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CHAPTER 2: MEMBERS OF CHRIST (part 4)
The vine is not only a united organism but it is an organism which lives a common life derived from a common source, and that source is not in the branches but in the parent stem; just so we Christians live in the Spirit not with out own life but with the life of the parent stem which is Christ. “I am the vine, ye are the branches: he that abideth in Me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without Me ye can do nothing.”
I would emphasize those last words as I think the Lord Christ meant them to be emphasized—“Without Me ye can do nothing,” not something, but nothing at all. The majority of the discouragements of the spiritual life arise from the fact that we constantly think that by ourselves we can do something, though it may not be a very big something. So we set out to do that something by ourselves with the very best intentions and a good deal of hope; then we find that it does not happen, the thing is too hard for us, even though at the outset it seemed quite possible; then we forthwith become depressed, we say it is no good trying and give it all up. We should not, however, get depressed, nor should we make so many failures, if we would only realize that “the branch cannot bear fruit of itself”; it has no life in itself, all its life being derived from the tree of which it is a part: it has no independent life.
Just separate a branch from a tree and see what happens; for a time it will continue to live and look beautiful because the sap is still in it, but when the sap dries up the branch begins to wither and its flowers to disappear and in the end it is just a dead branch; you will get no fruit off a branch like that. It is just the same with ourselves, we are just branches of the vine, which is Christ, and we live with the life of the vine and no other life, and that is fundamentally what grace means to us.
Some people speak of grace as if it were a kind of dead thing, or something which can be put up into parcels and distributed, others as if it had no real existence at all. But the fact of grace is so tremendous that we can never get to the bottom of its significance; one thing we can say of it quite simply, and that it that it is the life of Christ in us. It is not just something for which we pray when we have something especially difficult to do, not something which is given at one time and withdrawn at another, not something which comes to an end, but it is our very life.
There is such a thing as grace given for special purposes, and we should find it hard indeed to face the difficulties of life without it; but the great scholastics would never call that grace, they called it “a certain divine aid,” and reserved the term grace for that even greater thing which we are now considering, the life of the parent stem which makes to live the branches of which the vine is composed, that life of which the Sacraments are the channels.
“I am the way and the truth,” said our Lord, but He also said, “I am the life” (Jn xiv. 6), and it is that which makes it possible for our feet the tread the way and our minds to know the truth and by them to reach God; and although by ourselves we can do nothing, yet, as S. Paul reminds us, we “can do all things through Christ Who strengtheneth” (Phil. iv. 13) us with His own life.
But what is it that we are to do? God expects some result from the tremendous gifts which He bestows, and our Lord describes this result as the “fruit” of the divine life. “He that abideth in Me and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit.”
God looks for fruit in us. That is the real lesson of that acted parable of the barren fig-tree. Many people have found difficulties in that little incident and some have in consequence come to regard it as a spurious addition to the Gospel story because they could not accommodate it to the character of Christ, but these difficulties arise fro a misunderstanding of the whole matter. Our Lord did not curse the fig-tree in a fit of childish rage or because of unsatisfied hunger. He was hungry, the tree should have borne fruit which would have satisfied that hunger, but it did not, and He cursed it so that it withered, not on account of itself but in order to impress upon the Apostles the fact that the Christian who fails to bring forth fruit is not only useless but fails to attain the end for which he has been made and redeemed, and he must consequently wither. It may seem to us an extravagant way of doing it, but when we realize the extreme difficulty with which important truths were brought hom to their slow minds we cannot say it was extravagant. Rightly understood, the incident captures our imaginations so that we cannot forget it, and no doubt that is what the divine wisdom intended.