“I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener…Remain in me, as I also remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me. “I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.”
John 15:1, 4-5 NIV
Fruit! What is the purpose of a vine? Much has been preached and taught about the union between the vine and the branches as the analogy of the union between Jesus and His followers…but what about the fruit? After all, viticulturists only grow vines for their grapes.
What would the world do without grapes? Apart from delicious fruit, a world without wine would be unthinkable. Jesus’ first miracle recorded in John’s gospel happened because the wine vats were empty! Wine forms the centrepiece of the Lord’s Supper. There is no other fruit that can substitute for wine with all its symbolism.
So, Jesus did not say “I am the apple tree and you are the branches…” or something like that. The vine also forms an important part of Old Testament imagery for Israel. For example, God saw Israel as the choice vine He had planted and tended, only for them only to bear inferior grapes.
“I will sing for the one I love a song about his vineyard: My loved one had a vineyard on a fertile hillside. He dug it up and cleared it of stones and planted it with the choicest vines. He built a watchtower in it and cut out a winepress as well. Then he looked for a crop of good grapes, but it yielded only bad fruit.”
Isaiah 5:1-2 NIV
Jesus picked up on the picture, significantly to teach the men, who would form the nucleus of this “vine” of the New Covenant, a very significant lesson. Their union with Him would guarantee that the fruit they bore would reflect the nature of the vine…Jesus Himself.
How could this happen?
First, be sure to be in the true vine.
The original vine, Israel, failed. Membership of the nation of Israel, however much they prided themselves on being the covenant people of God, could never guarantee that the fruit of that union would be good. Their history was nothing but rebellion and failure.
“It is not as though God’s word had failed. For not all who are descended from Israel are Israel. Nor because they are his descendants are they all Abraham’s children. On the contrary, “It is through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned.” In other words, it is not the children by physical descent who are God’s children, but it is the children of the promise who are regarded as Abraham’s offspring.”
Romans 9:6-8 NIV
There is an exclusive section of Abraham’s offspring that are the fruit of faith…a union established with Jesus, the real vine, brought about by the power of God. This is God’s “vine” towards which all His energies are concentrated.
Second, the vine exists for one purpose…to bear fruit. Everything else about the vine will go up in flames when the vine no longer bears fruit. Jesus said that every branch that bears no fruit will be pruned from the vine. There is no place in the vine for useless branches.
Fruit is the natural extension of the vine. Jesus said that a tree is identified by its fruit. A tree cannot say, “I am an apple tree,” when the fruit is obviously lemons. So too with the fruit that grows on our “tree”!
Third, the fruit a tree bears is not an end in itself. Inside the fruit is hidden its most precious part…the seeds that reproduce its kind. The fruit’s purpose is to nourish the seed in the ground until the environment in which the seed grows takes over the task.
Now, let’s return to Jesus’s teaching.
A branch can only produce fruit when it is connected to the vine. The Father, the gardener, carefully tends the vine for one purpose…fruit…because fruit has in it the seeds that guarantee the vine’s continued reproduction, of the same quality as the vine that produced the fruit. Seedless grapes, for example, are pleasant to eat but have no further value for the gardener.
What is Jesus intending to convey? Unbroken union between the branch and the vine is the only way to bear fruit. The fruit must be of the same quality as the vine to reproduce itself faithfully. The Father’s pleasure is in the fruit since the fruit guarantees the continuation of the vine.
What is the nature of the “fruit” that pleases the Father?
To be continued…