John 15:2,6; Isaiah 64:6
Every branch in me that beareth not fruit he taketh away: and every branch that beareth fruit, he purgeth it, that it may bring forth more fruit…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.
But we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags; and we all do fade as a leaf; and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away.
C. H. SPURGEON (1834-1892): We are about to let autumn preach…Falling leaves are nature’s sermons.
C. H. MACKINTOSH (1820-1896): Man in his best estate is only like an autumn leaf. “There is none abiding.” The highest position, the loudest profession, may all end in following Jesus afar off, and in basely denying His name. Spurious cases may arise; counterfeit conversions may take place. Persons may seem to run well for a time and then break down. The blossoms of spring time may not be followed by the mellow fruits of autumn.
C. H. SPURGEON: Remember, Brethren, that decays in Divine Grace and backsliding are usually very much like the fall of the autumn leaves. You are watching the trees, for now they are beginning to indicate the coming fall. They evidently know that their verdant robes are to be stripped from them for they are casting off their first loose vestments. How slowly the time of the brown leaf comes on! You notice here and there a tinge of the copper hue, and soon the gold leaf or the bronze is apparent. Week after week you observe that the general fall of the leaves is drawing nearer, but it is a matter that creeps slowly on. And so with backsliders. They are not put out of the visible Church all at once. They do not become open offenders all at once. The heart, by slow degrees, turns aside from the living God and then, at last, comes the outward sin and the outward shame.
JOHN GILL (1697-1771): “The strangers shall fade away,” Psalm 18:45. Like the leaves of trees in autumn, when they fall and perish; to which hypocrites and nominal professors are compared―carnal professors who had no true grace in them; and so dropped their profession, and became like trees whose fruit withered; or like trees, in the fall of the year, which are without fruit, and shed their leaves.
THOMAS GOODWIN (1600-1679): They fall as leaves in the autumn, in the declension of their years, before the winter of old age comes, and seldom or never continue till then.
JOHN CALVIN (1509-1564): Jude employs other metaphors for the same end, that they were trees fading, as the vigour of trees in autumn disappears. He then calls them trees unfruitful, rooted up, and twice dead, Jude 12; as though he had said, that there was no sap within, though leaves might appear.
JOHN GILL: This is to be understood not of true believers and real members, for these are rooted in the love of God, and in Christ, and have the root of the matter in them, the true grace of God; and therefore, though they meet with many blustering storms, yet do not cast their leaf of profession—“Whose leaf shall not fade,” Ezekiel 47, as the leaves of trees in autumn do, and drop off and fall.
MATTHEW HENRY (1662-1714): The trees of the Lord, though they seem dry trees, are “full of sap,” Psalm 104:16.
JOHN GILL: True believers, as they take up a profession on principles of grace, they hold it fast without wavering; their root, seed, and sap, remain, and so never wither and die in their profession; indeed there may be, as there often are, decays and declensions in them.
C. H. MACKINTOSH: True believers may fail in many things. They may stumble and break down in their course. They may have ample cause for self-judgment and humiliation, in the practical details of life. But, allowing the widest possible margin for all these things, the precious doctrine of final perseverance remains unshaken―yea untouched, upon its own divine and eternal foundation: “I give unto my sheep eternal―not temporary or conditional―life, and they shall never perish,” John 10:28. Yet so it is. People may argue as they will, and base their arguments on cases which have come under their notice, from time to time, in the history of professing Christians; but, looking at the subject from a divine point of view, and basing our convictions on the sure and unerring word of God, we maintain that all who belong to the “us” of Romans 8:1-39, and the “sheep” of John 10:1-42, are as safe as Christ can make them, and this we conceive to be the sum and substance of the doctrine of final perseverance.
C. H. SPURGEON: And there are some whose ripe and mellow experience has the peacefulness of autumn about it…We like to let our eyes rest upon that beautiful lake in the distance, or that forest browning with the tints of autumn, or that green hill, or that sky checkered with a thousand hues as the sun is setting.
ALEXANDER MacLAREN (1826-1910): I remember once standing by the side of a little Highland loch on a calm autumn day, when all the winds were still, and every birch tree stood unmoved, and every twig was reflected on the steadfast mirror, into the depths of which Heaven’s own blue seemed to have found its way. That is what our hearts may be, if we let Christ put His guarding hand round them to keep the storms off, and have Him within us for our rest.
C. H. SPURGEON: Our sins are countless as the drops of dew in these autumn mornings when every leaf is wet, for every tree is weeping tears of sorrow over the dying year. Yet when the sun has risen, with a little of its heat, the moisture of the dew is gone—as if it had never been. Our sins are countless—but the removal of our transgressions is complete when the infinite love of Jesus shines upon us and God in His Son has reconciled us by His atoning blood!—Oh, to make the autumn of your life and the coming winter of your last days into a new spring and a blessed summer—this is to be done by laying hold of Christ now!
ALEXANDER MacLAREN: But the man who does not trust Jesus “is like the troubled sea which cannot rest,” but goes moaning round half the world, homeless and hungry, rolling and heaving, monotonous and yet changeful, salt and barren—the true emblem of every soul that has not listened to the merciful call, “Come unto Me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”—I saw a forest fire this last autumn, and the great pine-trees stood there for a moment in pyramids of flame, and then came down with a crash. So that hereafter will be to godless men.
C. H. SPURGEON: In the social economy of life, a man may be of some use however bad he may be; but a man who is in the nominal Church of Christ, and yet does not bring forth fruit unto God, is of no use whatsoever. There is nothing to be done with him but to gather him up with the autumn leaves, and the decaying stalks of vegetation, to be burned in the corner outside the wall.
