Sermon on John 15:1-9 — "Abide in Jesus" by Rev Harry Newton
A Sunday sermon from SumRed Church in which Rev Harry Newton unpacks Jesus' metaphor of the vine and branches from John 15, exploring what it means to truly abide in Christ.
Summary
Rev Harry Newton delivers a sermon on John 15:1-9, set within the context of John's Gospel and the farewell discourse of chapters 13–17. He explains the significance of Jesus' "I am" statements as claims to divinity, drawing on the name Yahweh from Exodus, and connects this to a Trinitarian understanding of God. The central argument is that "abiding" in Jesus is not the same as merely believing in him — it requires active, ongoing connection through prayer, Scripture, and putting faith into action. Newton also stresses that this is not entirely the believer's burden, because the Holy Spirit works from within to transform and sustain the follower of Jesus over time.
Key Takeaways
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Introduction to John's Gospel
Rev Harry Newton: If you were here a few weeks ago, you might recall I did a brief recap of something called the Gospel of John. It's one of four accounts of Jesus' life — Matthew, Mark, Luke, John — each named after an author of their story. John is a bit weird. People often tell me — people who have been around church for a period of time — that they love John. They love it. It's great. It's my least favourite version of the Jesus story because he's weird. When you read his language, it is a bit strange. But the reason it's strange is that he's not writing for us. He's writing for a first-century Judaic audience in what is a really Essenic kind of style.
If you don't know who the Essenes were, they were a group of people who lived out in a place called Qumran. I say they were a bit unusual because they believed that if you spat to the left, you were absolutely fine, but if you spat to the right, you were anathema to the Lord and therefore destined for the pits of hell. Very strange. So they had to have spit buckets to their left in chapel, but not to their right. You don't think that's weird — I think that's weird. Anyway, John evidently had something to do with them to a degree, and he writes from a very Essenic kind of perspective.
What he also does is structure his book really, really carefully. He structures it in two halves: the Book of Signs and the Book of Glory. The Book of Signs comes first — it covers approximately the first twelve chapters — and in it he gives us seven signs that point towards who Jesus is. Because what does a sign do? It tells you where to go, right? Who's ever seen a really dumb sign? That's the one. Cool.
I was watching Top Gear the other night — don't judge me, I love it, it's my secret pleasure — and in it there's a sign pointing to a secret nuclear facility. And the presenter goes, "Oh look, there's a facility," pulls off the highway, and there it is. So there are some dumb signs. But in John's version, the seven signs are actually quite epic. He includes exactly seven because seven in Judaic society was a very important number, full of symbolism and richness. He also gives us seven "I am" statements about who Jesus is. We'll get to those briefly in a moment.
The Structure of John's Gospel and the Farewell Discourse
That's the Book of Signs. Then he has the Book of Glory, which is where we are today. The Book of Glory is divided into a number of subsections, and we find ourselves in the midst of something called the farewell discourse — chapters 13 through to 17. This is really important for us today because it provides the context of where we're at.
Chapter 12 is the end of the Book of Signs, and chapter 13 is the segue into the Book of Glory. In chapter 12, Jesus tells his friends that he's soon going to die. And then when we hit the beginning of chapter 13, he reaffirms that he's going to be leaving them soon. We're told they're quite distressed by this. He then goes further and predicts — because they're having the Last Supper, that last meal he has before he dies — that one of the men sitting around the table with him is going to betray him later that night. And then he turns to Peter, one of his closest friends and the de facto leader of this group of peasants, and says, "You're going to deny me publicly."
Now, this sets a pretty low vibe. I don't know about you, but I think that would be a pretty depressing way to have dinner. Has anyone ever had a really bad dinner party? We had some people over once, years ago, and one of them started crying halfway through me serving her potatoes. I had no idea what I'd done to make her cry. Then the other one started comforting her, and then they started yelling at each other. The husband got up and left the house and sat outside and played with Josiah, who was a toddler, and didn't come back in. Super awkward. This is kind of that level of awkwardness. Jesus is having a meal with his friends and says, "By the way, you're going to deny me and you're going to betray me." Bad vibes.
Which is why in chapter 14, just preceding our reading this morning, Jesus responds with what I think is an incredibly pastoral, kind, and comforting tone. In fact, the unofficial title given to that subsection is "Jesus comforting his disciples" — because of all that stuff that's just happened. They're upset. They're scared. They're confused. In Peter's case, they're a little offended. And so Jesus comforts them and reassures them that he's going to be coming back in the not-too-distant future, which probably would have made no sense to them at all. And then he makes them a promise — a promise that relates to what we celebrated two weeks ago in the church: Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit came in power to the first disciples.
The Promise of the Holy Spirit
Now, why does that matter? It matters because Jesus promises that the Holy Spirit will be sent to be with them and to help them after his departure. And that matters for us this morning because it sets the scene. The promise of the Holy Spirit is the foundation of the type of life that Jesus is describing to us in this very brief reading that Eleanor just read out — the passage about the vine.
So I want to spend a little bit of time exploring this metaphor of the vine.
"I Am the True Vine" — The Claim to Divinity
Jesus states right at the beginning: "I am the true vine. The Father is the vine grower." Now, this sentence is packed full of meaning, and as twenty-first century Kiwis, we can kind of miss the boat on it to a degree.
As I said earlier, throughout John's account there are seven "I am" statements — statements made by Jesus regarding his identity. The reason he uses the words "I am" is because right back in a book called Exodus in the Old Testament, God is asked who he is. Moses, who is the soon-to-be leader of the Israelites, says to him essentially, "Who are you? Who am I to say sent me?" And God responds: "I am who I am."
In first-century Hebraic culture, the phrase "I am" was closely tied to the name Yahweh. Who's heard the name Yahweh before? Great. If you haven't, it was the old Jewish name for God, meaning "the one who is" or "the self-existent one." And if you were here last week, that might ring a bell, because you might notice it's reminiscent of the Latin phrase ipsum esse subsistens, which we explored last week as a way of explaining the nature of God — this idea that God is not a being among other beings, the height of the pyramid of beingness, but the very essence that underpins and sustains reality itself.
So when Jesus says "I am" here in our reading, he's echoing God's name and making a claim to his identity. He's saying: I am God. And we see an echo here of last week's Trinitarian theme — that mysterious and frankly esoteric conceptualisation of the nature of God. Three personae, one God: Father, Son, Holy Spirit. Three persons in the one. If that sounds a bit weird and a bit gobbledygook, it's okay — it's supposed to. The whole idea is that God is beyond our ability to fully comprehend.
So bringing all that together — that's the background of this one sentence. In this opening line, we hear Jesus say, "I am the vine and the Father is the vine grower," and we hear Jesus make this bold claim to divinity and underscore his close personal relationship with God the Father.
Where Does the Holy Spirit Fit In?
Now, last time I spoke about God the Father and God the Son, someone walked up to me afterwards and said, "What about God the Holy Spirit?" Fair point. Because if we say we're Trinitarian — one God, three persons: Father, Son, Holy Spirit — where does the Spirit fit into all this? We'll get to that in a minute.
But first, Jesus refers to himself here as divine. What does that actually mean? I think it's really easy to look at these things and go, "Oh yeah, I kind of get what that means," without thinking about them in depth. So a brief segue.
Who's heard of Hampton Court? Who's been to Hampton Court? Awesome — me too. I got kicked out because I peed on a bush. I was only about five. Apparently I was bursting for the loo and I peed on a bush, and this man ran up to my mum and said, "He is not to urinate on Her Majesty's bush." And I was asked to leave. That's my one claim to fame in that area.
But anyway, Hampton Court was actually the palace of King Henry VIII, who incidentally founded the Anglican Church, of which we are part. And in Hampton Court, there is a grapevine which is about a thousand years old — really cool. What makes this grapevine particularly remarkable is that it has one root which is about two feet thick. Attached to it are branches, some of which are almost sixty metres long. And despite its age — a thousand years old — it produces over a ton of fruit every year. Even the branches that are almost sixty metres long produce fruit for their entire length. They still bear sweet, delicious fruit.
Why? Because life flows from that single root into the vine, which brings nourishment to the branches.
Abiding in Jesus — What It Means
So when Jesus says, "I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing" — when he says this, he's making it clear that he is the source of true spiritual nourishment. Which means, if you want to flourish spiritually and live a life of meaning that makes a positive, lasting, tangible impact on the world around you, you need to be grafted to Jesus the vine. You need to, to quote him, abide in him.
But what does that actually mean? As I've shared before, when I went to youth group, I remember once asking what the word "grace" meant. I asked my youth group leader, and he said, "Oh yeah, you know, it's in there somewhere," and walked off. We often in Christian circles just assume everybody knows what different words mean, and if you're anything like me, you kind of pretend you do know.
So what do we mean by the word "abide"? The word abide means to dwell. But it also carries a relational aspect. To abide in Jesus means to live in a continual, close, and faithful relationship with him. It means drawing your spiritual life, your strength, and your direction from him in your daily life.
To be clear: to abide in Jesus does not mean to believe in Jesus. They are not the same thing. It means to be grafted to him, dependent on him daily, and keeping in step with his heart and his teachings. So when Jesus says, "Abide in me and I in you," he's inviting those of us who want to be his followers into a life of ongoing connection, trust, and obedience.
Three Ways to Abide
But the next question is: how do you actually do that? What does it look like to be attached to the vine, to abide in Jesus?
Simply put, the first way is to be immersed in prayer. Paul was a leader in the early church who wrote extensively to Christians across the region — a really interesting man, though apparently a very boring preacher. He once literally bored a man to death. The guy fell asleep, fell out the window, and died. So Paul wasn't exactly a great preacher, but he was a theological powerhouse. And in his letter to the church in Thessalonica, he reminded them to, quote, "pray without ceasing." The point being: one way to abide in Jesus, one way to be grafted to him, to dwell in him, to be connected to him, to have him as your spiritual source of nourishment and sustainment, is to immerse yourself in prayer.
The second way is to immerse yourself in Scripture. Paul, again, wrote to a man called Timothy. In 2 Timothy, he reminds us that Scripture shapes our character. If you've read the Bible, you might recall the passage where Jesus talks about the eye being like a lamp to the body — when it's full of light, you are full of light; when it's full of darkness, you are full of darkness. I'm paraphrasing there. I think it's a really good thing to remember. If you are consuming things which are bad for your soul — and you know what they are, I don't have to define them, we all know the stuff around us that we maybe spend a bit too much time looking at and consuming inwardly — that's going to form your character. If, however, you're spending time engaging with and consuming things that are good for you, that will also shape your character. Scripture is good for you. So the point is: if you want to be grafted to Jesus, if you want to experience a close spiritual connection to him, immerse yourself in prayer and immerse yourself in Scripture. Which is why this year, our challenge as a faith community is to do those two things as our two main focuses.
The third key way we can abide in Jesus is to put our faith into action. There's a writer in the book of James who writes: "Faith by itself, not accompanied by action, is dead." In other words, you can be as spiritual as you like and stand around. You can pray. You can read Scripture. You can do yoga. You can meditate. You can do whatever floats your boat spiritually. But if you're not putting it into action, it's completely and utterly meaningless. If you want to abide in Jesus and experience a tangible relationship with him, you need to immerse yourself in prayer, immerse yourself in Scripture, and immerse yourself in putting your faith into action.
If you don't do these things, you won't sustain yourself. There was a study that came out not long ago showing that over seventy percent — I can't remember the exact figure, but seventy-something percent — of clergy, people in my position, do not read their Bible regularly or pray regularly. And do you know that the majority of clergy burn out within five years? I'm into year twelve, so I'm well ahead of the curve — which is awesome. But they burn out at five years. Do you know why? Because they're not reading and they're not praying. They're not sustaining themselves. You need to be grafted to Jesus to be able to flourish and be sustained spiritually.
The Fruit of Abiding — and the Role of the Holy Spirit
When we do these things — when we abide in Jesus by praying, reading, and putting our faith into action — we draw closer to Jesus. We become empowered to make a difference in the lives of others. And most importantly, when we abide in Jesus, we begin to experience the reality of God's presence in our daily lives. To put that in plain English: God becomes real.
God is real. But what use is God to you if he's not real to you? That's a line from Martin Luther. The point is: God exists, he actually exists for you personally, and you can come to know him personally. You can come to be immersed in him through Scripture, prayer, and putting your faith into action.
Which sounds really awesome, unless you're me. Who's done StrengthsFinder? A few of you already know this. StrengthsFinder, if you don't know, is a personality-based psychometric test. It gives you your strengths, and the idea is that you do it with your colleagues so you can all complement each other. Sounds good in theory. We did it as a staff team last year — I thought it was really good, we all seemed to enjoy it. It also tells you your five biggest weaknesses. Guess what Harry's biggest weakness is? Consistency.
So if you're like me and you struggle to be consistent, what does that mean for all this? Because if abiding in Jesus is related to your ability to read Scripture regularly and to pray consistently, then there's a potential for a sense of anxiety to come about here, isn't there? The onus seems to be on you. And if you're me, you're kind of in trouble.
But here's the thing. We do have a part to play in abiding in Jesus. The good news, though, is that it is not all on us. And this is where the Holy Spirit comes in.
We touched on this a couple of weeks ago at Pentecost in terms of what the Holy Spirit does. And as we discovered, one of the key things the Holy Spirit does in the world is transform us from within. Have you ever met someone who has an amazing story of transformation — they met Christ and it completely changed their life, turned them around? That is what we're talking about here. The Spirit does not leave us the way we are. Because God loves you just the way you are, but he loves you too much to leave you that way.
When we commit ourselves to following Jesus, the Spirit begins to change us from the inside out. And over time, the Spirit makes us more and more like Jesus — more loving, joyful, peaceful, faithful, gentle, and self-controlled. I don't know about you, but those sound like pretty good things to have more of in your life.
So what all this shows us is that abiding in Jesus — being grafted to the vine — is a two-way street. Yes, we need to be proactive in abiding in him. But our efforts to abide in him are not what save us. We are saved and spiritually sustained through God's love. And Jesus' presence in your life is made real through the gift of what he calls the Advocate — the Holy Spirit. And that, in turn, relieves us of any spiritual anxiety we might have.
The Promise — Ask for Whatever You Wish
The upshot of abiding in Jesus, the upshot of all this, is that if you are grafted to Jesus — if you abide in him and he in you — then your heart and your mind will become transformed over time to be in sync with his. Which is why Jesus ends our reading this morning with that amazing promise: "If you abide in me and my words abide in you, ask for whatever you wish and it will be done."
Big words, right? Why doesn't he answer my prayer when I want to win Lotto? I've never actually bought Lotto tickets — well, I did once, and I won, but that's beside the point. And yesterday I went to Mitre 10 and bought a voucher — I could potentially win a Hilux. Come on, God, let me win that Hilux. I love a Hilux. Why does he not answer those prayers? Yeah — he doesn't like me more than the other twenty people who entered. But also, what Jesus is saying here is not that if you can just be spiritual enough, he'll become your personal genie.
What he's saying is this: as you become transformed into his likeness, as you abide in him and he in you, and the Holy Spirit begins to change you into who you are truly made to be, you will become more like him. Your heart and your mind will be in sync with his. And what that means is that whenever you ask Jesus for something, he will give it to you — because what you're asking for is actually what he wants to give. That is an amazing promise.
But he doesn't end there. He actually ends with this one line: "As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you. Abide in my love." His point being that by being grafted into him, by living in relationship with him and abiding in him and he in you, you will come to experience the tangible reality of God's presence in your life.
Closing — The Good News of Jesus
This God talk might sound a bit weird, and I get that. Christianity at times gets associated with some pretty negative stuff. Brian Tamaki was being a twit in the middle of Auckland yesterday — we get associated with all sorts of things. But thankfully, Christianity is not about us. It's about Jesus. It's about the good news of Jesus: that he died and redeemed you through his death and resurrection, and that through him and the gift of the Holy Spirit, you can experience the tangible reality of God's presence in your life today. You can have peace from your past, purpose in your present, and hope for your future. That is the good news of Jesus.
And so if you want to flourish spiritually, if you want to live a life of meaning, if you want to be free of any baggage from the past, if you want to trust that regardless of what happens in the future you will not be alone — abide in him. Immerse yourself in prayer. Immerse yourself in Scripture. Put your faith into action. But never fall into the trap of thinking the onus is entirely on you. Grafting into the vine is a two-way street. The Holy Spirit is always at work in you, pulling you closer to Jesus and transforming you quietly from within into who you are truly made to be.
That's what today's reading is all about. Abide in me and I in you.
Communion
We're now going to prepare ourselves for communion. Communion is, funnily enough, exactly what Jesus was doing that night with his friends when he said all this. He was having the first ever communion service — sharing the bread and the wine with his friends. And he said to them, "Every time you do this, do it in remembrance of me. Every time you gather to worship, do this and remember it's for me." So that's what we're going to do this morning.