Abide in Christ

“Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, so neither can you unless you abide in Me. I am the vine, you are the branches; he who abides in Me and I in him, he bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing.” –John 15:4-5 (NASB)

Don’t you just love thesauruses? I do. Recently while noodling on the theme of my WIP, I decided to sneak in an allusion Christ’s stunning imagery in John 15. Since “abide” isn’t exactly a sneaky sort of word, I turned to a thesaurus for some other possibilities. The listings opened my eyes for an impromptu word study.

I realized that “abide” may be one of those words that I have heard many times and even used without having ever clearly defined. It’s little wonder, though. “Abide” signifies a number of meanings: to endure, to wait, to exist, to remain or continue in a given state, and even to submit to or put up with. Which sense did Jesus mean when He said, “Abide in Me”?

I sought out a concordance and discovered that the Hebrew word translated as “abide” reflected several meanings as well. The first is to remain, with connotations of continuing, surviving, and not changing. The second simply means, to await one.

This complex word recurs multiple times in John 15, but with an illustration so poignant that its definitions become secondary to understanding its sense. We remain – continuing, surviving, not changing – as a branch of a vine does, dependent upon its source. We wait through the slow and sometimes painful process of bearing fruit, know that separated from the vine, we can’t produce so much as a single bud. We abide in Christ.

Has a dictionary or thesaurus ever sparked a mini-Bible lesson in your life? Share your insight in the comments!