the translators. It does not appear in the Greek texts.
The Vine and the Branches
ne of the recurring themes of Jesus' preaching, teaching, and miracles was His absolute equality with God. He repeatedly affirmed His deity in the clearest possible terminology: "My Father is working until now, and I Myself am working" (John 5:17). "If I glorify Myself, My glory is nothing; it is My Father who glorifies Me, of whom you say, 'He is our God' " (8:54). "I and the Father are one" (10:30). "Though you do not believe Me, believe the works, that you may know and understand that the Father is in Me, and I in the Father" (10:38).
Every time Jesus called God "My Father," He was underscoring His deity. His Jewish audiences understood quite clearly what His intention was: "For this cause therefore the Jews were seeking all the more to kill Him, because He not only was breaking the Sabbath, but also was calling God His own Father, making Himself equal with God" (John 5:18, emphasis added).
Some of the most powerful affirmations of Jesus' deity are a chain of expressions in John's gospel known as the "I am" statements. Each of these phrases employs the name God revealed to Moses at the burning bush — "I AM" (Ex. 3:14). Jesus applied that name to Himself in a series of prominent declarations: "I am the bread of life" (John 6:35). "I am the living bread that came down out of heaven" (6:51). "I am the light of the world" (8:12; 9:5). "I am the door of the sheep" (10:7). "I am the good shepherd" (10:11). "I am the resurrection and the life" (11:25). "I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father, but through Me" (14:6). And this stunning, inescapable affirmation of deity: "Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was born, I am" (8:58).
Jesus' stature as the great I AM of the Old Testament was essential to His role as Savior. Those who refused to acknowledge Him for who He is could not be saved: "Unless you believe that I am,1 you shall die in your sins" (8:24). This set up an extremely difficult barrier for Pharisees who were predisposed to hate Him anyway. They understood that He was claiming authority over their
1. Th e word He, which appears in the New American Standard Bible at this point, has been added by the translators. It does not appear in the Greek texts.
Jesus Illustrates His Gospel
greatest patriarchs and prophets (cf. John 4:12; 8:53). Indeed, He was claiming equality with God, and the ramifications of that they could not accept. Therefore, Jesus warned them, they would die in their sins.
On the final night before His death, alone with His disciples after Judas had departed to do his evil, turncoat, treacherous deed, the Lord revealed another aspect of His deity to the remaining disciples. And once again He used the highest name of God, I AM:
I am the true vine, and My Father is the vinedresser. Every branch in Me that does not bear fruit, He takes away; and every branch that bears fruit, He prunes it, that it may bear more fruit. You are already clean because of the word which I have spoken to you. Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it abides in the vine, so neither can you, unless you abide in Me. I am the vine, you are the branches; he who abides in Me, and I in him, he bears much fruit; for apart from Me you can do nothing. If anyone does not abide in Me, he is thrown away as a branch, and dries up; and they gather them, and cast them into the fi re, and they are burned. If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it shall be done for you. By this is My Father glorifi ed, that you bear much fruit, and so prove to be My disciples. (John 15:1 – 8)
The imagery Jesus uses in that discourse is not a parable but a metaphor. Parables are stories whose interpretation must be supplied separately. A metaphor contains its own interpretive elements. Here Jesus explicitly says that He is the Vine, for example, and the Father is the Vinedresser.
Other elements of the imagery are not quite as clear, however. "You are the branches" (v. 5) is spoken to the disciples. Does He mean the fruit-bearing branches as well as the fruitless ones? Some interpreters say the unproductive branches represent fruitless Chris tians and this proves that true believers might live spiritually barren lives. At first glance that interpretation might seem to have merit. But look at verse 6. The empty branches are cut off, dried, gathered, and cast into the fire: "They are burned." Could that possibly describe a true believer?
How are we to interpret this admittedly difficult metaphor? As always, we must consider the context. And here we find an important clue to Jesus' meaning. Remember what was happening in the upper room. Take note of the characters in that night's drama: "Jesus knowing that His hour had come that He should depart out of this world to the Father, having loved His own who were in the world, He loved them to the end. And during supper, the devil having already put into the heart of Judas Iscariot, the son of Simon, to betray Him" (John 13:1 – 2).
The Vine and the Branches
The Cast of Characters
Here, then, is the cast: Jesus, the Father, His disciples, and Judas the betrayer. All of them were weighing heavily on Jesus' mind that night. He was eager to affirm His great love for the Eleven. He must have also been grieving over Judas, who had utterly rejected His love and set out to betray Him. Most of all, He knew that He and the Father shared an infinite love; yet He was burdened with the knowledge that tomorrow He would be the object of the Father's wrath as He bore the burden of our sin on the cross.
It is not surprising, then, that Christ, the Father, the eleven faithful disciples, and Judas all play a part in the vine-and-branches metaphor. Christ is the True Vine. The Father is the Vinedresser. The disciples (along with all true disciples) are the fruit-bearing branches. And Judas (as well as all false disciples) represents the barren branches.
The True Vine
The metaphor of a vine and branches would have been familiar imagery for our Lord's disciples. The Old Testament often spoke of Israel as God's vine. Jehovah cared for the vine, tended it, pruned it, and loved it. Nevertheless, the vine degenerated and bore no fruit, which grieved the Vinedresser:
Let me sing now for my well-beloved A song of my beloved concerning His vineyard. My well-beloved had a vineyard on a fertile hill. And He dug it all around, removed its stones, And planted it with the choicest vine. And He built a tower in the middle of it, And hewed out a wine vat in it; Then He expected it to produce good grapes, But it produced only worthless ones. "And now, O inhabitants of Jerusalem and men of Judah, Judge between Me and My vineyard. What more was there to do for My vineyard that I have not done
in it? Why, when I expected it to produce good grapes did it produce
worthless ones? So now let Me tell you what I am going to do to My vineyard: I will remove its hedge and it will be consumed; I will break down its wall and it will become trampled ground. And I will lay it waste; It will not be pruned or hoed,
Jesus Illustrates His Gospel
But briars and thorns will come up. I will also charge the clouds to rain no rain on it." For the vineyard of the Lord of hosts is the house of Israel.
(Isa. 5:1 – 7, emphasis added)
God took away the wall of the vineyard and left it unprotected. Gentile nations trampled it and utterly laid it to waste. Israel was cut off, no longer God's vine. The covenant people had forfeited their spiritual privileges.
Jesus was telling the disciples that He was the true Vine. Old Testament Israel was only a pale earthly shadow. Such comparisons are common in the New Testament. Repeatedly we are told that many things in the Old Testament are only imperfect likenesses of some greater heavenly reality — the "true" thing. For example, there was an earthly tabernacle with a human high priest; now Christ is our Great High Priest in the "true tabernacle" (Heb. 8:2). In contrast to the created light of Genesis 1:3, Christ is the "true light" (John 1:9). Manna fell from heaven to feed the Israelites in the wilderness; Jesus said He is the "true bread out of heaven" (John 6:32). Likewise, contrasting with the Old Testament picture of Israel, Jesus is the "true" Vine.
The horticultural imagery is ideal for the point Jesus was making. Living branches belong entirely to the central vine; fruitful branches must depend completely on the main stem for nourishment, support, strength, and vitality. They are offshoots of the vine. They bear its likeness. They flow with its juices. They radiate its life and character. In Jesus' words, they abide in the vine.
The Vinedresser
Remember that John 15:1 – 8 is one long figure of speech. As we noted in interpreting some of the parables, figurative language must not be made to bear more meaning than is clearly intended. The symbolism is not meant to extend to every fine detail. For example, in this metaphor Christ is portrayed as a plant but the Father as a person. Some who reject the deity of Christ have tried to suggest that this proves Christ is not of the same essence as the Father. They claim that if Jesus is God, He and the Father ought to have equivalent roles in the metaphor. If Jesus is the Vine, they claim, the Father should be the root. And so they argue that the imagery here disproves Jesus' deity.
But that misses the entire point. As we noted at the outset of this chapter, in the very expression "I am" Jesus was employing the name of God. By tying the words "I am" to expressions like "the bread of life," "the way, the truth and the life," and "the true vine," Jesus was boldly asserting His identity as Jehovah of the Old Testament. Besides, the metaphor of the vine and branches does affirm Jesus' deity by portraying Him as the source and sustainer of life.
The Vine and the Branches
Still, the vine-branches metaphor is not primarily a lesson about Jesus' deity. Our Lord was using this imagery to underscore the reality of every believer's union with Him. As the Father cares for the Son, so He cares for those joined to the Son by faith. That glorious truth is the central point Jesus was making here. It is one of the most sublime truths in all Scripture! Believers are united by faith to the beloved Son of God.
Vinedressers had two chief means of maximizing the fruit that grew on the vine. One was to cut off the barren limbs. The other was to prune new shoots from the fruit-bearing branches. This all insured that the vine would produce more fruit, not just leafy growth. John 15:2 describes both chores: "Every branch in Me that does not bear fruit, He takes away; and every branch that bears fruit, He prunes it, that it may bear more fruit." Barren branches grow rapidly and new ones sprout quickly. They must be carefully and regularly pruned. It is the only way to insure maximum quantities of fruit.
The Fruitful Branches
The identity of the healthy, fruit-bearing branches seems clear — they represent genuine Chris tians. It is the nature of the Chris tian to produce fruit. "We are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them" (Eph. 2:10). The inevitable result of genuine salvation is good works. We are not saved by works, but works are the only proof that faith is genuine, vibrant, and alive (James 2:17). Fruit is the only possible validation that a branch is abiding in the True Vine: "You will know them by their fruits. Grapes are not gathered from thorn bushes, nor figs from thistles, are they? Even so, every good tree bears good fruit; but the bad tree bears bad fruit" (Matt. 7:16 – 17, emphasis added). If someone's faith is genuine, that person's life will bear good fruit.
The Vinedresser prunes these fruitful branches so that they will bear more fruit. The pruning represents God's loving discipline. The Father "disciplines us for our good, that we may share His holiness" (Heb. 12:10). And God is glorified in the process. As John 15:8 says, "By this is My Father glorified, that you bear much fruit."
The vinedresser might remove extraneous shoots in several ways. Sometimes the tip was simply pinched off. Other times a knife would be used to make a clean cut, neatly excising the useless growth. Large, heavy branches had to be topped to prevent them from becoming so long and weak that their own weight tore them from the vine. And grape clusters were thinned out while they were still flowering so that the healthiest fruit would grow even larger and more abundantly.