A John 15 Story

God saved me when I was a kid. I might have been eight years old, or fifteen, or maybe eighteen (I had a few conversion-esque experiences) — but by my freshman year of college I was born again, and I had begun reading the Bible daily.

As a novice, I picked up a study guide at a Lifeway bookstore close to campus. It was a verse-by-verse walk through John 15. Someone had told me the Gospel of John was a good place to start, and I figured I could manage one chapter.

To be honest, I don’t remember much about that study except how verse 5 struck me:

I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.

It was that last line: “apart from me you can do nothing.”

I remember testing it. Nothing — really? What about breathing? Is it impossible for me to breathe apart from Jesus?

I thought I was being smart until I remembered Hebrews 1:3, that “he upholds the universe by the word of his power.” My freshman logic reasoned that without a universe intact, breathing wouldn’t matter much. The verse applies, I thought. Apart from Jesus I wouldn’t even be alive. He is the One behind it all. “All things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together” (Colossians 1:16–17).

A theology was being formed.

Around that time, I was talking with a classmate who lived in my dorm. He was a self-acclaimed Presbyterian who sipped liquor and played secular songs on his guitar at night — a true rebel at our Baptist college. He had a bad haircut, and I wasn’t especially fond of him, but we had good conversations from time to time. He liked to read and discuss theology, and I found him interesting.

So one afternoon, in a typical exchange, he began making his case for Calvinism — a brand-new doctrine for me. He said sinners don’t have the ability to love Jesus because of their total depravity. He said the gospel is that Jesus chooses sinners to save, not that sinners save themselves by choosing Jesus.

I wrestled with that. It just couldn’t be. I was offended — my free will insulted.

But then I distinctly remember saying to him, “Jesus says that apart from him we can do nothing. I believe John 15:5.”

He looked at me and said, “Dude, that’s what I mean.”

And that’s how I became a Calvinist.