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BRINGING FORTH FRUIT

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International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Feb 24, 1887

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 13, No. 8.

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BRINGING FORTH FRUIT.

By George Bowen

CHRISTIANS are to bring forth much fruit, not because of peculiar incidental advantages enjoyed by them, not by the favor of circumstances, not in consequence of their social position or their wealth or their intellectual endowments, but because they are united to Christ. The virtue is in him, and it freely flows to those who are united to him. He is the source and origin of fruitfulness; all fruit is from him, and it reveals itself in connection with his people just so far as they abide in him.
The chief impediment to usefulness is the unsubdued feeling of independence on their part, the insidious idea that they have a strength and a wisdom of their own from which they can in some measure draw. Every Christian renounces this nominally, but the habit of self-reliance has so incorporated itself with his being during the life of nature that he does not easily discover how much he is under the influence of it, at the very time that he is professing to look to Christ as the sole ground of confidence.
How many there are who are looking to Christ simply to eke out their own inadequate strength and wisdom, as though it were the function of a vine to supply what was lacking in the inherent power of the branch to support itself! But the branch has no such power. Its glory is that it stands in a certain intimate relation to the vine, the source of its energy and fruitfulness.
It becomes every Christian to recognize fully and distinctly that much fruit is expected of him. It is expected that he will give powers, energies, influence, wealth, time, and talents in such a way to Christ as that he may bring forth much fruit. He is to place himself and all that he has in such a relation to Christ as that the fullness of power and of blessing that is in Christ may flow freely forth through his instrumentality into the world. There is much fruit in Christ germinantly waiting for the channels through which it must obtain its embodied existence among men. Everyone that professes to be a disciple of Christ really professes to be a branch for the production of this much fruit.—Rev. George Bowen's Gospel of John.