Remaining in Christنموونە

Day 2 Devotional

The Meaning of Remaining in Christ

In verse 3, Christ tells the disciples that they are already clean. He had already said this to them in John 13:10 when He had washed their feet as they began to partake of their last supper in the Upper Room. There, in John 13:10, this is what He had said to them: And you are clean, though not every one of you.

When Christ said, though not every one of you, He was referring to Judas, who had conspired to betray Christ. This tells us that the word clean that Christ uses here in verse 3 refers to those who are not like Judas because they have sincere faith in Christ, and they have sincere devotion to Christ.

This helps us to understand that when, in this passage, Christ uses the expression, remaining in Him, He is referring, first of all, to our repenting of our sin, our placing our faith in what He did for us on the cross, so that we are then spiritually connected and united to Him, in the same way that the branches of the vine are vitally connected to, and united to the vine.

The original Greek word that is translated into English as remain in this passage means to stay, to live, to dwell, to endure, and to continue. So, Christ is saying that when we come to Him in faith, we come to stay, to dwell, to endure, to continue with Him through thick and thin.

In verse 2, Christ had explained that His Father cuts off every branch in Him that does not bear fruit. Judas was an example of a branch that was cut off because of his lack of sincere faith in Christ, and his lack of sincere devotion to Christ.

The fate of Judas, therefore shows us the fate of all those in our churches today who are church-ians, but not Christ-ians, because they have not repented of their sin, and they have not placed their faith in what Christ did for us on the cross, so that they can begin to spiritually dwell, endure, and continue with Christ.

In verse 2 Christ explains that the branches in Him that bear fruit are pruned so that they will become even more fruitful.

The pruning of the healthy vine is necessary because an unpruned vine develops long branches that produce little fruit because most of the sap goes into growing the branches instead of growing the grapes.

In this verse, Christ is explaining that our heavenly Father, the Gardener, uses the hard things that He allows us to go through in our Christian lives to trim and prune our flesh life so that we can bear more spiritual fruit and grow into spiritual maturity.

So, we can summarise our first M by saying that the meaning of this expression, remaining in Christ is that, through our repentance from sin, and our faith in what He did for us on the cross, we become spiritually connected to Christ in the same way that the vine branches are vitally connected to the vine tree. This is how the process of remaining in Christ begins in our lives.