17th Day
The Father Glorified
Herein is My Father glorified, that ye bear much fruit.—Ver. 8.
How can we glorify God? Not by adding to His glory or bringing Him any new glory that He has not. But simply by allowing His glory to shine out through us, by yielding ourselves to Him, that His glory may manifest itself in us and through us to the world. In a vineyard or a vine bearing much fruit, the owner is glorified, as it tells of his skill and care. In the disciple who bears much fruit, the Father is glorified. Before men and angels, proof is given of the glory of God’s grace and power; God’s glory shines out through him.
This is what Peter means when he writes: “He that ministers, let him minister as of the ability that God giveth, that God in all things may be glorified through Jesus Christ.” As a man works and serves in a power which comes from God alone, God gets all the glory. When we confess that the ability came from God alone, he that does the work, and they who see it, equally glorify God. It was God who did it. Men judge by the fruit of a garden of what the gardener is. Men judge of God by the fruit that the Branches of the Vine of His planting bears. Little fruit brings little glory to God. It brings no honour to either the Vine or the Husbandman. “That ye bear much fruit, herein is My Father glorified.”
We have sometimes mourned our lack of fruit, as a loss to ourselves and our fellow-men, with complaints of our feebleness as the cause. Let us rather think of the sin and shame of little fruit as robbing God of the glory He ought to get from us. Let us learn the secret of bringing glory to God, serving of the ability which God giveth. The full acceptance of Christ’s word, “You can do nothing”; the simple faith in God, who worketh all in all; the abiding in Christ through whom the Divine Husbandman does His work and gets the much fruit; this is the life that will bring glory to to God.
Much fruit: God asks it; see that you give it. God can be content with nothing less; be you content with nothing less. Let these words of Christ: Fruit—more fruit—much fruit, abide in you, until you think as He does, and you be prepared to take from Him, the Heavenly Vine, what He has for you. Much fruit: herein is My Father glorified. Let the very height of the demand be your encouragement. It is so entirely beyond your power, that it throws you more entirely upon Christ, your True Vine. He can, He will, make it true in you.
Much fruit: God asks because He needs. He does not ask fruit from the Branches of His Vine for show, to prove what He can do. No; He needs it for the salvation of men: it is in that He is to be glorified. Throw yourself in much prayer on your Vine and your Husbandman. Cry to God and your Father to give you fruit to bring to men. Take the burden of the hungry and the perishing on you, as Jesus did when He was moved with compassion, and your power in prayer, and your abiding, and your bearing much fruit to the glory of the Father, will have a reality and a certainty you never knew before.
The Father glorified. Blessed prospect. God glorifying Himself in me, showing forth the glory of His goodness and power in what He works in me, and through me. What a motive to bear much fruit, just as much as He works in me. Father! glorify Thyself in me.