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“Whoever remains in Me and I in Him, he it is that will bear much fruit.”
᛭ INI ᛭
To remain in Christ is what it means to be a Christian. True Christians are people who are in Christ, and Christ is in them. To trust Christ, to believe in Christ is remain in Him, and when someone trusts Christ, believes in Him, His promise is that He is in them. The believer and Christ are united, like a branch to the vine.
This being in Christ by faith isn’t just an idea. It’s not because the believer thinks so. It’s not because the believer feels it. You can pin it down, just like a branch being connected to the vine isn’t just an idea or feeling, it’s a fact of life! You can tell a branch isn’t actually connected to the vine because it withers and dies. It produces no fruit, and any fruit that may have been on the branch is spoiled and rots away. That’s what it’s like with so-called Christians, as Paul lays out in Galatians 6. (More on that in a bit…)
Remaining in Christ, and Christ remaining in you, has everything to do with His Word and His promises. It begins with Christ and ends with you bearing the fruit of the Holy Spirit in your daily life. And this life of faith in Christ began for you already in Holy Baptism. There you were sanctified through the washing of water with the word, (Eph 5), the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit. (Tit 3) Baptism placed you into Christ. “For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ.” (Gal 3), and “if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.” (2-Cor 5) And you receive Baptism’s benefits by faith.
Faith in Christ began there, but your faith in Christ is made strong through His Word. His Word which tells you all about what God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit has done for you. The Father created you and gives you life. Christ the Son redeemed you with His blood. God the Holy Spirit makes you holy through the Word and Sacraments. The Spirit keeps you connected to Christ, grafted into Him by the Word. Apart from the Spirit working through the Word your faith, your remaining in Christ and He in you, withers and dies. You’re then separated from Christ. Only to be gathered up and burned, as Christ warns today.
Those with true faith in Christ will be branches that bear fruit. Faith is a living, active thing. When you have faith, you will bear fruit. Just like a branch connected to the vine produces grapes. The proof that you have faith is not that you think you have faith, not that you feel like you have faith. As Christ says, “On [the Last] Day many will say to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ but I will say to them, ‘Get away from Me. I never knew you.” (Mt 7) The proof that faith is living is the same proof that the vine is connected to the branch and fruitful, there’s fruit, there’s works! “Faith without works,” is no faith at all, it is “dead,” not living, false faith. (James 2)
Living faith lines up with the 10 Commandments. “Fearing and loving God” means that you have no other gods, don’t misuse His name, and keep the Sabbath Day holy. “Fearing and loving God” means honoring parents and other authorities, caring for your neighbor’s body, keeping your lust in check, not stealing, not gossiping, not coveting, being content with what you have. Or Paul puts it a different way in Galatians. Those with true, living faith will be instruments of the Holy Spirit. He will bear His fruit in and through them, because they are united with Christ by faith. “The Fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.” (Gal 5)
Dead and dying branches will have dead fruit, rotten fruit. They will say, “It doesn’t matter how I live because I have faith in IHS.” (They may not say it exactly that way, but that’s how they’ll behave.) As James says, “Someone will say, ‘You have faith, and I have works.’ Show me your faith without your works, and I will show you my faith by my works.” (James 2) The dead, rotten works of the flesh are evident: “sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies.” What does such a list mean?” (Gal 5) To put it another way. It’s intomate relationships like on movies, tvs, and in popular music. It’s “;frenzied and joyless grabs for happiness; trinket gods; magic-show religion; paranoid loneliness; cutthroat competition; all-consuming-yet-never-satisfied wants; a brutal temper; an impotence to love or be loved; divided homes and divided lives…the vicious habit of depersonalizing everyone into a rival; uncontrolled and uncontrollable addictions…” (MSG)
The life of faith, of remaining in Christ and He in you, of remaining in His Word and His Word remaining in you, must then be the most important thing. Only through Him dwelling in You, His Spirit working in and through you, will those ugly things be pruned away and the beautiful things like love, joy, peace and so on, be produced bountifully!
This is why 4 out of the 6 Chief Parts are all about receiving from the Lord or rejoicing about what you have already received from the Lord. This all has to do with the Word and Promise of Christ! Your flesh will reject these things, but faith will rejoice in these things. These things are death to the flesh and life and strength to faith. To be separated from these things will be death to faith and strength to flesh. They are the Lord’s Prayer, Baptism, Confession, and the Lord’s Supper.
In these way the Spirit keeps you connected to Christ. In these ways Christ dwells in you, remains in you, and you remain in Him and have eternal life. The Lord’s Prayer is the daily living out of the 2nd and 3rd Commandments, it’s the daily promise that your heavenly Father hears your prayers for Christ’s sake. So, read His Word daily, pray daily. Christ’s promise is that His Father hears you and gives the Spirit to those who ask. Christ’s promise is “If you remain in My word, you’re truly My disciples.” (Jn 8) “If you remain in Me, and My words abide in you, you will ask what you desire, and it shall be done for you.” (Jn 15) This is living out your Baptism everyday, “a new man daily arising and emerging to live before God in righteousness and purity forever.”
Confession too is the promise that your sins are forgiven before God in heaven by the minister whom Christ has sent.
The Lord’s Supper is the chief way your Lord and Savior IHS Christ keeps His promise to remain in you and you in Him. That’s what He says. If you think it’s just because you think you’re in Christ and He in you, if you think it’s because you feel certain way about Christ, or that you know certain correct answers about Christ, you’re wrong. Christ promises: “If you don’t eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you don’t have life in you.” (Jn 6) (You’re dead.) “Whoever eats My flesh and drinks My blood,” Christ continues, “has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. For My flesh is food indeed, and My blood is drink indeed. He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood abides in Me, and I in him.” (Jn 6) Christians who then despise Christ and His Sacrament through not using it are not remaining in Christ.
Yet, Christ’s promise abounds. Through His flesh and blood His life flows into you. In His death grudges, sin, and death die, and through His flesh and blood reconcilation, forgiveness, life abound—between you and God, between you and your neighbor, too.
To remain in Christ is what it means to be a Christian. True Christians are people who are in Christ, and Christ is in them. To trust Christ, to believe in Christ is remain in Him, and when someone trusts Christ, believes in Him, His promise is that He is in them. The believer and Christ are united, like a branch to the vine.
This being in Christ by faith isn’t just a correct answer or an idea or a feeling. It’s being connected to Christ by the Word, having Communion with Christ through His Flesh and Blood. Separated from these things is to be separated from Christ, which is to whither and die. But making use of these things is to make us of Christ, to remain in Christ and He in you, which is to bear fruit and live forever.
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