John 15:1-11 The true vine

John 15:1-11 Jesus now creates another metaphoric self-revelation: "I am the true vine." We need to see the whole picture. Humankind is part of a vine planted in the vineyard of the earth. The true vine is Jesus, and His disciples are branches. The Father is the vintner. He is raising fruit to make wine. He is a good farmer, and tends His crops. The Father's desire is that His vineyard bear much fruit. He plans to make excellent wine. Jesus draws on the parables relating to vineyards in Matthew 20:1-16, and Matthew 21:33-44 and, before them, Isaiah's parable (Isaiah 5:1-2). But here He elaborates on a new application of this metaphor. His disciples are the branches of the vine from which God expects fruit. 

       Jesus gives an explanation of how this fruit comes to be. It comes from abiding in Jesus. The Father prunes the vine to remove unfruitful branches.  The rest of the branches become even more fruitful when the deadwood has been removed. The Father will be glorified when Jesus' disciples bear fruit.

        Jesus concludes this metaphor by tying into a single bundle obedience, love, and joy. Keeping His commandments and abiding in His love are one and the same thing. The metaphor of the vine illustrates this. Moisture and essential nutrients flow through the vine to the branches. Once they are broken off this flow ceases and they die. Just so, we must abide in Jesus to be connected to the source and pathway for the live of the Father. When the tree sap of God's presence flows through us, it produces all of the fruit that God desires, and keeping His commandments becomes a natural lifestyle.

       We might stop before going on to ask why the modern church sees so little of this. We see little love between fellow believers in different denominations, and great church splits give evidence of this lack even within a single congregation or fellowship. And we see little obedience to the commands of Christ in the modern church, but rather theological excuses for why the Sermon on the Mount lifestyle must wait for eternity. I think the most blame can be laid at the feet of our lifestyle. We live like the world. More specifically, we love the intellectual and emotional approach that the world lives by more than we love The Lord and the spiritual kingdom that He is bringing. The Pharisees made many of the same mistakes. Even if we reject adulation by the world (which we would never get anyway) we want to feel we have justified our faith in their eyes. And that is the problem. If we are living for an audience of One, our eye will be single. Otherwise, not so much.

        The description of being discarded is not so much a threat of being burned in fire, as simply getting rid of dead things so they don't rot. Whether this is purging us of aspects that are dead by God's reckoning, or of whole personhood, is a false dichotomy. In the end, when the Father removes the ungodly aspects of our life, we will only have as what is left, what is born of our connection to Jesus. If that is the null set, well, there won't be anything left.

       Jesus promises us a life full of love, joy, and holiness, as a complete package. But to receive it, we have to be connected to the vine of Him, and no other. Bearing fruit, receiving answers to our requests - these are natural consequences of this connection.