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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