before God and man’ (Acts 24:16). It is allowing Jesus’ words to remain in us (7). This obedience is not, however, a grim, forbidding thing, I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete (11). To submit to Christ is no hardship. Rather is it the road to liberation. It therefore brings joy, the joy of Christ’s presence welling up in our hearts (1 Pet. 1:8). The reference to joy in the context of the vine image is appropriate, for, as Newbigin observes, ‘the “fruit