John 12:23-26 – And Jesus answered them, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. Whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life. If anyone serves me, he must follow me; and where I am, there will my servant be also. If anyone serves me, the Father will honor him.
THEME OF THE DAY. THE REQUIREMENT FOR ABUNDANT FRUIT-BEARING. Every Christian wants to bear spiritual fruit for God’s glory. Such a desire is implanted at new birth. When we became Christians, the yearning to serve the Lord and produce fruit for Him was given to us. And Jesus tells us in John 15, we will bear fruit, but there are a couple things about fruit-bearing we must acknowledge and understand.
Our understanding of fruit-bearing begins with knowing there are degrees or amount of fruit a Christian may produce from their lives. Sometime soon, read John 15:1-8. As we do, notice Jesus says His people may bear “fruit” (John 15:2); may bear “more fruit” (John 15:2); and may bear “much fruit” (John 15:5, 8). There is a scale, an ascending scale, from fruit, to increased fruit, to even more increased fruit that may come from the Christian abiding in Him. And it is the desire of our Lord that we fall into the latter fruit-bearing group; His people who bear “much” fruit. So, let’s get it settled into our thinking that fruit-bearing will occur in the Christian life and levels or amounts exist within the fruit-bearing life. That leads to the next thing we are to understand about fruit-bearing …
A life bearing more and much fruit for the Lord Jesus has a requirement we must meet if we are going to be this type of Christian. It is an individual and personal requirement. It is an individual and personal requirement that the Lord places on each of us. No one can meet it for us. And unless it is a daily pursuit, our fruit-bearing will be minimal and our impact for Christ in the lives of other people also minimal. The requirement is found in today’s scripture; death to self.
The most difficult and challenging aspect of living the Christian life is the daily call to “take up the cross” and die to ourselves. Think about how many times “self” has gotten the upper-hand in our lives. It might have been the Lord’s Day and we decided to choose a fleshly, worldly pleasure instead of obedience to be with God’s people on His Day. It might have been choosing to watch television instead of praying and reading our Bibles. It might have been filling up our lives with “stuff” and leaving no room to serve the Gospel. There are so many battles we face in dying to ourselves and they occur daily. Yet, Jesus tells us if we don’t put self to death, plant self-interests and desires in the ground to die, we cannot bear much fruit. And there is only one way that we can daily put self to death and bear much fruit. It won’t come by personal resolve or self-discipline, though they must be in place. The only way to successfully and consistently die to ourselves is to be overwhelmed by the love of God. It is only by basking in, thinking upon, and living under the control of Christ’s incredible love that any death to self occurs. But, oh, when we do taste of His love and behold His glory, death to self becomes a passion and we diligently fight the ugliness of selfishness in order to bear much fruit. And it becomes a warfare of delight as we learn to live “crucified with Christ” that He might live through us (Galatians 2:20).
May the Lord help us to see the Christian life is to be a fruit-bearing life, a much fruit-bearing life, and then to gladly meet the one requirement necessary to have such a life – death to self.
PRAYER: “Lord, help me to yield all my life to You so that I might be an abundant fruit-bearing disciple of Yours.”
QUOTE: “God uses yielded people for His purposes; totally yielded people who want His will above all things.”