If a man abide not in Me he is cast forth
Jesus and the only means of righteousness
God is the author of righteousness, and Jesus is the Son of God, because He gives the method and secret by which alone righteousness is possible, And that He does give this, we can verify from experience.
It is so I try, and you will find it to be so! Try all the ways to righteousness you can think of, and you will find no way brings you to it except the way of Jesus, but that this way does bring you to it. This is a thing that can prove itself, if it is so; and it will prove itself, because it is so. (Matthew Arnold.)
Five steps to judgment
Just as abiding in Christ infers grace for grace, fruit for fruit, so not abiding in Christ draws after it the judgment of being rejected, the successive steps to which are presented to us in the words: cast forth, wither, gather, cast into the fire, burn. These are the five steps in the judgment; the complete execution of which is, by God’s long suffering, delayed. (R. Besser, D. D.)
Cast forth
One year when I was travelling towards my usual winter resting place I halted at Marseilles, and there was overtaken by great pain. In my room in the hotel I found it cold so I asked for a fire. The porter came in, and he had in his hand a bundle of twigs. I called to him to let me look at it. He was about to push it into the stove as fuel with which to kindle the fire. As I took the bundle into my hand, I found it was made of vine branches--branches that had been cut off now that the pruning time was come. I solemnly thought, will this be my portion? Here I am, away from home, unable to bear fruit, as I love to do. Shall I end with this as my portion? Shall I be gathered for the fire? Those vine shoots were parts of a good vine, no doubt, branches that once looked fair and green; but now they were fuel for the flame. They had been cut off and cast off as useless things, and then men gathered them and tied them in bundles, and they were ignobly thrust into the fire. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
And is withered
Withered
The cast-out branch withers; whatever remains of sap it might have had so long as it hung on ever so slightly to the vine, now quickly dries up; it becomes a hard piece of wood, which can no longer be bent, only broken. A man may refuse to be bent by grace, but he cannot hinder himself from being broken by wrath. Judas is a fearful example of this: he withered in one day. We may indeed place a cast-off branch in water, and by that means keep it for a time from completely withering; but it is of no lasting good: so it is no use for a man inwardly dead and forsaken by the Holy Ghost to force forward for a while the appearance of a pious life from his own strength; it cannot last long, seldom until his end, and then his withered state is manifest. (R. Besser, D. D.)