John 15:1-3

“ I am the true vine, and my Father is the vine-dresser. 2. Every branch in me which bears not fruit, he takes away; and every branch which bears fruit he prunes, that it may bear more fruit. 3. As for you, you are already clean because of the word which I have spoken to you. ”

The pronoun ἐγώ, I, placed at the beginning, and the epithet ἡ ἀληθινή, the real vine, lead us naturally to suppose that Jesus wishes to establish a contrast here between His person and any vine whatsoever which is not in His view the true vine. What outward circumstance leads Jesus to express Himself in this way? Those who hold that Jesus has not yet gone out of the room, or give up the attempt to resolve the question (de Wette), either have recourse to the use of the vine in the institution of the Holy Supper (Grotius, Meyer), or suppose that Jesus pointed the disciples to the shoots of a vine which projected into the room (Knapp, Tholuck), or even that He was thinking of the golden vine which adorned one of the gates of the temple (Jerome, Lampe; see Westcott). Hengstenberg, Weiss and Keil think that Jesus wishes to contrast His Church with Israel, which is so often represented under the figure of a vine, in the Old Testament (Isaiah 5:1 ff., Psalms 80:9 ff.).

But the continuation of the figure (branches, fruits, pruning, burning, etc.) shows that it is not a symbolic vine which occupies His thought. If we hold that when uttering the words of John 14:31, Jesus has really gone out from the room and the city, the explanation becomes very simple. On the way to Gethsemane, Jesus stops before a vine covered with branches; He looks upon His disciples grouped about Him, and finds in this plant the emblem of His relation to them. What significance has the objection of Weiss that any other plant might have served Him as a symbol? It was this plant which was there; and it offered Him points of agreement which no other presented to Him. Among all the plants, the vine has certainly a special dignity resulting from the nobleness of its sap and the excellence of its fruits; this is what explains the use which the Old Testament makes of it as a figure of Israel, the noblest of the nations.

The word vine includes here the stock and the branches, as the term ὁ χριστός, 1 Corinthians 12:12, designates Christ and the Church. The point of comparison between Christ and the vine is the organic union by which the life of the trunk becomes that of the branches. As the sap which resides in the branches is that which they derive from the vine, the life in the disciples will be that which they will draw from Jesus as glorified. God is compared to the vine- dresser because it is He who, by the sending of Jesus, has founded the Church, who possesses it and cultivates it, without by His dispensations, within by His Spirit.

Jesus means thereby to make them appreciate the value of this plant which God Himself has planted, and for which He, in such a personal way, has a care. What is said here does not preclude the fact that God accomplishes this work by the intermediate agency of Jesus as glorified. Only the figure does not allow this aspect of the truth to be noticed; for Jesus is here compared to the vine itself, and it is in the relation of His unity with His own that He appears in this parable. In the remarkable words of Ephesians 1:22, Paul has found the means of uniting this twofold relation: Jesus one with the Church; Jesus protecting and governing the Church.

The culture of the vine includes two principal operations: the purification of the vine and the purification of the branches. The first is that by which every sterile branch is cut off (the αἴρειν); the second, that by which the fruitful branches are pruned, that is to say, are freed from useless shoots, in order that the sap may be concentrated in the cluster which is forming (the καθαίρειν). As the question in this passage is only of the relation of Jesus to the members of His community, apparent or real, the first of these images cannot be applied, as Hengstenberg has applied them, to the rejection of unbelieving Israel. If an example is presented to the view of Jesus, it can only be that of Judas and of those disciples who, in ch. 6, had broken the bond which united them to Him. In any case, He is thinking of the future of His Church; He sees beforehand those professors of the Gospel, who, while being outwardly united to Him, will nevertheless live inwardly separated from Him, whether in consequence of a decree which will prevent them from being truly converted, or as the effect of their neglecting to sacrifice even to the uttermost their own life and to renew daily their union with Him.

᾿Εν ἐμοί, in me, may refer to the word branch: every branch in me, united with me by the profession of faith; or to the participle φέρον : which does not bear fruit in me. By fruit Jesus designates the production and development of the spiritual life, with all its normal manifestations, either in ourselves or in others, through the strength of Christ living in us (Romans 1:13). It may happen that the believer, after a time of fervor, may allow his own life to regain the ascendancy over that which he derives from the Lord, and that the latter may be about to perish. Then the pruning- knife of the vine-dresser intervenes. After having for a time tolerated this dead member in the Church, God, by a temptation to which He subjects him, or by an outward dispensation which separates him from the surroundings in which he was, or by the stroke of death, severs him externally from the community of believers with which only an apparent bond connected him.

The second operation, the purification of the branches, has in view the true believers who really live in Christ through the Holy Spirit. It is intended to cut off all the shoots of their own life which may manifest themselves in them, and which would paralyze the power of the Spirit. John 15:3 will show that it is the divine word which properly has the mission of pruning these shoots; but if this means is not employed or is not sufficient, God makes use of other more grievous instruments, which, like a well-sharpened pruning knife, cut to the quick the natural affections and the carnal will (1 Corinthians 11:30-32). In this way the whole being of the disciple is finally devoted to the production of the divine fruit.

In John 15:3 Jesus declares to the disciples that He ranks them in the second class of branches, and no longer in the first. The work of pruning alone concerns them, and even, in principle, it is already accomplished in them. By receiving Christ and the word which He has declared to them, “they have given the death-blow to the old man” (Gess), even though he has yet to die. By the moral education which they have received from Jesus, the principle of perfect purity has been deposited in them. For the word of Christ is the instrument of a daily judgment, of a constant and austere discipline which God exercises on the soul which remains attached to Him. On this part attributed to the word of Jesus, comp. John 5:24; John 8:31-32; John 12:48. Διά (with the accusative) not by, but because of. ῾Υμεῖς : you, in opposition to all those who are not yet in this privileged position.

From the nature of this position (in me) Jesus infers the duty of the position: to abide in Him.