Blogging in Christ — Issue 14

Fruit That Remains

A large number is a tempting report: thousands in a month feels like success, and few feels like failure. But a crowd passes, and a tree is judged by its fruit, not by how many walked past it — by what is still on the branches when the season turns.

The Lord sets the measure before any counting begins. "You didn’t choose me, but I chose you and appointed you, that you should go and bear fruit, and that your fruit should remain; that whatever you will ask of the Father in my name, he may give it to you." (John 15:16) None of the three belongs to the writer. The choosing is Christ's, the appointing is Christ's, and the remaining is the purpose of the appointing. He is sent to bear fruit, and the fruit that counts is the fruit that remains. Everything else, however large or noticed, is not the measure the Lord named.

Remaining is not reaching. A word can reach many ears and remain in none. The parable names the difference. "What was sown on the rocky places, this is he who hears the word and immediately with joy receives it;" (Matt 13:20) "yet he has no root in himself, but endures for a while. When oppression or persecution arises because of the word, immediately he stumbles." (Matt 13:21) Here is a large and immediate response: joy at once, reception at once. It is also, by the parable's own terms, a response with no root, and a rootless response endures only for a while. The first report would have called it a triumph; the later report calls it a springing up that withered when the heat came. A writer who measures by the first report will chase quick joy, while the root — the part that decides survival — goes unexamined.

Against that picture stands the good ground, and its description refuses every shortcut. "What was sown on the good ground, this is he who hears the word and understands it, who most certainly bears fruit and produces, some one hundred times as much, some sixty, and some thirty.” (Matt 13:23) Hearing and understanding come before bearing, in different measures: a hundred, sixty, thirty. The difference is not failure. Thirty is fruit, because it is real and it remains. Luke's telling adds the quality the numbers hide: "Those in the good ground, these are those who with an honest and good heart, having heard the word, hold it tightly, and produce fruit with perseverance." (Luke 8:15) Fruit is not a moment of reception but a holding that lasts. A piece held tightly by one reader for ten years has borne more than a piece glanced at by ten thousand and held by none.

The reason is that fruit grows from abiding, not from technique. "Remain in me, and I in you. As the branch can’t bear fruit by itself unless it remains in the vine, so neither can you, unless you remain in me." (John 15:4) A severed branch may look green for a day, but it bears nothing. "I am the vine. You are the branches. He who remains in me and I in him bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing." (John 15:5) The writer's craft, clarity, and diligence are not the vine. The moment a writer believes a method produces fruit, he has mistaken the branch for the vine, and his work will have the shape of fruit without its life.

Therefore the fruit itself must be named, lest a writer count the wrong harvest. "But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faith," (Gal 5:22) "gentleness, and self-control. Against such things there is no law." (Gal 5:23) This is the harvest the Spirit grows, and none of it is measured by a monthly total. Love, patience, and self-control do not appear on a chart. They appear in a life, over years, under pressure, in the same places where the rocky-ground hearer stumbled. A piece bears this fruit when a reader is made more patient, more truthful, more steadfast — not when a reader merely arrives and leaves. The writer cannot manufacture this fruit by any arrangement of words; he can only announce the word faithfully and leave the growing to the One who gives life. "I planted. Apollos watered. But God gave the increase." (1 Cor 3:6) "So then neither he who plants is anything, nor he who waters, but God who gives the increase." (1 Cor 3:7) A large audience does not make the planter something, nor a small one nothing. God gives the increase, and it is His to measure.

There is also a day that will measure what the month never could. "each man’s work will be revealed. For the Day will declare it, because it is revealed in fire; and the fire itself will test what sort of work each man’s work is." (1 Cor 3:13) "If any man’s work remains which he built on it, he will receive a reward." (1 Cor 3:14) The same word again: remains. Fire does not count how many saw the work. Fire tests what sort of work it is, and what survives the testing is what remains. Much that looked impressive in its month will not survive its day, because it was built for applause rather than for truth. Much that looked small — a plain piece, carefully verified, written to the Lord first — will remain. The writer who writes for the Day checks the quotation no one will check and drops the striking line the text will not support.

Nor does fruit hurry. "He will be like a tree planted by the streams of water, that produces its fruit in its season, whose leaf also does not wither. Whatever he does shall prosper." (Ps 1:3) In its season. The tree does not fruit on demand, nor apologize for months when it bears nothing visible. Its leaf does not wither, because it is planted by streams, not by the weather of a single week. So with the herald's work: a piece may bear fruit years after it was written, in a reader the writer never met. "so is my word that goes out of my mouth: it will not return to me void, but it will accomplish that which I please, and it will prosper in the thing I sent it to do." (Isa 55:11) The word accomplishes what it was sent to do, not what the writer hoped in thirty days. A writer who trusts that promise is freed from the monthly report.

This is how the gospel itself spreads, and the pattern rebukes every traffic report. "which has come to you, even as it is in all the world and is bearing fruit and growing, as it does in you also, since the day you heard and knew the grace of God in truth," (Col 1:6) Bearing fruit and growing, together and in that order. Where the word is heard and the grace of God is known in truth, the two come together without the writer's management, in all the world and in one reader alike. A piece that bears fruit in one honest heart has joined that worldwide bearing, whether any counter noticed or not.

"In this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit; and so you will be my disciples." (John 15:8) The Father is glorified not by the size of the audience but by the bearing of much fruit, defined by the vine, not by the market. A disciple is known by fruit that remains: truth held tightly, character formed slowly, a life that perseveres when oppression arises. That cannot be copied by method, because its cause is not method. Its cause is the choosing and appointing of Christ, and the abiding of the branch in Him.

Let the practice be plain. Write as one judged by what remains, not by what arrives. Do not chase the quick joy of the rocky ground, and do not grieve over the thirty when the Lord has given thirty and not a hundred. Check the text, keep the piece true, release it, and leave the increase to God. The traffic will pass, as traffic always does. The fruit that Christ appointed will remain, because He appointed it to remain, and the branch that abides in Him will bear it in its season.