You say, “Does every Christian have fruit?”  Yes, every Christian has fruit.  That’s how you know you’re a Christian.  What is fruit?  Righteous attitudes, righteous longings, righteous desires, righteous affections, righteous virtues, righteous behaviors.  That is the manifestation of life; and where the life of God exists, the fruit must be there.

That’s why Ephesians 2:10 says that we have been saved by grace through faith, unto good works, which God has before ordained that you should walk in them.  It can’t not be that way, because where there is the life of God and the soul of man, it becomes evident. 

That’s what it says at the end of John15: 8.  When you bear much fruit, you prove to be a true disciple.  James said, “Faith without works is – ” what “ – is dead,” it’s useless claim.  The only way you know faith is real, salvation is real, is by the evidence.

Matthew 7, Jesus said, “You’ll know them by their fruit,” and that’s repeated a number of times in the gospels.  Paul in Romans 6 says, “You were slaves to sin, and now in Christ you become slaves of righteousness.”  We’re known by our fruit.  We’re known by the manifest evidence of transformation.

That’s the only way you can tell a person’s a Christian – not by remembering an event, not by remembering a prayer, not by some wishing and hoping.  The way you know someone has been transformed and regenerated and born again is because the fruit of righteousness is manifest in that life.  It’s not perfection, but it’s a dominating direction.  There are people who attach to Christ and are fruitless.

In John 15 Jesus is judging false branches – cutting them off, drying them out, and sending them to hell; and he is pruning true fruit-bearing branches.  This is the Father’s work.

Now let’s look at these branches and just consider what this is saying.  The vine is flourishing, growing luxuriantly, but some serious steps are taken by the vinedresser, the farmer.  First of all, when He sees a branch that has no fruit, He takes it away, He takes it away.  Down in verse 6, He throws it away, it dries up.  Those branches are gathered, cast into the fire, and burned.  That is drastic judgment by God on false believers, No fruit.