Good Works
I. All that Christ did on the earth and said and suffered, and all that He now is in heaven, and all that He says in heaven, and all for which He has appointed and instituted His Church, is to establish and manifest truth. Truth is communicated to us that it may beget faith, and faith is given to us that we may find peace; and we have peace that we may enjoy the sweetness of communion with God; and we have sweetness of communion with God that we may take root and grow in the fruit of holiness. The very next thing to the glory of God, and only second to it, is holiness, because holiness is God's image.
II. What is fruit?Let us analyse it. We were all once poor, helpless, lifeless, dead branches. We could not raise ourselves up. God took us off the vine and joined us to Jesus Christ. The fruit depends upon the depth of the graft. If you are a graft indeed, then a spirit, a sure influence, and an empowering, vigorating, propagating principle has flown, and is always flowing, from the Father through the Son into your heart, just as the sap from the root through the stem into the little branches. If that secret process is going on, fruit is always being formed upon you. The sap must run when the spring-time comes; grace must flow in its season, and when the sap runs, it must deposit itself and the deposit must become fruit, and so grace must turn itself into good works.
III. God will have, and God must have, faithfulness in life, personal holiness, and that holiness going forth to extend itself in the world. No, God will look on nothing where He does not see, what He saw in Eden, His own reflection. Hence, in all this present life, you have not yet the clue to read life's mysteries if you are not looking upon life as the probation and the discipline and the school for another state. It is God deepening the features of the resemblance of His children to Himself. And when in another world we shall look back on all the sufferings of this lower state, and learn to connect the great preparative process that has been carried on here, with that higher being where the real fruits of glory shall be always shedding themselves over the fields of immensity; we shall understand better than we can read it here what our Lord means in the words of this text.
J. Vaughan, Fifty Sermons,1874, p. 211.
I. The main and direct application of such is of course to individual Christians, to whom indeed it was spoken. The branch bears fruit by virtue of the healthy and generous sap which flows into it from the vine. Without union with the vine it were not a living branch at all; without this fertilising sap flowing, and flowing rightly, in proper measure through it, it could bring forth no fruit. But, as in the operations of husbandry, the sap requires directing, the branch must be trained and pruned, and stopped from rambling out into unfruitful exuberance. So it is with God's spiritual husbandry likewise. The fruit-bearing branches of Christ are liable to become exuberant and unprofitable to cover a vast space without a correspondent yield for the Master's use. All afflictions of believers are but the knife of the great Husbandman, the purging that they may bring forth more fruit.
II. The same parable which describes individuals, describes nations. If Christian believers are the smaller twigs of the great vine, each in Christ and Christ in them, the greater limbs of the vine may figure forth to us Christian nations, including families, as they include individuals, but existing and bearing fruit by the same power and under the same conditions. And the heavenly Husbandman purifies us that we may bring forth more fruit. Let us then be watchful; not unwise, but understanding what the will of the Lord is; not surprised nor cast down because we receive evil at His hand as well as good, but examining our fruit, and enquiring what the heavenly Husbandman expects of us, and sparing neither ourselves nor our substance but diligent in seeking His grace, that we may show ourselves mindful of His great mercies, and fulfil the end of His chastisement.
H. Alford, Quebec Chapel Sermons,vol. ii., p. 247.
References: John 15:2. Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. xiii., No. 774; J. Armstrong, Parochial Sermons,p. 293; Archbishop Maclagan, Church of England Pulpit,vol. iv., p. 41.