FRUIT-BEARING
If you abide in Him, you will bear much fruit (John 15:5, 8, 16). Fruit does not mean behavior or good deeds; it is the expression of a life. To bring forth fruit is to live Christ out in your daily life. Expressing Christ in your daily life depends upon your fully realizing that you are one spirit with Him. He is the vine, and you are a branch. Together you are one organism. This is the real Christian life: a mingling of God with man.
ONENESS
If we live this way, we have the church life. There will be no division. The oneness we enjoy is simply the Lord Himself. Even among couples there is not oneness. The wife may be pleasant and gentle, yet she still has her ideas about how things ought to be. The husband may be considerate and mild mannered, but he has his opinions. They cannot be one as long as they are not in the spirit. They may not fight, but one of them is traveling in the air and the other on the ocean! They are liberal toward each other, so things appear peaceful, but they are traveling in different circles.
This may also be the situation in the church life. You lack the real oneness because you are in your mentality. You give others the liberty to travel on the ocean, while you remain in your higher opinions in the air! There is no possibility for the church life unless you come back to this uniting and mingled spirit, that is, Christ as the life-giving Spirit mingled with your spirit. It is here you must remain.
It is to this that John’s mending ministry is calling us back. Christians have been distracted from this, but John comes to remind us that the Lord is in us and we are in Him. We must abide in Him and let Him abide in us. If we live in spirit by the Lord, we shall fully enjoy Him. We shall experience reality and grace. In this one organism, that is, Christ mingling with our spirit, we grow, we live, we walk, and we have our being. We have no argument with our spouse and no argument with our fellow believers.
ABIDING IN OUR SPIRIT WITH THE LORD
This oneness is mysterious yet simple. If we abide in our spirit with the Lord, all the complications and distractions will be gone. If, however, we remain in our doctrines, we shall keep getting more complicated and confused. The only way out is to return to the spirit. Here we have been regenerated by the Holy Spirit with the life of God. Here Christ as the Spirit gives life. Here we are one with the Lord. We must turn away from every distraction and return to the spirit. As we live Him, we shall enjoy the Triune God. This is our wonderful Christian life, which issues in the church life.
(The Mending Ministry of John, Chapter 3, by Witness Lee)
