Remaining in Christنموونە

Day 4 Devotional:

How We Are Marked by Remaining in Christ

In this passage, Christ also describes three ways in which our Christian lives are marked by our remaining in Him.

The first way in which our lives are marked by remaining in Christ is bearing internal and external spiritual fruit. Seven times in this passage Christ refers to bearing fruit.

Gal. 5:22 refers to internal spiritual fruit as the fruit of the Spirit and describes this as comprising of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. These are the character traits of Christ Himself that are developed in our lives as we learn to daily yield to the direction and guidance of the Holy Spirit who, upon our salvation, imparts into us the very life of Christ. We then bear external fruit as the people around us see and experience the internal fruit of the Spirit in our lives, and they are drawn to Christ whose character we are displaying.

The second way in which our lives are marked by remaining in Christ is in verse 11 where Christ tells us that, by remaining in Him, His joy will be in us. In the NT, the word joy refers to a state of calm and confident assurance in the face of the difficulties of life. Remaining in Christ means that, in the strength of the Holy Spirit, we develop confident responses to the challenges of life as we trust the Holy Spirit to strengthen and to guide us.

The third way in which our Christian lives are marked by remaining in Christ is in verses 7 and 16. Here, Christ promises us that if we remain in Him, and we are obedient to His Word, our prayers will be answered. As our remaining in Christ builds up our intimacy with Him, we learn to pray more and more according to His will, and by so doing, we receive positive answers to our prayers (1 John 5:14-15).

So, we can summarise our third M by saying that, the three ways in which our Christian lives are marked by our remaining in Christ are first, bearing spiritual fruit, second, experiencing the joy of the Lord, and third, having our prayers answered.