[This is one in a series of mid-week Reflections published by Horley Baptist Church during June 2020]
We have in our garden about 30 different fruit trees – apples, apricots, cherries, pears and quinces, plus walnuts. The growing season started late this year but now we are seeing the various fruits starting to form. Some of our trees are growing on their natural root-stock, others are cultivated varieties grafted onto a wild root whilst others have had branches grafted into them as they have grown.
It had escaped my memory that the apostle Paul knew a thing or two about arboriculture. In his letter to the Romans, chapter 11, he speaks about how the gentiles have been grafted onto the root-stock of God’s relationship with the Israelites.
If some of the branches have been broken off, and you, though a wild olive shoot, have been grafted in among the others and now share in the nourishing sap from the olive root, do not consider yourself to be superior to those other branches. If you do, consider this: you do not support the root, but the root supports you.
Grafting is a painful experience for both parties to the process. The tree has be cut open to expose the sap, the life-blood, of the tree, then the incoming branch has to be made to fit the wound in the main stem. They are then bound together and the incoming branch starts to receive nourishment from its new parent.
Do you recognise the spiritual parallel? Christ’s body was cut, his life-blood exposed so that we could be joined with Him, to bear fruit for His kingdom. We become identified with Him. The process will not be painless, newly grafted branches need to be pruned to maximise their fruitfulness but the eventual outcome is beyond anything that we could achieve in our own strength.
Matthew Henry observed one significant variation from the normal horticultural practice. In the usual process, a branch from a good tree is grafted onto wild stock in order to improve the productivity of the natural plant. In the case of our salvation, the inferior branch is grafted into pure stock, to save the branch itself.
Have you been grafted into the Tree of Life?
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Contributed by Steve Humphreys; © the Author
