¹⁶ “You did not choose Me but I chose you, and appointed you that you would go and bear fruit, and that your fruit would remain, so that whatever you ask of the Father in My name He may give to you.”

“Appoint” means to lay hold of for a purpose. There is no sense of volunteerism or option to accept the appointment. It is for fruit-bearing that the believer has been chosen. The great evangelistic passage of Ephesians 2:8-9 is followed by verse 10, “For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them.” God, the creator of the universe, the sovereign Lord over all that exists, has appointed the followers of Jesus Christ to go and bear fruit with good works.

At once this is also an authorization. Nothing can stand in our way, and therefore we need to go forth and do it. Some have erroneously claimed that Christians are commanded to be faithful not fruitful, for fruit is not something that can be commanded, it is the result. However, the goal is certainly fruitfulness, not simply obedience. We must not suffer confusion between the means and the ends. Faithfulness is not the goal, as though when it is all said and done, God is looking for obedience, and that is it. No, God is looking for fruitfulness, and that is our motivation for good works.

God’s own good works include all of creation, a reflection of His glory. And He wants us to live our lives faithfully, so that the fruit of our faithfulness shows His glory. To do that we must, of course, abide in Christ, as a branch abides in the tree (see earlier in John 15). But the end goal is fruitfulness.

The other great truth we find in this verse, as we have seen earlier in the Upper Room (15:7), has to do with prayer. In our quest for fruitfulness, we have been appointed to ask God the Father for anything in Jesus’ name and He will give it to us. Of course, this is not a blank check to use for our selfish purposes; that would not bring fruitfulness for God’s glory. But, in our efforts to glorify Him as followers of Jesus Christ, we are given tremendous liberty to ask with the confident expectation that God will supply what we ask for. This confidence comes from being in line with His purposes and His mission.

The problem of prayer is that too often Christians pray for the wrong things or with the wrong motives. James writes, “… You do not have because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, so that you may spend it on your pleasures” (James 4:2–3). But a life lived for Christ is a life of answered prayer, for His glory.

Lord, show me the things to pray, so that Your Glory will be revealed.