Look at Jesus
“Yes, I am the vine; you are the branches. Those who remain in me, and I in them, will produce much fruit. For apart from me you can do nothing.” — John 15:5
‘Your salvation, friends, is that you get Jesus Christ.’ — Dan Hames, speaking at the 2026 Something More Weekend
Last weekend, I cried.
Don’t worry, they weren’t tears of sadness, but of joy.
For context, I was at the Something More Weekend, where 200 people gathered in a field in Warwickshire to know more of Jesus and get ready to go and make Him known.
We camped, prayed, worshipped, listened to God speak to us through His Word, enjoyed great food, and laughed a lot together in the summer sunshine.
It really was a beautiful glimpse of glory, and all of it filled me with immense joy.
But my tears came during the last talk on Monday morning, when Dan Hames (you might recognise him as the co-host from our Ask Us Anything podcast) preached from John’s Gospel on God as our Saviour.
I grew up in a Christian family, and so I’ve heard many talks on salvation throughout my lifetime.
But over the last few years, God has been slowly helping me to understand the gospel in a far more profound way.
And when Dan was speaking, I really felt that he was bringing all of that together to reveal a stunning vista of God's salvation that moved me so deeply.
So, for this week’s Journal, I wanted to share a little bit of what he spoke about with you:
This picture of salvation being a branch on the Vine in John 15 tells us that salvation is not something that Jesus did for you once upon a time—as something that you benefited from the first day you became a Christian, but that’s now in the rearview mirror and it’s down to you to make something of it.
No, this is life in the Vine. This is what you have now: life in the Vine—in Jesus—sharing in Him. It’s why so often in the New Testament, the phrase for being a Christian is to be in Christ.
Jesus did not do something for you 2,000 years ago, and then wander off saying, ‘Over to you’. You are, in New Testament language, in Christ.
You’re connected to Him. You are in the One who the Father has eternally loved. You are in the One who has been filled with the Spirit without measure. That is who you are now.
Salvation is not a transaction that you walk away from. Salvation is a reality that you live in in Christ.
That is what you have, and that means your salvation is in Christ: it’s about being in Him, about who He is today for you.
We don’t each have an individual package of salvation from God, like a bespoke set of benefits. It’s almost like we think of salvation as setting up our personal subscription when we become a Christian, and we’ve chosen our package, and if you want a bit more from God at some point in your life—if you need something extra from Him—you’re going to have to upgrade the membership. Maybe that’s going to mean some 5AM quiet times, maybe some sort of extra evangelism effort on top of what you’re already trying to do.
And we think that it’ll take more spiritual currency from us to get more from the Lord, because we started off with our own little packages, but we weren’t expecting to be this needy, this messy, this sinful. And so we fall into this pattern of sinning and falling short and beating ourselves up, because we think Jesus did something for us once, and we were grateful for it, but now we’re stuck on our own.
In salvation, you’re not on an individual package of benefits that you can accidentally ruin or lose or have your spiritual card declined. You don’t get emails saying that your order can’t be processed when you need more from the Lord. You don’t need to cry some more sincere tears of repentance in order to sort of release the next little level of benefits that you think you might need.
Your salvation is not about you. It is about the I AM who is a perfectly sufficient Saviour for you, and about you being in Him.
Your salvation, friends, is that you get Jesus Christ.
You have Him. You get God the Son, and all that is in Him. All that God is, is for you in Jesus Christ. You are a branch in Him. You are drawing on His life. You’re receiving all that He is and all that He’s done for you.
If you’re feeling guilty or discouraged, if you’re ashamed, if you’re worried that your salvation is somehow in danger, that you could somehow mess this up—abide in Christ. Go to Him. You can’t do anything on your own. Jesus says that in John 15. You can’t. Yes, you are rubbish. We all are. That’s who He came for.
We need to ditch any confidence in ourselves—that inward, anxious, self-centred confidence—and look only to Him, trust Him, abide in Him, and receive from Him the eternal life that’s in Him.
Hallelujah.
No matter how you’re feeling right now about your faith—look at Jesus.
He is enough.
Love,
Theo