“Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.” (John 15:4–5 ESV)

When Jesus spoke these words, he was in a room with his disciples. He spoke these words before His crucifixion to His disciples in private. When John first heard these words, he probably thought he understood what Jesus meant. Just continue to follow Jesus. Continue to hang out with Him. Simple. But then John and all the disciples saw Him captured and crucified. And whatever they thought they knew and understood was completely destroyed when they saw Him die. In fact, Jesus had spoken directly to John from the cross, and entrusted him with the care of Mary, his mother. And so these words of Jesus must have died on the cross with Jesus.

But then God raised Jesus from the grave. And they saw Him. And ate with Him. And interacted with Him. And these words began to take on new meaning for them. “Abide in me, and I in you”. How can we understand these pre-Easter words of Jesus, in a post-Easter world - where Jesus is alive as the trusted Shepherd of the LORD? John is a helpful guide.

The first is to observe the word “abide” - μένω. It’s a verb that means “to remain in a place”; “to dwell”; “to stay”. It is particular interesting because it contrasts from the other Gospels where we hear Jesus calling us to “follow” Him. To follow Him requires asking the question, where is Jesus directing us? Every day we wake up - we might ask, Jesus where are you taking me? Every time we come to a fork in the journey of our life, we might ask - which path does Jesus want me to take? Every time we come to a big decision, and we are concerned to ensure we are successful in our endeavours or we find favour - we ask, Jesus which choice should I make? How can I follow you? But discipleship for John is not understood as a matter of following, but as a matter of remaining. Of abiding. Of staying. The key question of discipleship with Jesus is NOT “where is Jesus directing me” or “what is Jesus speaking to me” BUT “where is Jesus” and “what does it look like to be WITH him”?

To help us really catch this, let’s wrap our head around some numbers.

Did you know that the word μένω appears a total of 40 times in the Gospel of John. And did you know that this same word, appears a total of 24 times in the First Epistle of John. And these two books account for the most number of appearances of the word μένω. And between these two books - the Gospel of John has 15671 words. And the First Epistle of John has 2141 words. Which means if the word appears 2.55 times in the Gospel of John; the word appears 11.2 times in the Epistle, which is over 4x more. Essentially, the word is an important theme for Jesus (of the 40 times we see it in the Gospel of John, 14 of those times, it appears in John 13-17 - the upper room discourse of Jesus). What do all these numbers mean?

If the pre-Easter Jesus was calling his disciples to abide in Him; the apostle John is interested to explain the meaning of ‘abiding in Jesus’ for a post-Easter world. And he does that work mostly in his first epistle - 1 John. I want to suggest to you that if we are going to comprehend the meaning of Jesus words in John 15, it might be helpful for us to read and meditate on the life described for us in 1 John.

And so as we read 1 John (a short letter with only 5 chapters), try reading it with this question - how do I abide in Jesus? If we are the branches, and Jesus is the vine, and we cannot bear fruit without first remaining in Him, it is vital that we learn what Jesus means.