Chosen to Bear Fruit

John 15:16-17 – “You did not choose Me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit, and that your fruit should remain, that whatever you ask the Father in My name He may give you. These things I command you, that you love one another.”

You did not choose Me, but I chose you: Jesus spoke of great privilege for the disciples – friendship with the Master, answered prayer, bearing much fruit, knowing things from the Father. The disciples should rightly treasure these things without becoming proud as if they had earned them. They were all rooted in the fact that Jesus chose them, not that they chose Him.

F.B. Meyer agrees, “We are in Christ, not because we hold Him, but because He holds us.”

Leon Morris provides some historical background: “It was not they who chose Him, as was normally the case when disciples attached themselves to a particular Rabbi. Students the world over delight to seek out the teacher of their choice and attach themselves to him. But Jesus’ disciples did not hold the initiative. On the contrary it was He who chose them.”

Appointed you that you should go and bear fruit, and that your fruit should remain: Jesus chooses disciples not simply so they would have the thrill of knowing they are chosen, but so that they would bear fruit that remains, to the glory of God the Father.

Henry Alford notes, “Much of their fruit will be necessarily the winning of others to Christ: but that is not the prominent idea here.”

That whatever you ask: Jesus connected bearing fruit with answered prayer. When He departed from them, their experience of asking and receiving would not end but would change, and Jesus prepared His disciples for this.

That you love one another: Again, Jesus commanded love among the disciples. When He departed from them, they must not disband or turn against each other. Jesus prepared them to stay together and love one another.

Based on The Enduring Word Bible Commentary by David Guzik.

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