb-web spider has a detachable penis.  Now, I would not particularly care to have one of these.  But as it turns out, this is a handy thing to have if you are a male orb-web spider…because an intimate encounter gives the female orb-web spider a howling case of the munchies.  And the preferred post-coital snack of choice for the female orb-web spider is the male orb-web spider.  So the male spider is able to leave his genitalia behind to finish the job (which it does…without him being attached to it) while he, hopefully, scampers a safe distance away from the female until her hunger subsides.

So having a detachable…functioning…body part is a great blessing for the male orb-web spider.  This does not, however, work so well for the Body of Christ.

I cannot count the number of times I have read John 15:5.  And I shudder to think I may ever have preached from it.  Never has the last part of this verse impacted me as it has of late.  Jesus is not joking when He says, “apart from Me you can do nothing.”  How could I have missed that?  Because for a good part of my Christian life, I did attempt to bear spiritual fruit apart from Him.  I tried to work for Him, to accomplish great things for Him, and to live my life for Him.  Imagine my surprise when I discovered that nowhere does the Bible command me to do anything for God.

Part of the problem is our poorly translated English Bible…and poor translation leads to poor interpretation…and every version has serious problems.

In several translations, the last part of John 15:5 is rendered, “without Me you can do nothing.”  This leads us to conclude that with Jesus we can do anything.  But the Bible never says this…not in Greek, anyhow…and it flies in the face of what Jesus is teaching in the first part of John 15.  The picture here is not of a vine that is not with us.  The idea is not that we branches could bear all kinds of fruit if the vine were alongside of us.

And yet, how much preaching have we heard about how we can accomplish great things for the Kingdom of God with Jesus at our side?

Rather, the illustration Jesus uses is that of a branch that has been detached from the vine.  And the word translated “without” (χώρις) in some of the most popular English versions of the Bible, is better translated as “apart/detached from” as it is in the NASB and the NIV.  Just try to tear off a grape branch from the grapevine with your bare hands sometime.  You will discover the branch is an outgrowth of the vine…so much so that if you attempt to tear off the branch, it will shred the vine all the way to the root.

Grape branches cannot be torn off.  They must be cut off.

And if the branches are cut off from the vine, the life of the vine will not flow through them.  Not only will the branches bear no fruit, but they will also die. We are delusional if we think that we are going to produce and manifest the fruit of the life of Jesus apart from an intimate connection with Him...apart from His life flowing through us.

This theme is repeated throughout the New Testament.  Paul uses the picture of the body (us) connected to the Head (Jesus).  Imagine Paul’s reaction if we were to suggest to him that a body part could go out and accomplish anything for the head while detached from the head.  Jason Henderson illustrates the absurdity of this kind of thinking by using the example of a talking hand arguing with the head about wanting to go out and do something great for the head.  The head tries to convince the hand that it just wants the hand to be an expression of its life, and to be as active…or inactive…as the head desires at any given time.

This can turn into quite an argument.  Ask me how I know.

A body part that is detached from the head is not going to do anything useful for the head.  A body part detached from the head is not merely dysfunctional.  A body part detached from the head is dead.

Or religious.

Instead of us trying to do something for God while detached from His life, Paul presents the Christian life as our being crucified with Christ and raised up into the newness of His life.  Rather than us doing things for God, Jesus lives through us.  His life flows through us.  We abide in Him, and His life in us produces fruit.

The phrase “in Christ” (or its equivalent) is found hundreds of times in the New Testament.  Religious professionals tell us we are positionally in Christ from the time we pray a salvation prayer…also referred to as the sinner’s prayer…but that we might not experience the intimacy of that relationship until after we die.

This thinking/teaching is so fundamentally flawed, I don’t even know where to begin to tear it apart.

For one thing, the salvation/sinner’s prayer didn’t even exist until 200 years ago.  How did Peter, James, John, Paul, and the others become Christians if they didn’t pray “the prayer”?  For another, “in Christ” is a place, not a position.  It is a present reality.  The New Testament expresses this clearly…and often…but we fail to see it, partly because of bad religious teaching.    I cannot help but suspect that those who tell us we cannot expect to experience a vibrant, intimate relationship with Jesus in this life are only telling us this because they are trying to cover up the fact that they themselves do not. 

But the Bible does not teach this.  Matthew 7:22, 23 tells us clearly that we will enter the Kingdom of God, or be rejected, on the basis of whether Jesus has ever been intimate with us…while we are alive on this earth.

If anyone has a hope of being accepted on the basis of what they have done for God, the people described in Matthew 7:22 are those people.  But according to the Bible, the issue is whether Jesus “knows” (γινώσκώ) us, not what we did for Him.  Knows us…experientially and intimately.  Now…not in heaven…but now.

So let’s abandon the preposterous notion that we can be anything or do anything apart from an intimate connection with Jesus.  We can no more live apart from Him than a branch can live apart from the vine.  We can no more function apart from Him than a body part can function detached from the brain.  It’s impossible.

Unless you’re a spider penis.

Responses to this article are welcomed.  You may contact the author at drdave1545@yahoo.com

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