The Tree of Fruitfulness

Fruitfulness is presented as an outflow of the life that we have been given. We have no power to produce fruit apart from christ. Fruit is produced as his life works itself out in our lives by his spirit. And so it's by cleaving to jesus, by hold on strongly to him and abiding in him, that we will produce fruit. The lord does not just want to save us as an end in self. Rather, he wants to produce something new, good, beautiful and fruitful through and in us. John frequently speaks of abiding in both his gospel and his epistles. This is perhaps nowhere more powerfully illustrated than by the organic union between the vine and the