What is something that grows without life? Something dead, hard, rigid and never changing it's basic starting shape--a crystal. Sure it grows, but there's no life there. It's not pliable, just breaks off with a hard enough push. There are those that have a life that's been given to them, yet their lives are just that, given, but not used. They're just....the walking dead. Their lives are seemingly purposeful, but helplessly self-focused. What can break the cycle of the same old same old? Being grafted into something alive. That which was dead, can become alive. Not the crystal. No the analogy breaks down. But for those who want life, a transformation is available to them that respond in faith to the pulsating life given by the Vine. But the work has to be "grafted". Without the graft, no growth occurs.
Get it? Without the pulsating life blood of Christ, we can do no good thing. We can live no purposeful life. Christ provides that purpose. He provides that focus of obedience. It is the constant reliance on Christ, his power through us, to live in and with and through and by, that is the same love that he gave us on the Cross!
4 Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. 5 I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.
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