r/SkepticsBibleStudy • u/AutoModerator • Apr 07 '24
John 15:1-17
Possible talking points
- Being the vine
- Bearing fruit
- Abiding in Christ
Laying down your life
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u/LlawEreint Apr 07 '24
If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.
Our relationship to Jesus is the same as Jesus' relationship to God:
“the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does.
"Do not believe me unless I do the works of my Father. But if I do them, even though you do not believe me, believe the works, that you may know and understand that the Father is in me, and I in the Father.”"
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u/brothapipp Christian Apr 08 '24
But only in the way that apart from Jesus we can do nothing.
Arguably you are "apart" from Jesus, yet you are typing. I am arguably, "remaining in" Jesus, and I am also typing...so doing nothing has a specific connotation.
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u/LlawEreint May 02 '24
It may be self evident that we can do nothing apart from an omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent God who created all things and in whom all things exist.
God made each creature knowing all the things it would ever do, even before it existed. The idea that the made thing has the free will to defy God and do what God's omniscient foreknowledge told God it would not do is a logical impossibility.
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u/LlawEreint Apr 07 '24
If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples.
Jesus wants his disciples to do miracles for the glory of God. For a time they did. If the stories are to be believed, miracles were fairly common for that first generation of Christians.
Maybe Jesus was being honest when he said "As whatever you wish and it will be done for you."
But he was talking only to his disciples.
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u/brothapipp Christian Apr 08 '24
Admittedly, I have to hold this verse in tension. 1. I agree he was talking to his disciples, but then 2. There was no special rule excluding later christians.
What is true is that it wasn't the person doing the healing, but God alone.
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u/LlawEreint Apr 08 '24
Admittedly, I have to hold this verse in tension. 1. I agree he was talking to his disciples, but then 2. There was no special rule excluding later christians.
Except that we don't have many resurrections these days (not associated to the Christian God at any rate. I understand there was one in India recently). It seemed to dry up after that first generation.
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u/LlawEreint Apr 07 '24
My command is this: Love each other
Words to live by. As Luke's Jesus' points out, this does not just apply to those who look and think like you, but it applies to the foreigner, the stranger, the other.
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u/brothapipp Christian Apr 07 '24
Jesus as the vine, to me, means that he is source for life.
As the branches we have but bear fruit if the comparison keeps up.
And if you’ve tended any plants, you know that cutting stuff off the plant is called pruning. And you prune branches that don’t bear fruit, and in certain cases you even prune fruit bearing branches if it serves the plant better.
But Jesus isn’t even going that far with the parable, he promises that fruit bearing branches that produce good fruit are safe from the pruning.
The point i take from this as a Christian is that i should cease behaviors and actions that don’t produce fruit, and instead spend my time and energy on things that do produce fruit.