Abide in me, and I In you. As the branch cannot bear fruit unless It abides in the vine; no more can ye, except ye abide in me.
To abide is to remain, to stay or to continue in a place. The Opposite is to move away from a place or to loosely hold on. Jesus told his disciples that the only way for them to bear fruit was if they remained or stayed in him and he in them. Just like the branch of a vine or any other tree cannot bear fruit unless it stays in the mother tree, so it is with them; they could not bear fruit unless they abided firmly in Christ.
The centre of the gospel is Christ himself. Anything or anybody else we may hold onto in life will only bring disappointment to us. There are believers or churches where the main focus is not on Christ but on some other human personality such as an apostle, a bishop, or a prophet. Such believers or members of such churches believe that God only operates or blesses them through the “Man of God. Such a man of God is not merely respected but almost worshiped. What he says is taken with greater seriousness than what Christ says in his word.
It is only in Christ that we should abide and it is only him we should follow. If we move away from Him and follow other people, we shall be like branches that have been cut off from the vine whose end is to dry up and be burned. To abide in Christ, we must know and abide in his word. The believers of Berea have been described as having been more noble because, after hearing Paul preach, they would always check the scriptures to confirm the truth of what they heard from Paul. This what all who want to abide in Christ should regularly do-search the scriptures.