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

Intimacy without Familiarity: Religion's Version of Knowing God

By David Ryser

The dysfunction of the Church is that it has become a group of people who are in Christ living as though they were not, trying to get a group of people who are not in Christ to behave as though they were.  (Tim Speer)

A friend of mine recently sent me an article that, in part, is a shining example of the religious mindset when it comes to our relationship with God.  The main premise of the article is that the Church has been taken captive by a belief that “the Church” is defined as a building (with its attendant rituals and activities) rather than as a group of believers.  The author correctly observes that Jesus said He would build His Church, but we have attempted to build it for Him rather than simply to love Him and others.  In so doing, we have stolen the Church from Him.  And then we, in turn, allowed the enemy to steal the Church from us.  The author then exhorts us to turn back to God.

So far, so good.

But toward the end of the article, the author issues a warning/caveat/disclaimer that is all too common in religious writings.  What is this dire warning?  We are cautioned not to become too familiar with God lest we lose respect for Him as the all-powerful Creator of the universe.  In fact, the author claims to “see too many people who are too familiar with God.”  I find this to be an interesting claim because I don’t know anyone who is too familiar with God.  I know people who are not at all familiar with God.  These people are religious-minded people…both believers and unbelievers…who hold God at arm’s length and relate to Him as though they are on the outside of the relationship looking in.  And I know people who are familiar with God.  These people are passionate lovers of Jesus and are intimate with Him.  And they respect Him.

How can you have intimacy without familiarity?

Intimacy without familiarity is an absurd notion.  How absurd?  I dare you to apply this concept to your relationship with your spouse.  Go to your spouse and utter the following affectionate speech:  “I love you.  I love you like I love no other.  I love you passionately.  I want to be intimate with you…body and soul…so that we are one in every way.  But I don’t want to become too familiar with you for fear that I will lose respect for you.”

What?  Can you imagine how your spouse would react to this?  And is there any way you could envision that your spouse would react positively?

There is a reason this sort of drivel does not appear in romantic greeting cards.

The fact is, there is no genuine intimacy without familiarity.  And religious writers who suggest we can have intimacy with God…and then caution against familiarity with Him…are likely neither intimate nor familiar with God.  They’re merely religious.  Religion depends upon maintaining a distance in our relationship with God.  It has a vested interest in keeping us separated from God and relating to Him as though He was an abusive Father whom we must fear…and appease…in order to win His favor.

This kind of fear is central to the continued existence and success of religion.  And someone who is intimate and familiar with God is a threat to religion…and to the religious.

Jesus had this problem back in His day.  He modeled and taught an intimate…and familiar…relationship with His Father.  And religious people hated Him because of it.  They called Him a blasphemer because He called Himself the Son of God, thus making God His Father.  Jesus demonstrated the love, compassion, mercy, grace, and works of the Father.  He claimed to know the Father…in an intimate and familiar way…and religious people hated Him.

They hated Him enough to murder Him.

Is this religious spirit the same spirit that compels religious writers to caution believers against becoming too familiar with God?  I hope not.  I hope that this is merely a holdover from the religious training we’ve all received.  As we transition from religion to Jesus, it is not uncommon for us to retain religious notions and patterns of thought even as we are moving toward an ever-increasingly intimate relationship with God.  These fall away as we get nearer to Him, and it is unfair to judge too harshly someone who is in transition.

We lovers of Jesus are all in transition.

So it can be difficult to know if someone is in transition or merely a shrewd businessperson who sees an opportunity for gain in jumping aboard the loving-Jesus bandwagon.  The latter can discern what God is saying to His Church and see an opportunity to profit from the “loving Jesus fad” in some way.  So they preach and write about loving Jesus without really understanding what it is to live in intimacy with God.  They trumpet the need to be intimate with God, but are not comfortable about being familiar with Him.  So they admonish us to be intimate with God, but not to get too familiar with Him.

I am not without compassion for these people.  I was one.  I remember one day, as I was in the pulpit preaching, having the thought:  “Here I am speaking for God, and I don’t even know Him.”

This was not my happiest moment in the vocational ministry.

Jesus lived in intimate, and familiar, relationship with the Father.  And He respected the Father.  There is no hint that Jesus’ familiarity with His Father caused Him to disrespect His Father in any way.  The whole notion is ridiculous.  I don’t know anyone who is in an intimate relationship, even with another person, who is not also familiar with them.  And I know of no one who is in an intimate and familiar relationship with another person who does not highly respect that other person.

How could this be any less true of our relationship with God?

Toward the end of His ministry, Jesus revealed to His disciples that God was as much their Father as He was Jesus’ Father.  In His last conversation with His disciples, Jesus invited them into the same relationship that He had with the Father.  Not a similar relationship.  The same relationship.  The identical relationship that Jesus had enjoyed with the Father (and the Holy Spirit) from eternity past.  He prayed that His disciples…whom he now called His friends…would be one with God and with one another in the very same way that He and the Father were one.

Intimate?  Yes.  Familiar?  Absolutely.  Disrespectful?  Never.

It is a biblical and experiential…for some of us…fact that we have been invited into an intimate relationship with God.  As we grow in intimacy with Him, we also come to know Him more and to become more familiar with Him.  This intimacy and familiarity with God never causes us to be disrespectful toward Him. It is not disrespectful to God for us to enjoy Him as He enjoys us.

So we should not be made to fear intimacy and familiarity with God.  We were created for both.  We must not allow religious people to tell us that we should have intimacy with God without familiarity.  Intimacy without familiarity is not genuine love.  Intimacy without familiarity is the love of the prostitute and the gold-digger.

And I am neither.

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