Fruitfulness and Pruning: The Link

“But the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and the more they spread abroad. And the Egyptians were in dread of the people of Israel” Exodus 1: 12. 

This verse is referencing the situation when the Israelites were enslaved in Egypt under pharaoh. They were being put to forced labor and mercilessly abused by their slave drivers. To read the passage for context, click here.

Compare this passage with John 15: 2 ^“Every branch in me that does not bear fruit he takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes, that it may bear more fruit”. This is the same idea.

How Pruning Leads to Fruitfulness

Any decent gardener will tell you if you want to bear a lot of fruit on a plant the worst thing you can do is leave it alone and allow it to grow unabated and unopposed. In order for a plant to bear a lot of fruit, it must be pruned.

You must remove the parts that aren’t bearing fruit so the plant can direct its energy to the parts that are. And this is why the Israelites multiplied and spread the more they were oppressed.

It’s a principle that holds true for every living organism, whether plants or germs or people.

Lessons from Bacteria

In fact, bacteria do the same thing. The reason antibiotics produce resistant strains of bacteria is because the weak organisms are killed by the antibiotic. But the strong ones aren’t.

So, the strong germs continue to live and reproduce. And what do you think strong germs produce? That’s right, more strong ones until pretty soon you’ve got bacteria that’s stronger than the antibiotic. They are resistant to it.

And it results from oppression, from “pruning” if you like. What this is really saying is the oppression caused the people to have more children or to bear fruit. Affliction increased their fruitfulness.

A Reason to Rejoice in Suffering

We see this same principle in the New Testament. Romans 5: 3, 4 says “. . . we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope”.

And James 1: 2-4 says trials make us perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.

Now, the truth is when we suffer, we don’t become more of anything. But we are filled with the Holy Spirit to a greater degree, whose fruit is love (Galatians 5: 22, 23).

Suffering makes us fruitful because it fills us with the fruit of the Spirit. That is if we respond in the right way.

To read another post related to Fruitfulness and Pruning: The Link, see The Suffering of the Righteous in the Bible.