Fruitfulness involves obedience but obedience to Christ is so much more than just following rules—its about living a fruitful, satisfying, God-glorifying life through abiding in Christ. Jesus shares this vision with his disciples in John 15:10-17. When I was in high school, I thought my mom was trying to ruin my life. For a brief moment of time as a teenager, I really want to be involved in a street racing club. What could be cooler than taking a 120 hp Honda Civic and making it look like some kind of shark with four wheels and showing it off amongst other suburbanite teens? My mom put her foot down and (lovingly) forbid me to participate in this culture. Plus at that time, I drove a hand-me-down minivan. Who was I kidding? Of course I thought she was doing all this to spite me and keep me from my dreams. But ultimately her commands were out of love for me and ultimately for my greater joy. I was settling for a mud-pie of fun, to paraphrase C.S. Lewis, thinking that this temporary satisfaction would lead to ultimate joy. In the end, my mother was right; those guys were sketchy and a horrible influence. Nothing good came from that and I have my mom to thank for stopping me from getting involved in something which would hurt rather than help me.

God gives us commands to follow not out of spite but out of love. He alone is good, he alone knows whats best, and he alone his wise. He knows what’s best for us! Even though we might not see the outcome or why he is asking us to obey him, we must trust that he has our best interest in mind and ultimately cares for us in a way that we can’t possibly begin to imagine. This is why he gives his people commands to follow. And willful obedience to his commands demonstrates that we are abiding in Christ and his love in us. Jesus shows that a sign of our abiding relationship with him is that we would desire to follow his commandments. Our obedience displays our love to him. This is the same way with earthly parents. When you obey and follow them, it demonstrates that you have love and respect and honor them. This kind of obedience is not a “have-to” kind of obedience. This is a “want-to” obedience. If you are abiding in Christ, if your mind, will and affections are centered on Christ then everything in you desires to obey his word, to live in accordance with Scripture, to be Christ-like in all you do, and when you fail you desire to come back to him and allow him to embrace you and set you back on the path of obedience. This is a loving obedience that gives your life purpose and brings about a fruitful life.

Jesus even tells us why he has commanded these things. Verse 11 says that its all about joy. Do you have true joy this morning? I’m not talking about just smiling and telling everyone you are fine. I’m talking about a restful assurance that knows that you belong to Jesus Christ and the joy that produces in your life and spills out over into everything you do. God doesn’t give us commands to follow not out of guilt or reluctance; he gives us these so that we would have maximum joy. This is another of the fruits of the Spirit from Galatians 5. Jesus wants to have people who have an infectious joy for life and people. This is the kind of joy that makes other people see that there is something different about you. This is a joy that remains even if life gets hard. This doesn’t mean you are fake-happy all the time, but this is an attitude that shows others no matter what, you have a greater joy than this world can ever offer you. This is why Jesus gives us these loving commands and this is what he’s looking for in those who abide in him. We see here another reason for Jesus giving us commands: love. This is the greatest fruit among all other according to Paul in 1 Corinthians 13.

Jesus calls us to love each other as he has loved us. How has Jesus loved us? The greatest love is to give yourself up on behalf of others. Jesus did this through his obedience to the Father to the point of death on a cross. Paul gives a beautiful description of this in Philippians 2. He says that Jesus counted equality with God as nothing, taking the form of a servant, and being obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Our mindset towards one another is to be one of self sacrifice. Giving up ourselves to one another demonstrates an intimate connection to the living vine of Christ as you mirror his acts and life. If we are abiding in Jesus, if we have a saving relationship with Jesus Christ, then he calls us our friends. And as a friend, we too receive the benefit of his laying his life down for us. This is the ultimate act of love. Though none of us deserve it, Jesus laid his life down for us so we might have eternal life and friendship with God. This is the essence of justification. We are made right with God because Jesus took the punishment for our sin that we rightly deserve and God transfers the holiness of Christ to us when we believe in him by faith and we are made friends with God. If you have not trusted in Christ by faith, you are not a friend of God and the righteous judgment of God against sin remains on you. Only the righteousness of Christ can make you right with God, and proclaiming faith in Christ that righteousness can be yours today. Only in an abiding relationship with Christ—a relationship wherein you are connected to Christ as the true vine and he is your most greatest treasure and joy—will produce fruit which is pleasing to him and glorifying to God.

Here we see that its God who chooses us to do this task for his glory. His disciples ultimately had nothing to offer Jesus. Though these men did great things for God, there was nothing which God needed that they could offer. Jesus chose them. God chose these men not because of their ability but because of his grace and desire to see them bear fruit. They had nothing to offer God; God had everything to offer them. I know many families who have been adopted children and I have friends who have been adopted. You see, adoption isn’t based on what the child can offer the parent. Adoption is based on what the parent can offer to the child. The parents chose the child in order that the child may be loved and cared for and that the child would grow and become a fruitful person. Parents adopt children because they want to love them and bring them into their family. They choose them. This is how God chooses us. Out of his love and joy he chooses us to come into his family so that we might grow in his love and become fruitful people who ultimately display his glory. The Scriptures say that when we come to Jesus in faith, declaring him to be Lord and asking him to forgive us of sin, that we become adopted children in the kingdom of God. The miracle of faith, according to Scripture, is that it shows that we are chosen by God. And once we realize that we are chosen, that we have been adopted, we are free to experience the love and joy that God has to offer and we are invited into the fruitful life of abiding in Christ.

Out of joy and thankfulness for choosing us, we desire to obey our heavenly father and seek after holy fruit that will grow and display the lovingkindness of our adoptive Father. Only those who abide in Christ will bear fruit for Christ. God desires to see his people be fruitful. An abiding relationship with Jesus Christ, clinging to the true vine, will produce fruit which is pleasing to him. God chooses us out of his love so that we may choose to bear fruit for him.

Who are the Puritans? Joel Beeke and Mark Jones summarize the Puritans in their work, A Puritan Theology, saying:

“In summary, the late sixteenth-century and seventeenth-century movement of Puritanism was a kind of vigorous Calvinism. Experientially, it was warm and contagious; evangelistically, it was aggressive, yet tender; ecclesiastically, it sought to practice the headship of Christ over the faith, worship, and order of His body, the church; politically, it was active, balanced, and bound by conscience before God, in the relations of king, Parliament, and subjects.”

Are they worth reading? Don Kistler (here) provides readers with a list of reasons:

1.  They will elevate your concept of God

2. Puritans had a “love affair” with Christ, and they wrote much about the beauty of Christ.

3. Puritans had a “love affair” with Christ, and they wrote much about the beauty of Christ.

4. The Puritans help us see the sufficiency of Scripture for life and godliness.

5. The Puritans can teach us about the heinous nature of sin.

6. The Puritans will help us with practical living.

7. The Puritans will help with evangelism that is biblical.

8. Reading the Puritans will help us have right priorities.

9. The Puritans can help us clarify the issue of how a man is made right with God.

10. The Puritans held a high view of the authority of Scripture.

How should we understand them? Kelly M. Kapic provides readers with a helpful grid in understanding Puritan writers. Kapic, in his book A Devoted Life, provides eight basic observations regarding Puritanism. These eight are:

1. Puritanism may be best understood as a movement of spirituality

2. Puritanism, at its heart, lays stress on experiencing communion with God

3. Puritans were united in their dependence upon the Bible as their supreme source of spiritual sustenance and guide for the reformation of life.

4. He helpfully points out that Puritans included individuals with numerous theological eccesiological convictions, thus we should avoid gross characterization

5. The Puritans were predominantly Augustinian in their emphasis upon human sinfulness and divine grace.

6. The Puritans placed great emphasis upon the work of the Holy Spirit in the believer’s life

7. The Puritans were deeply troubled with sacramental forms of Catholic spirituality fostered within the Anglican Church

8. Puritanism can also be understood as a revival movement

Though not all theses facets appear in every work, this grid will help readers understand the Puritans and who they were. The distinction of “Puritan” is not as clean and neat as one may think (titles and categories rarely are), but we can say that there was an era of exceptional pastors and theologians who sought to exemplify godliness and extol the sovereignty and grace of God in Christ. For a helpful list of where to begin your Puritan reading, click here.

 

I agree with Miller. Well, not on everything. Actually just on a couple things. I don’t agree that it’s ok not to be connected to a local church as a professing Christian. I think it’s dangerous to assume that God can be experienced in the same way (or better) apart from the preaching of the Word and the sacraments rightly practiced. I am also not sure that Scripture is lacking in prescriptive forms of worship and gathering, as Miller suggests. Lastly, I’m not sure its valid to allow learning styles to dictate church attendance and preference. But I do agree with Miller on one thing—lectures and entertainment are not church. However, I do believe he’s equivocating here. Someone speaking from a pulpit in front of an audience does not necessarily qualify as a lecture. Nevertheless, sermons do take the form of lectures far too often. Sunday morning can sometimes be little more than information transmission from the pulpit to the people.

I don’t discredit Miller on this observation.

In fact, I think he’s right.

Many people show up to church for what qualifies as little more than a lecture on what the pastor knows and maybe what you should do after you hear it. It’s filling up the empty tank, to use an often repeated metaphor. While a sermon should communicate information, its ultimate purpose is to invite transformation. With the Word as the vehicle and the Spirit as the fuel, the sermon moves into the hearts and minds of the gathered body of Christ to incite renewal and refreshment. It’s also the mode of exhortation, warning people of God’s judgement yet warming their hearts to the profound grace of God in Christ. Sermons are meant to arouse affections for Christ, not merely convey facts about Christ. The seventeenth century puritan pastor Richard Sibbes knew this well. Of his sermons Mark Dever says, “[W]hat strikes the reader of his sermons is his affectionate language. For Sibbes, Christianity was love story….God is the affectionate, loving sovereign, with every ‘sincere Christian…a favourite.'” (Dever, Richard Sibbes: Puritanism and Calvinism in Late Elizabethan and Early Stuart England, 143). Drawing people to reflect on depravity and grace Sibbes exclaims, “Therefore the more clear knowledge we have of the mystery of corruption—how prone our hearts are to deceive us—and of the great misery we are in by nature, the more we shall wonder at the boundless and bottomless goodness of God in the mystery of our salvation. The one will sharpen the appetite of the other.” (Sibbes, “The Fountain Opened” in Works 5:474). Such affectionate language was meant to engage the full faculties of man. The mind reflecting on the state of man’s depravity and the heart rejoicing at man’s rescue through the mercies of God and Christ’s atonement. Sibbes’s sermons engaged the heart and roused the affections, not simply communicated information.

Likewise the worship was centered on the biblical sacraments. Speaking of the Lord’s supper Sibbes says, “So that this communion, take the bread and wine, it seals our communion and fellowship with Christ, and thereupon our freedom from sin and from the law, and sets us in a blessed and happy state” (Sibbes, “The Spiritual Jubilee” in Works 5:246). Its the act of communion and the profound truth represented in it taken with fellow members in the body which “sets us in a blessed and happy state.” Such a statement communicates deeply to the heart of one’s of faith as well as the intellectual ascent of it’s truth claims. This is the object of worship: receiving joy in the knowledge of what Christ has done on your behalf and praising God for his beauty and goodness among the fellowship of believers. Sermon, sacrament and song should seek to proclaim this reality. Any worship and preaching that strays from this core inevitably becomes mere entertainment. And when members of a church come to see the show rather than the Savior then the church has failed to fulfill its mandate. The writer of Hebrews says, “Through him then let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of lips that acknowledge his name.” (Hebrews 13:15 ESV). Indeed the context of this passage is an ecclesiological one, written to a church to remind them how to be a church.

I hope the leaders and people Donald Miller has mentioned who feel the same way as him will see the beautiful necessity of abiding in Christ through the local church. I  hope Miller, as a Christian public figure, will come to understand the essential nature of the local church gathering. This is not about tribal disputes; this is about the essence of Christian growth and practice. This is about God’s glory being displayed and the witness of the church to his marvelous grace. This is about demonstrating a life of true community that is more beautiful than the paltry and often self-serving options available in society. But I agree with him, and I don’t fault him for making some valid and necessary observations. When sermons become lectures, they bypass the affective purpose of the message. When worship moves away from the once-for-all atonement in Christ Jesus beautifully displayed through the sacraments and in gospel-saturated song, entertainment is the inevitable outcome. I think pastors and church leaders need to listen to what Miller says on this point. Their churches may be the ones he’s rightfully rejecting.

*This post is written in response to Miller’s response of his original post. Does that make sense?