The True Vine
Published by Stanley Pouw in 2021 · 31 October 2021
So as we come to John 15, we are listening to God. The writer is the apostle John, but in reality the writer is also God. Because the Holy Spirit inspired every word that John wrote. Because of this, the Bible is without error, it is accurate, and it is authoritative. When the Bible speaks, God speaks. And when God speaks, we listen, because God says to us what we must know.
The Bible should dominate every life and all of human society, for in it is contained all necessary truth for life. And when a person rejects the Bible, they have rejected God, and the consequences are dire. Those who listen to God through His Word are given life and blessing, now and forever. And we find ourselves on Thursday night of Passion Week, the last week of our Lord’s ministry.
They met together in the upper room, and our Lord spent that night giving them many promises. As that night moved on, our Lord exposed Judas as the traitor, and dismissed him. And Judas left to go meet the leaders of Israel to arrange for the arrest and crucifixion of the Lord Jesus. By the time we come to John 15, Judas is gone, and only the 11 true disciples are left.
But in John 15, they’re no longer in the upper room. Jesus and the 11, began their walk through Jerusalem, headed out the east side of the city to a garden where our Lord would pray so agonizing that He sweat as it were drops of blood. And while He was praying, they would fall asleep. And into that garden later would come Judas and the Roman soldiers, and the Jewish leaders to arrest Him.
As they walk through Jerusalem, our Lord continues to speak to them, and what He says to them is recorded in John 15 and 16. John 15:1-6, “I am the true vine, and My Father is the vinedresser. 2 Every branch in Me that does not bear fruit He takes away; and every branch that bears fruit He prunes, that it may bear more fruit. 3 You are already clean because of the word which I have spoken to you.
“4 Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in Me. 5 “I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing. 6 If anyone does not abide in Me, he is cast out as a branch and is withered; and they gather them and throw them into the fire, and they are burned.”
Before we look at the nature of salvation, let us look at the nature of Christ. The divine nature of the Lord Jesus Christ is declared in verse 1, “I am the true vine,” He says. How is this a claim to deity? Because of the verb “I am.” Back in Exodus 3, when Moses came before God in the wilderness and asked His name, God said, “My name is I Am That I Am.”
The eternally existent one; the one that always is, and always was, and always will be. Theologians call it the eternal being of God. He is the I Am. Throughout His preaching, teaching, healing and ministry, Jesus continually declared that He is God. He said things like, “My Father is working until now, and I Myself am working.” In John 10, He said it concisely: “I and the Father are one, one in nature and essence.”
And His Jewish audience did not miss the claim. In fact, in John 5:18, it says, “For this cause, the Jews were seeking all the more to kill Him, because He not only was breaking the Sabbath, but was also calling God His own Father, making Himself equal with God.” And one of the ways that He did that was by taking to Himself the name of God “I Am” and applying it to Himself.
There’s a series of those claims throughout the gospel of John. Jesus says, “I am the Bread of Life. I am the Living Bread that came down from heaven. I am the Light of the World. I am the Door, I am the Good Shepherd. I am the Resurrection and the Life. I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life.” And then He makes this claim in John 8:58, “Before Abraham was born, I am eternally existing.”
The Jews understood what He was saying. Their theology had deviated from Scripture, the Old Testament. And Jesus attacked that theology. He attacked their understanding of God, He attacked their understanding of the law. He attacked their understanding of righteousness. He attacked their perspective on works and faith and grace. He attacked all elements of their theology.
Then He claims to be God, which they see is the ultimate blasphemy, and that becomes the reason they want Him dead. So here He is on the final night with His disciples, and He reveals another powerful declaration of His divine nature and says, “I am the true vine.” Having looked at that, I want to take you to the most important part of the passage, and that is the nature of salvation.
The drama that unfolds in this analogy is simple: there is a vine, there is a vinedresser, and there are two kinds of branches. Branches that bear fruit and are pruned to bear more fruit; and branches that don’t bear fruit, which are cut off, dried and burned. As you well know, our Lord could say profound things in the simplest of ways; and that is exactly what you have here.
We know the first two characters, Jesus said, “I am the vine,” in verse 1, and He said “My Father is the farmer, the vinedresser.” But the question here is, who are the branches? All the branches are attached. But the ones that don’t bear fruit are cut off, dried, and burned. So who are they? I don’t really think there’s a lot of mystery about these two branches.
There was nothing obvious in behavior of Judas that would have distinguished him as a false disciple. He was visibly attached, and looked like everybody else, and did what everybody else did. But, there were two kinds of people in that room that night. There were those who bore fruit and there was that one who did not. There were those who were attached to the vine; and there was one cut off.
In John 6, Jesus said, “All that the Father gives to Me will come to Me and I’ll lose none of them.” This is not talking about believers, fruit-bearing branches that all of a sudden are cut off and thrown into hell. Judas had that very night just a few hours before walked away from Jesus terminally, finally. He is what the Bible would call an apostate, an ultimate defector.
But Jesus needs to explain Judas to these men. He says, “There are branches that have an outward appearance of attachment, but bear no fruit. They’re taken away and they’re burned.” And He was thinking of Judas. Judas has left, and is on his way to eternal hell. And the Bible says he went to his own place. Mark 14 says it would have been better for him if he’d never been born.
So our Lord helps us to understand the elements of the parable. He is the vine, the Father is the vinedresser; the branches that bear fruit are the true disciples; the branch that bears no fruit, cut off and burned, is a false disciple. That’s the way we understand His words. There are, in the kingdom of God, people that possess eternal life and people who only profess they have eternal life.
As we look at this metaphor, there are many truths for us to consider. Let’s start with the vine, Christ Himself: “I am the true vine.” He chose to present himself as a vine. He had earlier, in John 10, presented Himself as a shepherd with a flock. And before that He presented Himself as light. And before that He presented Himself as water. So He drew from familiar analogies.
It’s a good metaphor to speak of His lowliness. It’s also a good metaphor of union, it speaks of the closeness and communion of those who are Christ’s with Him, the very same life flowing through the vine, flowing through the branches. Others might say it’s a good word picture because it talks about fruit-bearing, fruitfulness, the result of being in Christ is manifest. It also illustrates dependence.
It also emphasizes belonging. But there’s a more important reason why He says, “I am the true vine,” and that is because there was a defective, fruitless vine. Who? Israel. The covenant people of God, the Jewish people. In Isaiah 5:1-7, Israel is presented as a vine. God says, “I planted My vine, My vineyard in a very fertile hill,” It talks about all the things God did for them to bring forth grapes.
Israel had been planted by God. But Israel was unfaithful, idolatrous, immoral, and God brought judgment. That’s what the Old Testament lays out for us. The disciples thought, “I’m Jewish connected to God.” Israel is the source of divine blessing. Not so. Our Lord comes along and says, “If you want to be connected to God, you have to be connected, not to Israel, but to Me. I am the true vine.
It’s important that we understand that the source of blessing is not Israel. “Not all Israel is Israel,” said Paul. Christ is the true vine just as He said in John 1, He is the true light. And in John 6, the true bread. Anybody who’s going to know the life of God has to connect to Christ, and has to connect to Him genuinely as God, as the ‘I Am’. All other vines are false vines.
Now the second character in this picture is the vinedresser, verse 1: “My Father is the vinedresser.” Christ pictures Himself as having been planted by God, and that’s true. The Father was behind everything that Jesus did. Jesus said, “I only do the will of My Father. I only do what the Father tells me to do, shows me to do, commands me to do. I only do what pleases the Father.”
Now verse 2 then introduces the branches. And there are two kinds of branches. “They all appear in Me.” They all are attached, just like there were lots of people attached to Israel in the past. But not all Israel is Israel, and not everyone who is a Jew is really connected to blessing. There were branches that do not bear fruit. And He takes those away, the Father is the judge.
The Father is doing two divine works. He is judging false branches, cutting them off, and sending them to hell. That is drastic judgment by God on false believers who bear no fruit. And there were branches that bear fruit, and He prunes those so that they would bear more fruit. Yes, every Christian has fruit. What is fruit? Righteous attitudes, righteous desires, righteous virtues and righteous behaviors.
That is the manifestation of life, 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. James says, “Faith without works is dead,” it’s a useless claim. The only way you know faith is real, salvation is real, is by the evidence.
The way you know someone has been transformed and born again is because the fruit of righteousness is manifest in that life. It’s not perfection, but it’s a dominating direction. Look, the nation of Israel is seen in Romans 11 as a branch attached to God. But they were cut off because of unbelief and sin, and a new branch, the church, was grafted in. Given enough time, the truth will come out.
The Father comes along in our lives with a knife and He cuts sin. The best pruning is trouble. 2 Corinthians 12 says, “When I am weak then I am strong.” I would rather be content with afflictions, weakness, trials, because in my weakness God’s strength is perfected. James 1, “Count it all joy when you fall into various trials, because the testing of your faith produces patience which has a perfecting work.”
Another way to look at that is in Hebrews 12:6-11, “My son, do despise the chastening of the Lord, nor be discouraged when you are rebuked by Him, for those whom the Lord loves, He disciplines, and He scourges every son whom He received. 7 It is for discipline that you endure. God deals with you as with sons, for what son is there whom his father doesn’t discipline?”
“8 But if you are without chastening, of which all have become partakers, then you are illegitimate and not sons. 9 Furthermore, we have had human fathers who corrected us, and we paid them respect. Shall we not much more readily be in subjection to the Father of spirits and live? 10 For they indeed for a few days chastened us as seemed best to them, but He for our profit, that we may be partakers of His holiness.”
“11 Now no chastening seems to be joyful for the present, but painful; nevertheless, afterward it yields the peaceable fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.” More fruit, more righteousness is the product of divine discipline – trials, tribulation and trouble. The believer is to expect this to be fruitful. It is not the affliction itself that is the knife, it is the Word of God that is the knife.
Hebrews 4:12 says, “The Word of God is sharper than any two-edged sword, dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.” It’s a two-edged knife and it cuts every direction, the Word does, the truth of God. The Word convicts us. The Word cuts into our disrespect for God’s purposes. The Word cuts into our hostility. But later on we become more holy, Amen? Let us pray.