If a seed falls into the ground and dies it bears fruit. If the seed preserves its life it cannot multiply. Only by dying can it bring forth the life that is in it.

Sometimes when we are in a particularly difficult travail we wonder why God chose for us the way of pain, of death. We have to trust that His wonders in and through us cannot be accomplished in any other manner.

Kingdom fruit comes from the cross. The promise concerning his Seed was confirmed to Abraham when he offered up Isaac. The fruit brought forth by Christ has come from His death. It is His body and blood that reproduce His image in us. Paul, one of the most fruitful saints of all, wrote his life-giving Epistles from a background of suffering and imprisonment. Paul died daily.

The true Vine, Christ, will "blossom and bud, and fill the face of the world with fruit" (Isaiah 27:6). The multiplying of Christ will come about through means of the branches that are abiding in the Vine.

In order to abide in the Vine, thus becoming a fruit-bearing saint, we must allow the Holy Spirit to cut us out of the vine of the earth of which we were a part and to graft us into Christ.

This is a painful process. The substituting of the Life of Jesus for our life requires death to all that motivates us. We are crucified with Christ in order that the Life of Jesus may flow in us. When the Life of the Vine flows in us, fruit is borne—the fruit that is the Life of Jesus increasing in us and in those to whom we minister.

We have mentioned three of the four parts of the Divine edict: the image of God; male and female; and fruitfulness. We have said that these aspects of man appeared in Adam and Eve in a primitive form but that they will be developed in the saints until they attain transcendent proportions and perfections.

If an individual goes through life and acquires wealth, power, and fame, but does not make progress in these three aspects of the Divine edict concerning man, his life has been wasted. It does not matter whether we "become something" in the world. It matters supremely whether we make progress in image, in union with Christ, and in fruitfulness.

If we do make progress in the characteristics God has assigned to man, God will view our pilgrimage in the world as having been successful. We have been faithful in the smaller arena and God will entrust us with the greater. In the ages to come we shall have the opportunity to develop into the fullness of the image of God. We shall come into an ever greater union with God through Christ.

An eternity of eternities lies before us. If we please God with our faithfulness in the present life, then during the ages to come we will be given the opportunity to reproduce the Life of Christ in multitudes of persons. We will become the "father" of many nations as was true of Abraham.

There is no limit on the fruitfulness that will proceed from our personality if we give ourselves without reservation to Christ. We will bring forth "much fruit."

To be continued.