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The Daily Word of Righteousness
When a Christian Dies, #34
Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you, and ordained you, that ye should go and bring forth fruit, and that your fruit should remain: that whatsoever ye shall ask of the Father in my name, he may give it you. (John 15:16)
To bear abiding fruit.
God the Father is seeking fruit.
Be patient therefore, brethren, unto the coming of the Lord. Behold, the husbandman waiteth for the precious fruit of the earth, and hath long patience for it, until he receive the early and latter rain. (James 5:7)
So important to God is the fruit He is seeking that He will cut out of the Vine, out of Christ, any branch that does not bear fruit.
Every branch in me that beareth not fruit he taketh away:.... (John 15:2)
The fruit is Christ. Christ has been sown in us and God is expecting to reap Christ in us. No other fruit can stand in God's Presence.
Jesus Christ died on the cross of Calvary. Then He was raised from the dead by the Glory of the Father. Now Christ is being multiplied. Christ is being multiplied to the extent of filling the creation of God. This filling takes place through the saints.
When we first come to Christ we are flesh-and-blood creatures. Then God plants Christ in us. Now there are two lives struggling for existence in us: our human life, and the Divine Life of Christ.
If we live in the flesh, the Divine Life will be choked out, as we learn from the parable of the sower (Matthew 13: 22). If we allow the Holy Spirit to press our human life into the death of the cross, the Life of Christ will be multiplied in our personality. Soon the Father begins to behold the Nature of His Son in us. This is the fruit for which God is looking.
Traditionally the churches are filled with good works of all kinds. The members hope by these to please God, while in the meantime the members of the churches seek to preserve their life in the flesh. The fruit that God desires proceeds from our death, not from our active soulish life.
As far as God is concerned, the first creation is finished. There is nothing of it, good or evil, that God desires. All of it was condemned on the cross of Calvary.
Now there is a new creation. Christ is the beginning of the new creation. As Christ is formed in us, the new creation multiplies. It is the new creation that inherits the Kingdom of God, the first creation serving only as a framework of support while the Lord God brings the new into being.
The Life of Christ is fertile. As Christ is formed in us He is conceived in those to whom we minister, and so on and on until the creation of God is filled with the image and Life of Christ.
He shall cause them that come of Jacob to take root: Israel shall blossom and bud, and fill the face of the world with fruit. (Isaiah 27:6)
When our fruit remains, and Christ is established in us and in those around us, whatever we ask the Father in Jesus' name He gives us. To this end we were chosen and ordained by the Lord—that we might bear the eternal fruit of righteous, holy, obedient behavior, the Life and image of Christ.
To be continued.