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I
am the True Vine
When
Jesus says that He is the vine and His people are
His branches, we understand that He is speaking in
figurative language again. Jesus is not literally a
vine with branches coming off Him and fruit hanging
on Him, any more than that He is literally bread or
a door. Rather, Jesus is drawing a figure that was
very familiar to these Jewish disciples, familiar
because vines were a common part of the landscape
and of the farming of that day. There were many
vineyards in Judea. The disciples would easily be
able to grasp the truth of which Jesus spoke if He
used this figure. Besides, this figure would be
familiar because it was part of Old Testament,
biblical language. In the Old Testament, Israel was
called “God’s vine”-for example, Psalm 80:8,
9.
When
Jesus calls Himself the vine, then, He is drawing a
beautiful picture of Himself with His church. He and
His people are one plant, one living organism. It is
a figure similar to that of the church as Christ’s
body with Christ as its Head. So here, Christ is the
main vine and His people make up the branches joined
to Him. Together they are a united, living organism.
Christ
is the source of all life and strength and every
blessing of salvation to His people. In a vineyard,
the vine is the main trunk of the plant. The
branches depend on the vine for their life, for
their vitality and nutrients. The vine is the
source, the tap of these things to the branches. The
vine is the means of support, literally as well as
physically, to the branches. Without the vine the
branches have nothing. They die. That is why they
have to be connected to the vine. It is this way,
spiritually, with Christ and His people. His
relationship to them and ours to Him is such that He
is the vine, the source of our life, our strength,
our salvation. He is our total spiritual support. We
depend on Him for everything, just as the branch
depends on the vine for everything. Without Christ
we are nothing. It is in Christ that all the
nutrients of God’s grace that we stand in need of
are found: forgiveness and righteousness and life.
That is why we must be united to Him as branches to
the vine. That union is by faith.
Jesus
is also the source of fertility. He is the One who
causes the branches to bear fruit. This is one of
the major points in this passage in John 15. Five
times our Lord mentions bearing fruit or not bearing
fruit. And it all hinges, you will notice, on being
connected to the vine. Just as in nature the vine is
the power of the branches being able to produce
fruit, so also in the realm of the spiritual, Christ
is the only power that enables His people to produce
fruit. The spiritual fertility is in Him.
Therefore
Christ stresses here, negatively, that without Him
we can do nothing. We have no ability to produce
good fruit without Christ. That certainly says
something about our spiritual condition by nature,
does it not? All we can produce, of ourselves, in
sin, is the fruit of sin. More evil, more depravity,
more death. The only reason, child of God, that you
and I can bear any fruit pleasing to God is because
Christ is our vine, the source of our spiritual
strength and productivity. All our good is in Him.
All our strength to do any good is in Him.
You
know what that fruit of which Jesus speaks is, do
you not? It is the fruit of faith: a real, visible,
living, working faith. Not a mere profession but a
faith that confesses the name of Christ personally,
publicly, boldly, unashamedly before the
church-world and before the unbelieving world. The
fruit of which Jesus speaks is the fruit of a life
lived for Christ in submission to His Word, in
obedience to His commandments. The fruit of which
Christ speaks here is the fruit of a godly
character, bearing the image of Christ, such as:
purity, integrity, love, faithfulness. It is the
fruit of a holy walk, antithetical, separate from
the world and pleasing to God. It is the fruit, dear
listener, of daily repentance and conversion,
sorrowing over your sins and turning from them.
These are the fruits which Christ, the vine,
produces in His people as branches. These are the
infallible signs of a true Christian. We may ask
ourselves today: “Do we have these fruits? Are we
bearing them, and are they visible before others?”
It
is at this point that we need to see how important
this fruit-bearing is from the viewpoint of what the
Father does as the Husbandman, or Vine-dresser, that
is, the One who cares for the vine and its branches.
That is part of the figure.
In
the first place, Jesus says that every branch that
does not bear fruit the Father takes away. There are
those who believe that this verse teaches that
believers can fall away and lose their salvation.
But it is evident from the rest of Scripture that
this cannot happen. So our text cannot mean this,
either.
I
believe the text is referring to hypocrites, to
unbelievers who are masquerading as Christians. They
are “branches” in the sense that they belong to
the visible manifestation of the church and appear
to be in Christ, even profess Him with their mouth,
but in reality, they are not. So it is that they do
not bear any real fruit, either. They only bear wild
grapes. Because they do not bear good fruit, the
Father prunes the vine of these dead, barren
branches. He cuts them off from Christ, the vine,
that is, from any connection to Him, because they
must be shown that they have no part in Christ.
Let
that purpose be an incentive to you to abide in
Christ. Then the purpose of God being glorified will
also be fulfilled in you. That is the ultimate
purpose of being on the vine and abiding in Him, the
ultimate purpose of your bearing the fruit of good
works in your life-so that the Father may be
glorified through your much fruit. Let the desire
that the Father be glorified fill you. Go and abide
in Christ and bear much fruit.
Source
: http://www.angelfire.com/ab/fullgospel/articles.html
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