7 "If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. 8 By this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples. 9 As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love. 10 If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father's commandments and abide in his love. 11 These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full.
12 “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.13 Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends. 14 You are my friends if you do what I command you. 15 No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you. 16 You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you."
John 15:7-16
All as we have said, is with a view to fruitfulness, fruit, more fruit, much fruit thirty-fold, sixty-fold, an hundred-fold. Only thus, by bearing fruit, is the purpose and destiny of the vine and its branches fulfilled. What, then is the fruit of abiding in Christ? What is a fruitful life? We tend to think of this in terms of soul winning, and this is of course true spiritual fruit. In this sense, Paul was truly fruitful in the service of God and the gospel. But, while this is true, in this passage it must be thought of only as the consequence of fruit-bearing not as the fruit itself. There is a twofold fruit mentioned here, and it is when this twofold fruit is evidenced that the fruit of soul-winning appears. Love and prayer are the two realities that Jesus underlines. First, to abide in Christ is to abide in His love (9, 10); and this bears fruit in love to one another (12, 17). The fruit of the Spirit is love (Galatians 5:22, 23). In the Galatians reference, as D.L. Moody once put it, love is the comprehensive term; and all else in the words of Paul are expressions of it: joy is love exulting; peace is love in repose; longsuffering is love on trial; gentleness is love in society; goodness is love in action; faith is love on the battlefield; meekness is love at school; temperance is love in training. 'Behold how these Christians love one another', they said of the early Church. Love means trust and security, and how desperately the world needs these today. And is not the Church of God, and the Christian Fellowship, the one place on earth where we should be able to trust one another? Is there a spirit of love and trust and caring among us? If not, then we are not abiding in Christ. Let us strive to catch the vision here of being a fellowship to which people may be drawn - needy people, hungry people, hurt and sensitive people, shy and retiring people, who find it difficult to communicate, drawn because they feel that the Church is and ought to be a place where they are loved for themselves, not because of any usefulness they might have for others, but for their own sakes.