Joh 15:1 | KingComments | STEP | While the Lord Jesus and His disciples have left the upper room and are on their way to the Mount of Olives, He continues teaching His disciples. In this chapter He speaks with them about what they will be when He will have gone away from them. It is noteworthy that in this chapter He is not interrupted by any of His disciples with a question or remark, as is the case in the previous and next chapter. He tells them that they will be a new testimony for God on earth. To illustrate His teaching, He uses the picture of the vine. The picture of the vine is applied to Israel in the Old Testament ( ; ). Yahweh removed a vine from Egypt and planted it ( ). This is Israel according to the flesh, but that is not the true vine. Israel did not produce the fruit God expected. Instead, the people have produced stinking fruit and God has had to surrender it to judgment. The Lord Jesus takes the place of Israel as a vine. He re-starts the history of Israel, but now with fruit for God and with blessing for others. He is the true, the genuine vine. He did bring God the fruit that God could have expected from Israel. Christ is the source of all true fruit for God on earth. He is not just a vine that bears fruit, while the other vines do not bear fruit. He is the true vine from which every branch can bear fruit. The Father – and not Yahweh , or the Almighty – is the Vinedresser. This presumes a relationship that is beyond the one Israel knows. God is in a covenant relationship with Israel as a people. That is a quite different relationship than the one in which the believers relate to Him who form the family of God after the resurrection of the Lord Jesus ( ). They may know Him as Father because the Lord Jesus is their life and therefore they are children of God.

‏ John 15:1

The True Vine

While the Lord Jesus and His disciples have left the upper room and are on their way to the Mount of Olives, He continues teaching His disciples. In this chapter He speaks with them about what they will be when He will have gone away from them. It is noteworthy that in this chapter He is not interrupted by any of His disciples with a question or remark, as is the case in the previous and next chapter. He tells them that they will be a new testimony for God on earth.

To illustrate His teaching, He uses the picture of the vine. The picture of the vine is applied to Israel in the Old Testament (Isa 5:1-7; Eze 15:1-8). Yahweh removed a vine from Egypt and planted it (Psa 80:8). This is Israel according to the flesh, but that is not the true vine. Israel did not produce the fruit God expected. Instead, the people have produced stinking fruit and God has had to surrender it to judgment.

The Lord Jesus takes the place of Israel as a vine. He re-starts the history of Israel, but now with fruit for God and with blessing for others. He is the true, the genuine vine. He did bring God the fruit that God could have expected from Israel. Christ is the source of all true fruit for God on earth. He is not just a vine that bears fruit, while the other vines do not bear fruit. He is the true vine from which every branch can bear fruit.

The Father – and not Yahweh, or the Almighty – is the Vinedresser. This presumes a relationship that is beyond the one Israel knows. God is in a covenant relationship with Israel as a people. That is a quite different relationship than the one in which the believers relate to Him who form the family of God after the resurrection of the Lord Jesus (Jn 20:17 ; 22). They may know Him as Father because the Lord Jesus is their life and therefore they are children of God.