For the remainder of this study, we will briefly survey more of the chapter to gain additional insight. “If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you.” (John 15:7)

If they abide “in Him,” the lost Jews will get into Christ… by faith, When the Messianic believers let God’s Words Get Into Them, and then their prayers will be answered because they will the praying of God’s will.

Unanswered prayer is a very troubling issue for so many Christians, but it does not have to be. Personal prayer is simply talking directly with God the Father in the light of His Words… to us. It's not talking to God in light of His Word in the Bible generally, or to someone else, such as was spoken to Israel.

Today unanswered prayer results from us expecting Father God to do something He did not say He would do for us in this age of grace; perhaps for the believers of Israel in “time past,” but not us.

We must go to Paul’s epistles (Romans through Philemon) for God’s Words to us today. Paul is “THE apostle of the Gentiles” (Rom. 11:13), as the Lord Jesus’ spokesman to us during this “the dispensation of the Grace of God” (Eph. 3:2). We can’t just grab verses from John 15 and force them upon us today... for Jesus had come only to speak and minister “to the lost sheep of the house of Israel” … during His earthly ministry.

“But he answered and said, I am not sent but (except) unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” (Matt. 15:24)
“These twelve Jesus sent forth, and commanded them, saying, Go not into the way of the Gentiles, and into any city of the Samaritans enter ye not: ⁶ But go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” (Matt. 10:5-6)

Now, we will go ahead and read more from John 15 about Israel’s fruit-bearing noting the conditional “if” statements. Thankfully we of the body of Christ in this grace age do not live under any such conditional “if” requirements.

“Herein is my Father glorified, that ye bear much fruit; so shall ye be my disciples. ⁹ As the Father hath loved me, so have I loved you: continue ye in my love. ¹⁰ If ye keep my commandments, ye shall abide in my love; even as I have kept my Father's commandments, and abide in his love. ¹¹ These things have I spoken unto you, that my joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full. ¹² This is my commandment, That ye love one another, as I have loved you. ¹³ Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. ¹⁴ Ye are my friends, if ye do whatsoever I command you. ¹⁵ Henceforth I call you not servants; for the servant knoweth not what his lord doeth: but I have called you friends; for all things that I have heard of my Father I have made known unto you.” (John 15:8-15)

Back to: “If a man abide not in me, he is cast forth as a branch, and is withered; and men gather them, and cast them into the fire, and they are burned” (Jn. 15:6). Jn. 15:6 is used today by Christendom’s legalistic pastors and teachers to try and make Christian ‘good works compulsory’ under threat of ‘salvation lost,’ saying; “Oh, you had better have works to prove your salvation or God will throw you out of His family!”  They primarily use this verse to refute the “once saved, always saved” slogan Bible believers have gained a reputation for. But they misuse John 15:6 claiming to it shows there’s no such thing as ‘once saved and always saved’! They quote Jesus saying He will reject and burn those who do not abide in Him! Yet, the fact is that Paul says we as grace believers have been eternally “sealed with the Holy Spirit” (Eph. 1:13).

It’s undeniable that the Lord Jesus says in John, “If a man (of Israel) abide not in me, he is cast forth as a branch, and is withered; and men gather them, and cast them into the fire, and they are burned.” But this admonition should be considered in light of something highly significant. It’s not a threat to believers, but a warning to the unbelievers of Israel who fail to come to faith in the Lord Jesus Christ! The Jews who have not joined the “Little Flock” of Israel’s believing remnant, will be consumed when Jesus Christ returns at His 2^nd Coming (cf. Zech. 13:8-9). They must be a part of redeemed Israel, they must forsake apostate, satanic Israel or they will face God’s wrath! This message that was entrusted to the “little flock,” is for them to preach to the unbelieving lost Jews. Jn 15:6 was spoken with only the ‘lost, unfaithful Jews’ in mind.

Good Works: We need to make this clear; God’s grace is not against “good works” (Titus 2:11-15). Our Christian lives are to be filled with genuine good works (Eph. 2:10). But the Law’s, fear and guilt do not motivate or empower anyone us to do right (that would be ‘legalism’). We are under grace, not the law.

“For sin shall not have dominion over you: for ye are not under the law, but under grace. ¹⁵ What then? shall we sin, because we are not under the law, but under grace? God forbid.” (Romans 6:14-15)

“For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: ⁹ Not of works, lest any man should boast. ¹⁰ For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus Unto Good Works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them.” (Ephesians 2:8-10)

What inwardly compels us to yield our lives to His will? It’s ‘gratitude’ to Father God for what He has done for us in sending … His Son, Jesus Christ, to die for our sins (See 2 Cor. 5:14-21)

“For he (the Father) hath made him (Jesus) to be sin for us, who knew no sin; (so) that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.” (2 Corinthians 5:21)

Paul’s entire Book of Titus, while Titus abounds with instructions about maintaining ‘good works’ under grace (Titus 1:16, 2:7, 2:14, 3:5, 3:8, 3:14), yet nothing like the threat of John 15:6 appears in Titus. Surely then, John 15:6 was never intended to be a threat to us Christian grace believers during today’s “dispensation of the grace of God” concerning “the Church, the Body of Christ.”

Just think about it, you as a believer became forever joined to the Lord the moment you first believed, this was apart from any good work of yours. You became “one spirit” with Christ’s “Spirit of life.” How can you become lost? Paul wrote of this union; “But he that is joined unto the Lord is One Spirit. (1 Cor. 6:17) Jesus Christ’s resurrected “Spirit of life” was dispensed into the believer’s human “spirit of man” (Zech. 12:1b), whereby we become “one spirit” with Him who is forever in us as the new, righteous, us. Our “spirit of man” has been eternally mingled with His Spirit, as tea gets into water, becoming INSEPARABLE.

We were thereby “regenerated” in our spirit… having received Christ Spiritually as the “Seed (Gk. sperma)” of the Father (cf. Gal. 3:16, 1Peter 1:23), dispensed into our human “spirit of man.” We were thereby literally ‘born of the Spirit’ by God’s very own nature-bearing “seed, which is Christ”; we cannot become unborn. Salvation is ultimately to have received Christ’s crosswork for us by faith, thereby becoming a partaker of Christ’s resurrected life and nature (Col. 3:4, 2Pet. 1:4).