John 15:4-11, Our Purpose: To exalt Christ as Lord (5)

Exalting Christ is more, much more, than obedience to Him.  It is living totally out of His life that has become our life.  Gal. 2:20 makes this clear: I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live, yet not I but Christ lives in me!  This isn’t symbolic, allegorical nor illustrative; Christ lives in the believer!  We need to stress this truth.

·       In John 6:51-58 Jesus said I am the living bread.  He then said, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in you.  The Jews misunderstood, asking “How can this Man give us His flesh to eat” (v52)?  Yet, Jesus did not back down on this strong language.  What did He mean?

o   The battle over these words has been fought with long-lasting lines drawn.  Catholics taught that in the Mass the priest was serving up the real flesh and blood of Christ.  Luther and Zwingli agreed on everything except this.  Luther taught that at the Lord’s Table, when the believer eats the bread and drinks the cup, those elements become the actual body and blood of Christ.  Zwingli understood the depth of this identification with Christ.  When one believes in Christ we die with Christ and are buried, raised a new person in the newness of His life (Rom. 6)!  Thus, believers were not ingesting the actual body and blood of Christ (Reformers often accused others of teaching “cannibalism”) but are remembering that their faith in Christ brought about a deep identification with Him.  He actually lives in us; He actually is our life.  But His life, eternal life, is not physical life.  Jesus was no more an actual loaf of bread than He was an actual plant when He said “I am the Vine” or a candle or light bulb when He said “I am the Light of the World.” 

o   Thus, believers in Christ have been called into “fellowship” (partaking, sharing the same life) with the Son (1 Cor. 1:9).  Christ “is our life” (Col. 3:4).  We are partakers “of the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:3-4).  True believers are those who are holding fast to the Head, from whom all the body, nourished and knit together by joints and ligaments, grows with the increase that is from God (Col. 2:19; cf. Eph. 4:16).  The “marriage” picture (Eph. 5:31-32), the “temple” picture (Eph. 2:21-22), and the Vine/branches in today’s reading show the same deep identification we have with Christ.

·       We need to remember that this is what Jesus prayed for in John 17:20-23.  Jesus prayed for us, believers, to be one (v21,22).  We often mistake this “oneness” for organizational oneness, requiring us to all meet together in the same assembly.  But that is not what Jesus says.  He prays for us to be one as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You (v21).  The Father and Son are One in a deep, unfathomable sense.  So are believers with each other.  It is because Christ, in Whom is the Father, now lives in each believer (v23).  The life of Christ is real, very real; but it is spiritual, eternal, resurrection life.