We are entirely dependent on the vine to bear fruit. Apart from Christ we can’t worship, pray, understand the Word, obey His commands, speak words that edify, love one another, show kindness as He has shown to us, forgive one another, discern truth from error, bring people to a knowledge of Christ, or build up the church. Abiding in Jesus is critical for believers because apart from Christ we all are useless in the vineyard and kingdom of God.

Throughout the past six posts, we have been answering the crucial question, “Who is Jesus?” from John’s Gospel, where Jesus made seven “I am” statements. In our last post, we observed a culmination of sorts when Jesus brought together the first five “I am” statements in John 14:6, saying, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life.” By making this sweeping declaration, Jesus emphatically asserted that He is the exclusive, all-sufficient Savior.
Jesus’ encouragement was critical for the disciples to understand because He was departing to the Father, and their hearts were troubled by this looming reality. They worried how their relationship with Christ would function when He was no longer physically present with them. The question that plagued their minds is relevant for all Jesus’ disciples today. If we recognize who Jesus is in His first six “I am” statements and come to believe in Him for life, how do we live out that life in this present world awaiting His glorious return?
Many professing disciples of Jesus currently have little or no understanding of what it means or looks like to live the Christian life in Christ’s absence. Many professing Christians would claim they believe in Jesus and are saved by His cross and resurrection, but they cannot articulate how that salvation should impact the way they live. They do not see Jesus as all-sufficient for their daily living, nor do they believe He can help them navigate the struggles of their lives.
The question for all Jesus’ followers is simply this: How do we live lives of dependence on Christ in our day-to-day walk so God is glorified through us in the here and now? Jesus answers this question in His final “I am” statement in John 15, when He calls Himself “the true vine.” In this statement, Jesus provides the key to depending on Him as our all-sufficient Savior: we must abide in Christ because He is the true vine who gives all we need.
To grasp Jesus’ meaning, there are three things we need to understand as disciples of Christ about abiding in Him.
First, if we would abide in Jesus and truly depend on Him for all we require to be pleasing to the Lord, we must understand the necessity of abiding in Christ.
Abiding in Christ is not an optional part of the Christian life, but an absolute necessity for Jesus’ disciples. Christ alone is the source of God’s blessings, and He alone is the source of what we need to live the Christian life. Jesus is, in essence, emphasizing again His total and absolute sufficiency. Because He is the true vine, His sufficiency and power will never run dry.
Jesus gives us two more reasons why it is necessary that we abide in Him.
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Everyone is confronted with who Jesus is as the resurrection and the life. People either believe that He is the Son of God who came into the world to bring salvation to sinners through faith in His name, or they reject that He is the resurrection and the life and remain a slave to the devil. The question to all men and women is the same that Jesus posed to Martha: “Do you believe this?”

We are continuing our wonderful study of Jesus Christ from the Gospel of John, as we look to answer the question, “Who is Jesus?” from what our Lord said about Himself. In John 6, we saw that Jesus is the bread of life. In John 8-9, we read that Jesus is the light of the world. In John 10, we studied that Jesus is the door of the sheep and that Jesus is the good shepherd. Each one of these pictures Jesus paints complements the others, giving us a full image of who Jesus is, what He has done for us, and what it means for us to believe in Him.
When we look at these four statements Jesus made, we see an ideal picture of the Christian life. Something, though, seems to be missing at this point in our illustration of our Lord and what it means for us to follow Him.
We read in Psalm 23 that the Lord is our shepherd, and we know the first half of the psalm focuses on the shepherd’s care and provision for His sheep. The psalm does not end there, however. The valley of the shadow of death comes as we follow the good shepherd. Having the good shepherd does not mean we avoid that valley, but that Jesus walks through the many challenges, trials, and tribulations of life with us.
That brings us, then, to this important query: How does the Good Shepherd walk with us through the valley of the shadow of death? John 11 speaks to this very question, as the focus on Jesus’ identity now shifts from ‘shepherd’ to ‘resurrection.’ Resurrection presupposes death, because we cannot have resurrection without death.
Jesus makes this statement – I am the resurrection and the life – in the context of the death of His dear friend, Lazarus. Here we see the meaning of Jesus being the resurrection life, and how our good shepherd assists us to navigate and triumph over death itself.
The narrative of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead takes place in five scenes, helping us understand the Savior as the resurrection and the life.
The opening scene involves Jesus and the disciples.
As we read Jesus’ words and actions in the opening of this narrative, we learn that He is motivated by two factors. First, He is driven by the glory of God. Everything Jesus does tends toward God’s glory. He is most concerned that God be glorified through this circumstance of an illness. Second, He is inspired by love for His people who are in distress and suffering. Jesus is not a god who is indifferent to the plight of others, but He is the living God who loves His people and acts out of love for them.
God always operates in this way toward His people, which is a glorious truth. His motives of displaying His glory and loving us are never at odds. We often do not see how what He is doing either glorifies Him or is a result of His love toward us, just as the peoples’ reactions depicted in the narrative. Nothing about Jesus’ response to Lazarus’ illness makes sense from a human perspective. John wants us to understand that Jesus’ plans often confound us because His goals are much greater than ours. The confusion, though, is never the end of the story!
The second scene focuses on Jesus and Martha.
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Believers, like the blind man in John 9, go through many difficulties in this dark world that opposes the light of Christ. We, too, face rejection, hostility, persecution, and suffering. In the midst of these difficulties, though, we grow evermore in our knowledge of our Savior. We know that the end of it all, we will see the face of Jesus – the Light of the world.

Our world today has a confused understanding of who Jesus is as various peoples and groups vainly try to mold our Savior into the person they want Him to be. Even within the church, the person and the work of Christ is unclear to many people. We need constant reminders from God’s Word of who Jesus is so we can keep our eyes fixed on the Messiah and grow in our trust and love for Him.
The world’s ambiguity in this area is why Jesus’ self-descriptions in John are so important for believers’ lives. In the Gospel of John, Jesus made seven statements beginning with the phrase, “I am the …” and went on to describe something about who He is and why He came into the world. The second of these statements is found in John 8:12, where Jesus declares that He is the Light of the world, and that those who follow Him will no longer walk in darkness.
The theme of light traces its origin back to the beginning of John’s Gospel, where the apostle informs his readers in the first chapter that Jesus inherently has life within Himself, and that He is the giver of life. Jesus’ life is the light of men, bringing illumination and truth to humanity. Additionally, John sets up a duality between light and darkness at the outset of his Gospel. Jesus is the light, but there is also darkness that is opposed to the Light. The Light of Christ shines amid this darkness, and the darkness is unable to understand it or extinguish it.
John’s introduction of these concepts set the stage for what is to follow, especially in terms of the conflict that will arise between light and darkness, between Jesus and the devil, and between those who are followers of Christ and those who are the children of the devil.
Not only does the theme of light flow out of the literary context of the Gospel of John, but it also fits the historical context as well. John 7:2 tells readers that these events all transpired around the Feast of Booths (or Tabernacles). Light was a significant part of the celebration. In the temple court, they would light four huge lamps to celebrate this Feast, and men would dance throughout the night with burning torches in their hands, singing songs of praise for God’s salvation of Israel from Egypt.
John 8:12 almost certainly takes place in the context of this feast, making Jesus’ pronouncement that He is the Light of the world that much more striking. The Jews, in response, ignore Jesus’ claim to be the Light of the world and instead try to execute Jesus for blasphemy. After this scene concludes, readers are left to wonder what Jesus meant when He called Himself the Light of the world, which is elucidated in John 9. John 9 is a validation and exposition of Jesus’ claim that He is the Light of the world – the story of our Lord bringing light to the darkened eyes of a blind man.
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Jesus’ message about being the bread of life is one of the most convicting and revealing in the Gospel accounts. People who are confronted by this message cannot stand in the middle and they cannot pretend which side they are on – at least for long. We all must either recognize that we have nowhere else to go but to Christ or that we are unwilling to relinquish our hold on our illusory autonomy. 

In John’s Gospel account, each of Jesus’ seven “I am” statements revealed something about His person and work, allowing John’s readers to know Him more intimately, clearly, and personally. These statements are designed to bring us back to the foundation of our faith, which is the Lord Jesus Christ.
The first of these statements occurs in John 6, where Jesus twice declares, “I am the bread of life.” By human standards, the message here could be categorized as the worst sermon Jesus ever preached. When the chapter begins, Jesus is being followed by crowds of possibly more than 20,000 people. At the end, He is left with 12 followers – one of whom is, in Jesus’ words, a devil.
In the modern church today, if a teacher loses 99.94% of his audience, he would be deemed a failure. That’s why by the world’s standards, this message Jesus gave in John 6 was a complete disaster; but by Jesus’ standards, it accomplished exactly what He intended it to do – and so it was a roaring success.
The tension of this passage is due to the crowd’s refusal to understand and accept Jesus’ true meaning when He called Himself the “Bread of Life.” Members of the crowd following Jesus were hungry, and they wanted our Lord to provide them with sustenance. Jesus, who was perfectly capable of such an earthly minded miracle, had a spiritual focus with His statement, knowing that their eternal destinies mattered exponentially more than the state of their empty stomachs. More than two thousand years have passed since this interaction between Jesus and the crowd, but the same tension and truth remains with us today.
John includes two scenes at the onset of this chapter to provide context for the forthcoming conversation and to demonstrate that Jesus is God. Only God can create bread to feed 20,000 people out of five crackers, and only God can overrule the way water and density normally work so that He can walk on water. John’s point in the inclusion of these stories is to force us to grapple with this question: ‘Who is Jesus?’ Is He a human bread factory, ready to meet our temporal needs and submit to our whims and desires? Or is He God in human flesh, the sovereign ruler of all?
As the crowd gathers around Jesus after His miraculous stroll across a stormy sea, the Savior confronts their worldly motives in seeking Him by highlighting their real reason for coming: they didn’t want spiritual truth or eternal life; they wanted physical food. This is how many people in this world search for Jesus. In fact, the entire seeker-sensitive movement in the church is built on this premise, that they want to attract a crowd by appealing to their fleshly desires.
Not only does Jesus understand the crowd is only interested in a resolution for their temporal problems, but He also knows they mistakenly believe they have some stake (i.e. works) in the things that only God can do. This crowd only wants to come to Jesus on their terms.
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Part of me wants to smile a bit when I think about a statue to Satan being torn down and decapitated because my heart rejoices in the defeat of the devil. This urge, though, must be tempered with truth, the truth that toppling a ridiculous display doesn’t do anything to defeat the devil. It’s at best a symbolic gesture of someone who professes to oppose evil. For those who are interested in seeing the souls of men saved and Christ truly glorified, our hearts must yearn for more than symbolic gestures. We should long for the true defeat of the devil by the power of God. 

Earlier this month, a man named Michael Cassidy allegedly tore down and beheaded a statue erected by the Satanic Temple in the Iowa state capitol. He reportedly took this action because “it was extremely anti-Christian.” Later, he posted a quote of 1 Peter 5:8 to his X feed, where the apostle exhorts Christians to “be on the alert” because our “adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour” (NASB).
Many Christians and politically conservative individuals have hailed Cassidy’s actions as ‘brave,’ applauding him for taking a stand against the evil that has infected our nation. People are exhausted by the constant onslaught of wickedness that occurs in our nation day after day, and to see someone fighting so publicly against Satan and satanism feels very refreshing. Such a bold protest, even if illegal, seems laudatory because, after all, it is opposition to evil. As Christians, however, we would do well to allow our passions to simmer and to think through this situation biblically in order to exercise wisdom and discernment in our fight against the powers of darkness. Is tearing down a statue really a biblical way to oppose evil, and a path that Christians should choose, or even celebrate?
To be clear: all statues that represent objects of worship are evil. The Old and New Testaments state that all forms of idolatry are an abomination to the Lord. Whether a statue is meant to symbolize Zeus, Satan, or even Yahweh (see Exodus 32 and the golden calf), such images are forbidden by the law of God and amount to idol worship. Christians should recognize that all forms of idolatry are detestable in God’s sight. Furthermore, Scripture tells us that all idols are demonic in character. Paul told the Corinthians that people who offer sacrifices to idols actually offer sacrifices to demons. Idols, in and of themselves, are nothing (1 Corinthians 10:19-20). Idols can’t speak, see, hear, smell, feel, walk, or talk (Psalm 115:4-7). The statues are empty and powerless. Nevertheless, behind all idolatrous worship, we find demonic powers. These demonic powers seek to destroy the souls of men and constantly assault the glory of Christ.
Christians, therefore, should oppose idolatry and the demonic powers it represents out of love for and loyalty to Christ our Lord. How should we do so? Do we oppose idolatry by destroying statues of Satan, demons, or false gods?
In the Old Testament, we find several examples that might provide biblical warrant for such actions against images and idols. For example, after the golden calf incident in Exodus 32, Moses burned the idol, ground it to powder, scattered it over the water, and made Israel drink the remnants (Exodus 32:20). A few chapters later, Yahweh commanded Israel to tear down the altars and idols of the foreign gods of the Canaanites (Exodus 34:13). In Judges 6, the angel of Yahweh came to Gideon and commanded him to tear down the altar of Baal and the Asherah (a false god’s image) next to it. God expressly commanded people in the Old Testament to destroy idols and images, and those who were faithful to Yahweh did so to honor Him.
New covenant believers might conclude from these examples that we should follow suit. God is still outraged by idolatrous worship and statues that dishonor Him, and such images are still worthy of being destroyed. As believers, some might therefore conclude, we should still destroy them when we have a chance to do so. However, there are some clues in the OT and the NT that the way we destroy idolatrous worship is different today than it was in the OT.
Many of the events we read about in the OT were of a typological nature, representing something greater that would occur in the NT. In the passages that relate to the destruction of idols, we see this typology at work.
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Do we desire a Savior who will come into our lives, cleanse us, forgive us, renew us, change us, make us holy, and give us, in the end, eternal life? That’s the kind of Savior Jesus is. Christ, the baby born to Mary, is God’s gift to us, and His work of salvation is the point of Christmas. 

“What do you want for Christmas?” Asking that question of others is always a diverse experience. There’s the person who is ready with a long list of things. Then there’s the person who only wants one thing, or the person who is offended by the question, or the person who has no idea what they want.
Now consider what we would find if we asked people not, “What do you want for Christmas?” but, “What do you want for a Savior?” Perhaps we would uncover similar answers. We’d find the person who has a list of problems this savior would have to be able to solve. Then we’d discover the person with one major issue in their life they want the savior to solve. Maybe we’d find people who feel that God has let them down, and unless the Savior comes up big, it’s only going to make them more bitter. Undoubtedly, we would also identify people who feel like life is pretty good, and they’re not even sure they need a Savior.
The way we answer the question, “What do you want for a Savior?” reveals a great deal about the spiritual condition of our hearts. This answer highlights what is important to us and reveals what we believe our greatest needs to be. It discloses whether we are even aware of our need for salvation.
As we continue with our study of Christmas: What’s the Point? we turn to Matthew 1:18-25 to see that Jesus, the true Savior, came to save His people from their sins. There are three questions that must be answered as we use this passage to consider the salvation Jesus secured.
First, as we think about God’s provision of salvation in Jesus, what qualifies Jesus to be the Savior?
This critical question was important to the original readers of Matthew’s Gospel. Matthew wrote his account to a primarily Jewish audience, who were familiar with the Old Testament promises and prophecies about the Messiah. One of Matthew’s goals for this Gospel was to prove that Jesus is the promised Savior, starting this quest by establishing that Jesus was qualified to be the Savior. Matthew is intent on showing how it is that Jesus is qualified to be the Savior, the heir to the Davidic dynasty, even though He is not the biological son of Joseph.
Matthew first tells us, in no uncertain terms, that Jesus is qualified to be the Savior because He was born of a virgin. Notice in our passage that Matthew adds that Mary was with child by the Holy Spirit, indicating this was not unfaithfulness to her soon-to-be husband, but a miracle God performed by His Spirit in her. Mary’s Son was not a mere human but the product of the Holy Spirit causing her to conceive apart from any relationship with a man. The clear testimony of Scripture is that Jesus was born of a virgin.
What’s more, the virgin birth is one thing that qualified Jesus to be the Savior. We need a Savior who is free from the stain of sin, who is not under the curse incurred by Adam, and who can represent us before God. Any child born naturally would have the imputed sin of Adam and already be disqualified from being the Savior. A natural birth simply could not provide a righteous Savior who was undefiled and separate from sinners! In addition, our Savior also must be a mediator.
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All those who have come to Christ in faith should take time this Thanksgiving to celebrate the victory we have in Christ by verbally recognizing His power in our lives to save and sanctify us. When Thanksgiving comes around, we truly have something to celebrate as Christians, because our God, the God of Israel, has won the victory through Jesus Christ. Shout to the Lord with joy and bless His name. 

As we march toward the Thanksgiving holiday, we are considering Psalm 100, which is appropriate and fitting to study this month. What we see in this text is that the Lord has called us to thanksgiving, to give Him thanks, and to recognize who He is and how He has blessed us. In Psalm 100, there are five principles that are critical for us to understand as we reflect on God’s call in our lives here.
The first principle is the Proclamation of Thanksgiving, as we see in verses one and four of the Psalm.
Readers of this psalm will discover that this point is found in verses 1 and 4, then the next two points are in verses 2 and 4. The last two points then stand alone in verse 3 and verse 5. The reason for this is because this Psalm is structured in such a way that the first and last items in verses 1 through 4 are parallel, the second and sixth items are parallel, the third and fifth items are parallel again, and then the fourth item in verse 3 stands alone. This was a common way to write poetry in the Old Testament, and it was a helpful memorization pattern to learn the Psalms.
So, the first point, which is the proclamation of thanksgiving, is found in verses 1 and 4. Verse 1 reads, “Shout joyfully to the LORD, all the earth.” Verse 4, at the very end states: “bless His name.” These two commands are parallel and signify similar ideas.
The Psalmist begins with a call to shout to the Lord with joy! This word translated ‘shout joyfully’ was a word related to war and battle, and it was often a shout of victory. The Psalmist is exhorting people to celebrate the victory of God over His enemies. What is most fascinating about this verse is the people to whom the Psalmist calls to celebration. Notice he says, “Shout joyfully to the LORD, all the earth.” That last phrase, ‘all the earth,’ is especially noteworthy because it is a call to Jews and Gentiles alike. It is a call to all the nations to come and celebrate the victory of Israel’s God.
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As Christians who have assurance of eternal life, we must be people of strong and biblical convictions. We must know that we are heard by God, liberated from sin, protected from Satan, distinct from the world, and united to Christ. It is my prayer for our churches that, in an unstable world built on shifting sand, we would be people who embrace these immovable convictions built on the rock, the true God, our Lord Jesus Christ.

One of the blessings of being a believer in Jesus Christ is having a certain knowledge of our salvation and eternal destiny. This knowledge, however, must produce certain convictions throughout our Christian life.
We live in a time where people are often weak, wishy-washy, devoid of real convictions, and content to just go with the flow and swim wherever the tide of the world take them. The apostle John rejects all of that in the life of a believer, asserting that if we have eternal life, then we should be strong; we should have convictions; and we should have certainty as a defining mark of our spiritual lives. In 1 John 5, John gives us five convictions that we should manifest as Christians who know that we have eternal life.
The first conviction we should have as believers is that we are heard by God.
Our confidence about our salvation should lead to confidence in our prayers. When we come into the presence of God in prayer – to make requests, to cast our burdens upon Him, to seek His grace and His help in a time of need – we should come with confidence and boldness. This attitude in prayer should be expansive; John tells us we can ask for anything according to God’s will. We have a certain knowledge God hears us because we know that we belong to Him and that He will give us whatever we ask of Him that is according to His will.
The one qualifier is we must ask according to His will, referring to anything revealed in Scripture. If we go through the New Testament, we see hundreds of promises and commands from God we are called to believe and obey – and we should pray that God would strengthen us to believe and obey His Word. The amazing thing is that we can pray all of these things with confidence, knowing God will perform His work in us to answer our prayers.
The second conviction we have as a result of our certainty of salvation is that we are liberated from sin.
If we want to be strong and stand firm in the evil day, then we must be convinced that not only are we saved and have eternal life, but we must also have been liberated from sin. We cannot be the kind of people who, when confronted with sin in their lives, respond, “I can’t help it!” We can help it because we have been born of God. We know we can battle against sin and win because of what God has done for us in Christ.
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Let’s not just tell people we love them; let’s show people we love them by how we treat them. That’s the character of love. It’s active. It shows itself in behavior. It meets needs. It is selfless, looking out for the other. It is not jealous; it is not angry; it is not rude; it does not keep an account of wrongs; it believes and hopes all things. John’s test is to examine ourselves by this standard and ask ourselves, “If I look at the character of love, is it obvious I am a child of God?” 

The distinguishing mark of a follower of Jesus Christ is love for one another. Love for the people of God is essential for disciples because we cannot be disciples of Jesus Christ without genuine, Christ-like, Spirit-wrought love for His people.
It comes as no surprise that the Apostle John, who recorded the Upper Room Discourse in John 14-16, asserts that one test of true salvation is our love for one another in 1 John 3. John argues that the true children of God are characterized by love for one another, and so this forms the basis for a powerful test of salvation. If we do not love other believers as John describes in this passage, then we very well may be self-deceived about our spiritual condition. But if we see this love, that Christ has commanded, active in our lives, then there is great evidence that we have been born again and have eternal life.
This test concerning love comes right on the heels of John talking about the return of Christ and its impact in our lives. The return of Christ should move us to holiness, obedience, purity, and righteousness. Then John pivots from obedience to love without any warning because he wants us to see that there is an inseparable connection between righteousness and love. Obedience in our lives manifests itself in our relationships with others and characterizes those relationships with love.
We might all testify that the reality of our holiness, the depth of our obedience, is often best viewed as we relate to others in the body of Christ. It is often easy to act in a way that seems holy when we are alone. When our preferences are not challenged, when our desires are not at odds with the desires of others, when our opinions reign supreme, when the only person we discuss what to do with is ourselves – it is much easier to appear holy than when we collide with other people and their preferences, their desires, their opinions, and their decisions. Our sanctification is put to the test in relationship with other Christians. These are the fires that test the mettle of our holiness. And this is why John joins doing what is right with loving the brothers and sisters in Christ.
We need to see what kind of love John has in mind so that we ensure that we are truly loving one another as God commands and as His children will do by the Spirit’s power. To this end, John gives us two examples of love to test ourselves by: one negative and one positive, so that we might know if we are living one another as God commands. The first example is the negative example of Cain. Cain was jealous of Abel, and he was convicted of his own sin. John makes the point that Cain didn’t merely kill his brother, but he murdered a true worshipper of God in a violent rage.
Here are two brothers, and they should love one another – just like those of us in the body are brothers and sisters in Christ, and we should love one another.
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Where are you today—are you a spiritual child? A spiritual young man? Or a spiritual father? What steps will you take to grow? If you are saved and your sins forgiven, Christian, you are called to grow in your faith, in spiritual maturity, and more into the likeness of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. 

In 1 John 2:12-14, the apostle John presents three stages of spiritual maturity to help affirm that his readers are saved by the blood of Jesus Christ and to exhort them to grow in their faith. Previously, we’ve looked at the first two stages that John wrote about – spiritual children and young men. Now we come to the final stage of spiritual maturity: Spiritual Fathers, which John describes in verses 13 and 14.
The Spiritual Fathers are those in the church who are the most spiritually mature. (Note that everything previously stated about the markers of spiritual children and young men applies to the Spiritual Fathers as well.) Spiritual Fathers have been forgiven; they know the Father; they are spiritually strong in faith; they know the Word, and they have learned how to find that way of escape when temptation comes along. These spiritually seasoned individuals aren’t perfect, but they understand how to fight the good fight of faith and apply it as a way of life.
We see one trait that is repeated of those who are spiritual fathers: they “know Him who has been from the beginning.” The “Him” John is referring to is Christ. But when John talks about knowing Christ, we must automatically add that if we have the Son, we have the Father; and if we have the Father and the Son, then we also have the Spirit.
The point John is making is that true spiritual maturity settles here: in an intimate, deep knowledge of the true and living God through an abiding relationship with Jesus Christ.
What happens between the stages of being a young man and a father?
At some point as a spiritual young man, you are in the midst of the battle, and you begin to understand the devil’s tactics; you become wiser to his schemes, and you know how to handle God’s word, understand how to employ prayer, put on the armor of God, and deflect the fiery arrows of the devil with the shield of faith. Something begins to become clear to you in a way it hasn’t before!
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