Without God We Are Nothing

Picture if you will a room where twelve men sat together; a small pocket of unparalleled glory hanging over the precipice of the “hour of darkness” that lay ahead. Jesus tells his disciples, “I am the vine, you are the branches. The one abiding in me, and I in him, this one bears much fruit, for apart from me you are not able to do anything.” (John 15:5)

That sounds like a ridiculous thing to say. If you quoted that to a nonChristian, they would say “That’s absurd. I don’t even believe in God, and I do plenty of good things every day. Look at all the charity that I do for needy people.”

Satan has this world under heavy blindness. The doctrine of total depravity is so heavily under attack.

The actual truth is that “all our righteous acts are like filthy rags” (Isaiah 64:6). What people think of as “good” is but a poor imitation of what true goodness is. Everything man does is infected with self.

Can we as Christians also begin to think like the world? Yes, we were dead in our trespasses and sins, but now we’re able, of ourselves, to do good? Don’t forget Jesus said these words to the eleven Apostles. He showed them they were completely dependent on Him for the power to live the Christian life. If that is true of the Apostles, how much more for us!

Applying this to much of our lives, Henry Mahan put it well:

“‘Without me ye’ cannot believe. ‘Without me ye’ cannot pray. ‘Without me ye’ cannot watch. ‘Without me ye’ cannot learn, know, or understand anything spiritual. ‘Without me ye’ cannot know the meaning of my Word. ‘Without me ye’ cannot preach. ‘Without me ye’ cannot worship. ‘Without me ye’ cannot hear me speak by the gospel. ‘Without me ye’ cannot persevere. ‘Without me ye’ cannot resist the Devil. ‘Without me ye’ cannot resist temptation. ‘Without me ye’ cannot resist sin. ‘Without me ye’ cannot stand. ‘Without me ye’ cannot recover when fallen. ‘Without me ye can do nothing!’”

If we fail to realise this we begin to take the credit for all these things, taking to ourselves the glory and praise that ought to be given to God. We would rob him and say that our good works are a product of our own kind heart! No, there’s no way around it.

Without Christ, we are dead in our sins. We cannot bear good fruit in the Christian life unless we abide in him, just as the branch cannot produce fruit without the root and the trunk supplying it with life.

And we abide in Jesus by faith, by prayer to our Father and reading His Word, by looking to His hand of daily provision for our physical and spiritual needs. No one eats the fruit of a tree and says, “This is a good branch”, no, they say “This is a good tree.” Do people look at our lives and say “What a good person they are” or do they look a bit deeper and see the source? If they don’t, how eager we should be to redirect them!

Not long after this scene in the upper room we see this same Jesus, hanging on a timber of wood soaked red in his own blood and gasping for air. The world may mock and jeer and put him on a cross, yet despite that, it was God’s plan that he suffer and die that we should live.

He is our Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God, Father of the coming age, Prince of Peace, and may we never forget that without Him we can do nothing. To forgot this is to forget His sacrifice and to stumble into sin. To be mindful of this truth is life, peace, joy, and fruitfulness.