Date: June 22, 2025
Series: Fruit bearing
God, as we see in Scriptures, wants those of us who are His children to bear fruit; He wants us to bring forth fruit. Let’s turn to St. John’s Gospel, chapter 15, and look at what Jesus has to say about that. From verse 8, it says: “This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples.” (NIV)
So, bringing forth fruit or our bearing fruit is to God’s glory or it brings God glory. And Jesus here says that as we bring forth fruit, we are showing ourselves to be His disciples.
Now I’m just trying to lay a foundation here. So I may not be able to take much of this, this morning. But I want you to take note of the fact that God wants us to bring forth fruit because doing so brings Him glory.Then, skip to verse 16 of the same chapter: “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.” (John 15:16NIV)
Here again, Jesus says, you did not choose me; instead, I chose you. We did not choose Him; He chose us. So, the reason we are saved is that He chose us. The reason you are born again is that He chose you.
In the Garden of Eden, Adam did not choose God; he chose the devil. So, it’s not in the natural man to choose God. The natural man will always choose the devil, ever since he fell. But we have been saved because God chose us, because He chose us and called us to Himself.
Yes, He called us back to himself. That’s why we are now saved. And Jesus is placing His fingers on that here, saying that we did not choose Him; He chose us.Not only did He choose us, He also appointed us. Appointed us to do what? Appointed us to bear fruit! Of course, in dealing with this, we are going to be looking at:
– Why God wants us to bear fruit.- What sort of fruit He wants us to bear.
– How do we bear fruit as much as he wants us to?
– The consequences of not bringing forth fruit.
Those are the things we are going to be looking at as we are dealing with this together. And I want you to keep them in mind. Well, here, Jesus is already showing us one of the reasons He expects us to bear fruit. He expects us to bear fruit because He has appointed us to do so. So, it is consistent with God’s purpose for our lives that we bring forth fruit. He wants us to bring forth fruit. He chose us to bring forth fruit.
He appointed us to bring forth fruit. We can summarize all that by saying that we have been recreated by Him to bring forth fruit. So, we are not expected to do anything contrary because that’s what He has appointed us to do.I’ll take you back to the first few verses of the chapter. And what is said in them has to do with our relationship with Him. What I am saying is that apart from the fact that He has appointed us to bring forth fruits, we also have a relationship with Him that puts us in a position to bring forth fruit.
You know, you may be appointed to do something, but it does not mean that you have the ability to do that thing. That somebody has chosen you to do something or appointed you to do something does not mean that you have what it takes to do that thing. You may not have what it takes to do that thing. And if you do not have what it takes to do that thing, even though you have been appointed to do it, you are still going to be a failure at it.
So, though the Lord has appointed us to bring forth fruit, if we do not have what it takes to bring forth fruit, we are still going to fail. It doesn’t matter how hard we try. A lot of times people try hard to do things, yet they fail. And the question they are not asking themselves is if they have the ability to do what they are trying to do.
For instance, you hear of students who have written maybe WAEC examinations like three or four times and they are yet to make all their papers. And they are telling themselves to try harder. But see, this is not a question of how hard you try. It’s a question of ability. If you have the ability to do something, then it will be worth it to try and try to get that thing done. That is because you already have the ability to do it. Yes, maybe there are certain things that are limiting you. And you might want to deal with those things. So, in the process of trying, you are dealing with those things that are limiting you.
But if you don’t have the ability to do something, it doesn’t matter how hard you try, you can only fail. Because the ability is not there. So, if we do not have the ability to bring forth fruit, it doesn’t matter how hard we try, we won’t be able to do so.Now we may be trying to live to please God. But pleasing God is not really something that we try to do. Of course, we may tell ourselves to make effort. And there are scriptures that point to the fact that we should make effort, that we should try to do what pleases God.
But essentially, we must have what it takes to please Him. Because if we do not have what it takes to please Him, then it doesn’t matter how hard we try to please Him. We won’t be able to please Him.If I find myself struggling to do something, I don’t want to struggle harder. I want to ask myself, “Do I have the strength to do this? Do I have what it takes to do this?” Struggling harder is not the solution. Gaining sufficient strength to do it is the solution.
If you are engaged in a fight with somebody, maybe a physical fight or a physical struggle, how do you win? Now, growing up, some of us would probably have been exposed to situations in which you have to physically fight somebody. But you may fight somebody 10 times and the person will beat you 10 times. Or let’s go to the field of boxing. You can meet an opponent in a boxing ring 5 times and he will beat you 5 times. He will beat you all the time.
Why? Now if somebody is telling you, “Let’s try harder,” the person is going to get you killed. Because trying harder is not the solution. The solution is, “Do you have the ability to contend with this person?” So, if you want to contend with the person and win, you will need to gain ability; you need to gain strength; you need to gain skills.
And until you are sure that you have gained sufficient strength, sufficient skills and sufficient stamina to deal with the person in the ring, don’t bother. Because one of these days, you may die in the ring. Some months ago, there was a Nigerian boxer that died. He died in the ring. And as I was reading the review, it was said that he had been told that he was not medically fit for that fight.
So, he was not supposed to be in the ring in the first place. If fact, he had already cancelled the fight. But they increased the money he would get, if he should fight. They told him, “Okay, what if we pay you additional money, will you still fight.”
Now I can’t remember the money that was added to what he was supposed to be paid. But he agreed to the fight. And I watched the clip, how he died. It wasn’t that he took any serious hits. He just staggered and fell down at some point. And the rest is now history.
So, I’m saying that living to please God is not a function of trying to please him. It’s a function of having the ability to do so. And I’m saying that in the light of what we are looking at. Jesus says, “You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you to go and bring forth fruit.”
And I’m saying that must mean that we have what it takes to bring forth fruit. If we do not have what it takes to bring forth fruit, even though He’s appointed us to bring forth fruit, we won’t be able to bring forth fruit. But thankfully, we have what it takes to bring forth fruit because we have a relationship, a relationship with Him that puts us in the position to bring forth the kind of fruit that He’s asking us to bring forth.
We’re still going to look at the kind of fruit He wants us to bring forth, maybe not this morning, but we’re going to look at it. But let’s first of all look at what He says about our relationship with Him, that relationship that places us in the position to bring forth fruit, the kind of fruit that He wants us to bring forth.
So, let us go back to verse 5, the same gospel and the same chapter. And it says:“I am the vine and 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 15:5NIV)
Now the Lord is describing our relationship with him here. And how does he describe it? He refers to himself as the vine and to us as the branches.
That’s our relationship. The branches are a part of the vine, right? And what part of the vine brings forth fruit? What part of any tree brings forth fruit? The branch! So, the branch is a part of the tree, an inseparable part of the tree, to put it that way. And it is the part of the tree that brings forth fruit. If it is not in the tree, it doesn’t have a relationship with it. So, it cannot bring forth fruit. But as long as it’s in the tree, the tree supplies it with everything that it needs to bring forth fruit.
So, the reason branches bring forth fruit is that they are part of the tree. They don’t struggle to bring forth fruit. They are not supposed to try to bring forth fruit. They only need to be a part of the tree to bring forth fruit. Can you relate to what I’m talking about? And the Lord is saying that He is the vine and we are the branches.
So, we are a part of Him.We talk all the time about being in Christ. What does that even mean to you? When you tell yourself that you’re in Christ or when you say to others, “I am in Christ,” what does it mean to you? This is what it should mean to you: that you have a relationship with Him; that you are connected to Him; that He is your source and you are drawing from him.
Now because He is your source, there are things that you should naturally do. There are things that the doing of them should be natural for you. Bearing fruit should be natural for us. It should not be something that we’ll struggle to do. It should not be something that we’ll fight to do. It is something that should be natural for us. That is because we have a relationship. We have a relationship with the Lord that places us in that position where we can naturally bring forth fruit. But there are reasons He wants us to bring forth fruit. And He gives us two of them here [in John 15:5&16]:
– He has appointed us to do so.
– We have a relationship with Him that enables us to do so.
But then, before we begin to look at how to take advantage of that relationship to bring forth fruit, we need to know what sort of fruit He expects us to bear.
Because here He tells us that it brings God glory when we bring forth much fruit. But what sort of fruit? You know, I’ve heard this from several preachers: When Jesus says that He has chosen us and appointed us to bring forth fruit, He means that we are to be evangelizing. In other words, they are saying that the fruit He’s referring to has to do with soul winning, bringing people into the kingdom.
But before I really considered Scriptures carefully to see what they said about this matter, I always had issues with that reasoning. It just sounded somehow to me. It didn’t sound good in my ears. Well, the first thing we need to consider is that the only person that can save any soul is God Himself. None of us can save any soul God has not saved. So, it is not your preaching that will save people; it is God that will save them.
Yes, He may use your preaching to save them. But ultimately, He is the one that saves people. He is the one that makes people have faith to be saved. And if He does not make them have faith to be saved, it doesn’t matter how grand your sermon is, it won’t result in their salvation. So, we can’t save anybody. You cannot save anybody. I cannot save anybody. I do not have the power to save anybody. The word of God is very clear about that.
Now that’s one of the reasons Christians are warned not to marry unbelievers. Don’t have it in mind that you are going to change the person. Don’t have it in mind that, by the time the person is exposed to your faith, he’s going to have a changed mind. You do not have the power to change anybody’s mind. The only one with the power to change people’s minds is God. And He has not succeeded yet in changing people’s minds.
I mean, there are millions of people, billions of people in the world today. How many of them has God succeeded in changing their mind? God possesses all power, yet He’s not been able to employ that power to save everybody, to get everybody to be born again. So, what makes you think you can get anybody born again through your preaching? You can’t. That is God’s job.Well, I’m saying that when Jesus is talking about bringing forth fruit, He’s not referring to soul winning; He’s not referring to evangelizing.
Now that’s not to say that He doesn’t want us to evangelize. That’s not to say that He doesn’t want us to preach the gospel. He wants us to preach the gospel, based on the ability [and opportunities] that He has given to each of us. But the main thing, the main thing He’s asking us to do is to bear fruit. And the truth is that when we understand the nature of fruit He wants us to bear, and we are bearing it abundantly, we have no problems at all in saving souls. I’m telling you:
we’ll be making it easy for Him, very easy for Him to save souls, to bless lives, if we are bearing in abundance the fruit He wants us to bear.So, first, we need to know what sort of fruit He wants us to bear. Because if we do not know what sort of fruit He wants us to bear, then, we can’t tell whether we are bearing it or not.
Are you following my point? But let me just say this before I close, because my time is already up: He refers to Himself as the vine and we as the branches. So, if we are to bring forth fruit, think about it yourself, what sort of fruit do you think we should naturally bring forth? It makes sense to say we should naturally bring forth the fruit of His character, right?
So, when He’s asking us to bring forth fruit, He’s simply talking about bringing forth the fruit of His own character, the fruit of who He is. In other words, we are to manifest his character.Remember that it’s also Jesus that says a tree is known by its fruit (Matthew 12:33).
A tree is known by its fruit, not just by the leaves. A tree is not a mango tree just because it looks like a mango tree. If it is not bringing forth mangoes, at some point, you’re going to change your mind about it. Think about it. If you look at a tree that’s naturally supposed to bring forth mangoes and you start seeing oranges on the tree, are you not going to think that something is wrong somewhere?
So, when He’s saying that we are to bring forth fruit, having already shown us our relationship with Him, we should know that the kind of fruit He’s talking about has to do with His own character. He’s asking us to bring forth fruit that is consistent with His character.
Now I don’t want to press this further than that this morning. But I believe that, up to this point, you understand what I’m trying to share with you, right? Let’s bow our heads and thank God for His word.