When Jesus was on earth, He gave two commandments from God: Believe in Jesus Christ whom God the Father has sent, and love one another just as Jesus loved you.
Jesus said that whoever keeps His commandments will remain in His love. Therefore, the definition of someone who doesn’t remain in Jesus must be that he or she never believed in Jesus as Lord and Savior in the first place.
The Apostle John wrote about such people who pretend to be believers who physically mingle with the true believers but they themselves are not really born-again.
Eventually, they depart from the church, drawing believers who are weak in the faith to their side with false teachings that sound good to the flesh (1 John 2:18-19).
These false believers have their own evil agendas, to lead the true believers astray, to propagate their own causes.
One such false believer who was literally with Jesus physically and later on didn’t remain with Him is Judas Iscariot.
He is an example of an unfruitful branch which God took away (John 17:12 WEB).
Judas went to hell not for betraying Jesus, but because he never believed in Jesus as his Lord and Savior.
He probably just followed Jesus so that he could steal money from the money box, since he was the treasurer (John 12:4-6).
That was his evil agenda as a false believer, and money is probably the reason for many other false prophets and teachers that have arisen throughout history since then.
Jesus explained further what He meant by separating unfruitful and fruitful branches in His “parable of the wheat and darnel weeds” in Matthew 13:24-30.
As Jesus said, the darnel weeds grew together with the wheat (Matthew 13:36-43, 49-50).
Darnel weeds look very much like wheat until they’re mature, and then the difference becomes obvious.
It's almost impossible to tell the difference between wheat and darnel weeds just from a glance!
Likewise it is hard to differentiate between true and false believers.
With our own eyes, we won’t be able to tell because very often, the false believers are good at pretending to really believe - even worshipping together at church but meanwhile their hearts are far from the Lord.
However God clearly knows the difference and He knows who is His own.
All false believers will be thrown into the lake of fire at the end of time, and all true believers will enjoy eternal life with God.
This is what Jesus meant when He said every branch in Him that doesn’t bear fruit God will take away, and they will be thrown into the fire to be burnt!
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#abide #fruitful
