W E E K E I G H T

‘I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.’ ~ John 15:5 ~

As you read John 15–17, take time to notice the characters, their responses, and the themes you encounter.

What does it look like to live in intimate connection with God?

Notice …

15:1 – 15:24

JOHN 15 – 17

15 “I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. 2 He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit He prunes so that it will be even more fruitful. 3 You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you. 4 Remain in me, as I also remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me.

5 “I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing. 6 If you do not remain in me, you are like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned. 7 If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. 8 This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples.

9 “As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. 10 If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commands and remain in His love. 11 I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. 12 My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. 13 Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. 14 You are my friends if you do what I command. 15 I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you. 16 You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit—fruit that will last—and so that whatever you ask in my name the Father will give you. 17 This is my command: Love each other.

The World Hates the Disciples

18 “If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first. 19 If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you. 20 Remember what I told you: ‘A servant is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will persecute you also. If they obeyed my teaching, they will obey yours also. 21 They will treat you this way because of my name, for they do not know the one who sent me. 22 If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not be guilty of sin; but now they have no excuse for their sin. 23 Whoever hates me hates my Father as well. 24 If I had not done among them the works no one else did, they would not be guilty of sin. As it is, they have seen, and yet they have hated both me and my Father.

15:25 – 16:22

25 But this is to fulfill what is written in their Law: ‘They hated me without reason.’

The Work of the Holy Spirit

26 “When the Advocate comes, whom I will send to you from the Father—the Spirit of truth who goes out from the Father—He will testify about me. 27 And you also must testify, for you have been with me from the beginning.

16 “All this I have told you so that you will not fall away. 2 They will put you out of the synagogue; in fact, the time is coming when anyone who kills you will think they are offering a service to God. 3 They will do such things because they have not known the Father or me. 4 I have told you this, so that when their time comes you will remember that I warned you about them. I did not tell you this from the beginning because I was with you, 5 but now I am going to Him who sent me. None of you asks me, ‘Where are you going?’ 6 Rather, you are filled with grief because I have said these things. 7 But very truly I tell you, it is for your good that I am going away. Unless I go away, the Advocate will not come to you; but if I go, I will send Him to you. 8 When He comes, He will prove the world to be in the wrong about sin and righteousness and judgment: 9 about sin, because people do not believe in me; 10 about righteousness, because I am going to the Father, where you can see me no longer; 11 and about judgment, because the prince of this world now stands condemned.

12 “I have much more to say to you, more than you can now bear. 13 But when He, the Spirit of truth, comes, He will guide you into all the truth. He will not speak on His own; He will speak only what He hears, and He will tell you what is yet to come. 14 He will glorify me because it is from me that He will receive what He will make known to you. 15 All that belongs to the Father is mine. That is why I said the Spirit will receive from me what He will make known to you.’

The Disciples’ Grief Will Turn to Joy

16 Jesus went on to say, “In a little while you will see me no more, and then after a little while you will see me.”

17 At this, some of His disciples said to one another, “What does He mean by saying, ‘In a little while you will see me no more, and then after a little while you will see me,’ and ‘Because I am going to the Father’?” 18 They kept asking, “What does He mean by ‘a little while’? We don’t understand what He is saying.”

19 Jesus saw that they wanted to ask Him about this, so He said to them, “Are you asking one another what I meant when I said, ‘In a little while you will see me no more, and then after a little while you will see me’? 20 Very truly I tell you, you will weep and mourn while the world rejoices. You will grieve, but your grief will turn to joy. 21 A woman giving birth to a child has pain because her time has come; but when her baby is born she forgets the anguish because of her joy that a child is born into the world. 22 So with you: Now is your time of grief, but I will see you again and you will rejoice, and no one will take away your joy.

16:23 – 17:13

23 In that day you will no longer ask me anything. Very truly I tell you, my Father will give you whatever you ask in my name. 24 Until now you have not asked for anything in my name. Ask and you will receive, and your joy will be complete.

25 “Though I have been speaking figuratively, a time is coming when I will no longer use this kind of language but will tell you plainly about my Father. 26 In that day you will ask in my name. I am not saying that I will ask the Father on your behalf. 27 No, the Father Himself loves you because you have loved me and have believed that I came from God. 28 I came from the Father and entered the world; now I am leaving the world and going back to the Father.”

29 Then Jesus’ disciples said, “Now you are speaking clearly and without figures of speech. 30 Now we can see that you know all things and that you do not even need to have anyone ask you questions. This makes us believe that you came from God.”

31 “Do you now believe?” Jesus replied. 32 “A time is coming and in fact has come when you will be scattered, each to your own home. You will leave me all alone. Yet I am not alone, for my Father is with me.

33 “I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.”

Jesus Prays to Be Glorified

17 After Jesus said this, He looked toward heaven and prayed:

“Father, the hour has come. Glorify your Son, that your Son may glorify you. 2 For you granted Him authority over all people that He might give eternal life to all those you have given Him. 3 Now this is eternal life: that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent. 4 I have brought you glory on earth by finishing the work you gave me to do. 5 And now, Father, glorify me in your presence with the glory I had with you before the world began.

Jesus Prays for His Disciples

6 “I have revealed you to those whom you gave me out of the world. They were yours; you gave them to me and they have obeyed your word. 7 Now they know that everything you have given me comes from you. 8 For I gave them the words you gave me and they accepted them. They knew with certainty that I came from you, and they believed that you sent me. 9 I pray for them. I am not praying for the world, but for those you have given me, for they are yours. 10 All I have is yours, and all you have is mine. And glory has come to me through them.

11 I will remain in the world no longer, but they are still in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, protect them by the power of your name, the name you gave me, so that they may be one as we are one. 12 While I was with them, I protected them and kept them safe by that name you gave me. None has been lost except the one doomed to destruction so that Scripture would be fulfilled.

13 “I am coming to you now, but I say these things while I am still in the world, so that they may have the full measure of my joy within them.

17:14 – 17:26

14 I have given them your word and the world has hated them, for they are not of the world any more than I am of the world. 15 My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one. 16 They are not of the world, even as I am not of it. 17 Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth. 18 As you sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world. 19 For them I sanctify myself, that they too may be truly sanctified.

Jesus Prays for All Believers

20 “My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, 21 that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. 22 I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one— 23 I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.

24 “Father, I want those you have given me to be with me where I am, and to see my glory, the glory you have given me because you loved me before the creation of the world.

25 “Righteous Father, though the world does not know you, I know you, and they know that you have sent me. 26 I have made you known to them, and will continue to make you known in order that the love you have for me may be in them and that I myself may be in them.”

Her Story

Anisha: ‘I Would Fall on My Knees and Pray for a Way Out’

“I’m the head of marketing for a data analytics firm,” she says. Her tone is confident, but far from arrogant. Anisha explains a little more about her job. She makes data analysis seem unbelievably interesting. What is even more evident is her effervescent spirit. At barely five feet tall, Anisha is petite, but her joy is larger than life.

When she looks back on her life, the exact timeline of events is somewhat fuzzy, especially because the incidents were so frequent. Did the time he slammed his head into her face and broke her nose take place when they first got married? Then, there was the time he flung a mobile at her and cut her eye, making one side of her face swell to an angry purple. Which came first? What about that time when he took a hammer to her knees? Or all those moments when he made her kneel before him?

The sequence of events is hazy. But the pain he inflicted, the way he squashed her worth and destroyed her confidence—these remain clear in her memory. It’s been six years since it all ended. Anisha is now an independent 30-year-old woman, but her voice quivers as she relives the memories.

She met him when she was barely 18. He worked as a DJ at her new event-planning job and started pursuing her almost immediately. But just a couple of months into their relationship, the abuse started. Anything could set Tarun off. Anisha’s situation at home was not ideal either. Her dad had died when she was three years old. Her mom had done what she could for Anisha and her two younger brothers, but money was always short and life’s pressures high. For her mother, alcohol had seemed like a temporary escape from overwhelming responsibility—till it took her in its claw-like grip.

“I had to quit college and check my mom into rehab. Somehow, I thought that having a man in my life could give me some security. I believed that he would be able to fix things,” she remembers. But Tarun did just the opposite. He broke the spirit of a beautiful young girl. When she tried to escape, he tracked her down like an animal does its prey.

She remembers the time she left the city and moved to her aunt’s place on the outskirts of town. At 4 a.m., he came for her, creating a scene outside the house till Anisha compliantly sat in the car with him. Barely had they started driving when he slapped her hard across her face. His mother and his friend sat in the car, silent spectators to the violence.

Anisha and Tarun moved in together and the pressure to get married started to grow. “Give him a chance,” his mother would convince Anisha. “He is improving.” For a few months, it did seem like things were getting better. He had stopped drinking and was on his best behavior. She didn’t feel like she had any option but to marry her abuser. He had, by then, stolen her sense of worth, her ability to make a decision. The abuse only grew worse after the wedding.

“I own you,” he would tell Anisha. “I have the license to do what I want.”

Her one escape from the hellhole that was her home was her job. While Tarun let her work, he controlled her money. Her bank account and credit cards were in his name. Every day he gave her ₹120—₹100 for auto fare and ₹20 for lunch. Soon her colleagues started noticing the bruises and the absences from work. They gave her information about NGOs that could help her out. Leaving him may have seemed simple to them. But she felt like a hostage.

“When you’re abused, it breaks who you are as a person. You lose your will to live,” she explains. “You even start believing all the vulgar things your abuser says about you.”

But then came the tipping point.

She had left for work after another sleepless night. Throughout the day, her phone beeped: one abusive text message after another poured in from Tarun. She left work early as she was experiencing chest pain. As soon as she walked into the house, Tarun grabbed her neck. “Please, Tarun, I have chest pain,” she begged.

“I’ll show you what chest pain is really like,” he shouted as he punched her chest, making her collapse onto the floor.

“I suddenly realized I was done with him. I had reached my breaking point,” says Anisha. The four years of abuse had reached a crescendo. She picked herself up. She waited for the coast to clear, grabbed a bag of loose change that she had hidden, and walked out.

“I just kept walking. I went to my office and told my CEO that I can’t go back home,” she says. Her colleagues arranged for Anisha to go to an NGO which sent her to a Christian shelter home at an undisclosed location. It was there that Anisha’s relationship with God solidified. God had always been her hope.

“Even when Tarun beat me, I would go to the washroom, fall on my knees right there, and pray for a way out.” But now, God became more real to her than ever before.

Yet, it was far from easy. She remembers how a car near the shelter had the same reversing tune as Tarun’s car. “Every time I heard that tune, I would shake with fear, thinking that he was coming for me,” Anisha recalls. She stopped eating. She was so weak she couldn’t even hold a pencil. “I had nothing with me, just the clothes I was wearing. But through the shelter home, God showed me that He was my provider,” she says. From her first day at the home, she was asked to join the daily prayer time and, slowly, through those times of prayer, she found her strength.

Toward the end of her stay at the shelter, another young woman joined the home. She had a disturbingly similar story. In fact, her abuser was none other than Tarun, the DJ. It sent shivers down Anisha’s spine that just a few months after her leaving, Tarun had started to victimize a new person, this time a 16-year-old girl whom he had also gotten pregnant.

Anisha was able to counsel the girl and help her understand that she was a victor for leaving her abuser.

After a year of living in the shelter home, Anisha found a job and now lives independently. She is involved in her local church and is called upon to counsel women caught in abusive situations. “I now understand who I am in Christ. The way I see myself has changed completely. I’m not the same woman anymore. It really takes God to help you work through the past,” says Anisha. “I’m living my life in surrender to Christ; He is my life—and I’m enjoying it completely.”

Reflect

A Call to Connection

Attachment theory posits that all human beings need to feel connected to a person who makes them feel as if they belong. Healthy relationships give people a sense of security and well-being. But no human being is complete enough to offer anyone else unconditional love consistently enough to take away their fear of rejection.

In an unhealthy, abusive relationship, the absence of security is intensified. The abused lives in fear of displeasing her abuser, in dread of his explosions of anger. She gives up her opinions, her preferences, her desires, and tries hard to become the kind of person she thinks he wants her to be. But she can never know where she is with him; she can never know what will set him off. Constantly trying to mold herself to please him, so as to not earn his wrath, she loses her identity, becoming unsure of herself, rootless, clueless.

Unlike humans, God does not despise our suffering or sweep it under the carpet. Jesus said, “I am the vine; you are the branches” (John 15:5). He offers Himself to each person as his or her root and welcomes each one attaching themselves deeply to Him. He is in them, and they in Him, flesh of His flesh and bone of His bone, made complete in His love. People come to Jesus starved of love and filled with fear of rejection. But nothing scandalizes Him. He knows the full extent of each one’s brokenness and sinfulness and accepts them with unconditional love. Jesus, the true vine, opens His heart to everyone saying, “Remain in my love” (John 15:9). His perfect love destroys fear and makes the broken person whole again. One can always be sure of where one stands with Jesus because He is unchanging.

A vine has many branches. It is the picture of a community of believers being one body through abiding in the love of Christ. Being made whole in His love, those who belong to Him can pour love into one another and help one another be rooted and build their lives in Christ. It is not only victims who need help. The community of disciples needs to cater to the abusers as well, to help them out of their abusive patterns of behavior. This demands a preparation to make a lifetime commitment to walk alongside broken people, to help them learn to abide in the love of Christ and be transformed by His truth. One cannot put the burden of change on the abuse victims alone. Yes, the community of believers is also broken and deeply flawed, because every individual is broken too, but each one needs to be growing, deeply rooted in Christ the vine, being transformed into His likeness and through the Holy Spirit. Christ offers all that He is to everyone so that they can be fruitful. Then those who follow Him will be able to be true ambassadors of reconciliation, bringing healing in hearts and relationships with themselves and with others.

Engage

What Will This Intimacy and Belonging in God's Family Cost One in the World?

How Will the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit Each Work to Sustain One Through the Trials One Will Face?

What Does It Look Like to Live in Intimate Connection with God?

  1. Identify
  1. Interpret
  1. Involve
  1. Intercede