Wednesday
Wednesday
The Vine and the Branches
I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.
John 15:5
In his allegory of the vine and the branches, Jesus was almost certainly thinking about Israel, the choice vine that Yahweh had planted in Canaan, and assuming the continuity between Israel and God’s new community. The essential message of the allegory is plain, namely that it is just as much God’s purpose for his people to be fruitful as it is the function of the vine to produce grapes.
It is surprising how many Christians imagine that to be fruitful means to be successful in winning people for Christ. And evangelism is indeed a very important part of our Christian calling. But if we compare Scripture with Scripture, the grapes in God’s vineyard were justice and righteousness, whereas in the New Testament the fruit of the Spirit is Christlikeness. See Isaiah 5; Galatians 5:22–23; and Colossians 1:10.
What, then, are the secrets of fruitfulness? The first is the pruning of the vine. God is an indefatigable gardener. He prunes every fruit-bearing branch so that it may bear more fruit. This pruning is surely a picture of suffering. And pruning is a drastic process. The bush or shrub is cut right back, usually in the autumn. To the uninitiated it looks extremely cruel. Sometimes only a stump is left—naked, jagged, scarred, and mutilated—but when the spring and summer return, there is much fruit. The painful pruning knife has evidently been in safe hands. Some form of suffering is virtually indispensable to holiness.
The second secret of fruitfulness is the “abiding” of the branches in the vine. In essence to be a Christian is to be “in Christ,” organically united to Christ. So to abide in Christ is to maintain and develop an already existing relationship. Moreover, it is a reciprocal relationship, since we abide in Christ and Christ in us. For Christ to abide in us we must let him do so, allowing him to be increasingly what he is, our Lord and our Life Giver. But for us to abide in Christ, Bishop J. C. Ryle put it like this: “Abide in me. Cling to me. Stick fast to me. Live the life of close and intimate communion with me. Get nearer and nearer to me. Roll every burden on me. Cast your whole weight on me. Never let go your hold on me for a moment.”
For further reading: John 15:1–8