Don’t Play Telephone With the Gospel

2025-05-04

Did you ever play the telephone game when you were in school?In the game of telephone, the teacher whispers something in a student’s ear, who then passes on the message to another student, who then passes on the message to the next student, etc. The last student repeats the message out loud. Hilarity ensues—the final message is always wildly divergent from the original.I was thinking of the telephone game when I read through John 15–Jesus’s famous words: “I am the vine, you are the branches.”

Did you ever play the telephone game when you were in school?

In the game of telephone, the teacher whispers something in a student’s ear, who then passes on the message to another student, who then passes on the message to the next student, etc. The last student repeats the message out loud. Hilarity ensues—the final message is always wildly divergent from the original.

I was thinking of the telephone game when I read through John 15–Jesus’s famous words: “I am the vine, you are the branches.”

We have developed this idea in American Christianity that a Christian is just someone who one time prayed a certain prayer. But when you compare this idea with what Jesus says in John 15, it seems totally crazy!

According to Jesus, either you are abiding in him, or you aren’t—there is no middle ground.

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