Joh 15:1-5 | 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 15:1-5

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.

Pruning and Bearing Fruit

The believers are compared to branches on a vine. The Father is presented as the Vinedresser Who takes the greatest care of the branches to ensure that they bear as much fruit as possible. He prunes and takes away everything that abuses the juices of the vine at the expense of the good fruit.

There may be things in the life of a believer that prevent his life from bearing full fruit for the Father. It doesn’t always have to be explicit evil, but anything in our lives that reduce the quality of the fruit. Then the Father sets to work to get rid of everything that prevents from bearing the full fruit. What absorbs our life force and does not produce fruit, must be removed. He will do everything to increase and improve the fruit.

If branches do not bear fruit, it means that they have no life connection with the vine. Their connection is a pseudo connection. Judas was such a branch. His connection with Christ as the vine has been a pseudo connection.

The fruit the Father wants to cultivate within us is the fruit of the Spirit (Gal 5:22). This fruit of the Spirit is the total mind of Christ. If this is present, it will certainly come to expression in deeds. The Lord speaks to His disciples as believers who are already clean. The cleansing by the Father only happens to those who are already clean. That cleanness has come about through the word that the Lord Jesus spoke to them and that worked in their hearts and consciences.

When the Lord speaks about this cleanness, Judas is no longer present and therefore He does not have to say “but not all” (Jn 13:10). The Word has cleansed their ways, it has judged their worldly thoughts, it has exposed their carnal desires. It has led them to self-judgment, repentance and faith. However, we not only need the Word to come to repentance and stand clean before God. We need the cleansing power of the water of God’s Word over and over again. Thus the Father cleanses us. He reveals through His Word what is to be removed from us.

To undergo the cleansing of the Father through the Word it is necessary to abide in Christ. When the Lord says “abide in Me”, this is a command that can only be fulfilled by those who have life. To ‘abide in Him’ we do by maintaining a living connection with Him. The result of this will be that He abides in us. Not that someone who has repented and received Christ as His life can lose Him again. What matters is that the believer is aware that he is in Him and also that he knows that Christ as the life is in Him.

There is an intimate connection between the believer and Christ. Without it, there can be no fruit. No disciple has life in himself. Consequently, no disciple is able to bring forth fruit himself. It is only possible to produce fruit if there is a living connection with the vine. Only by abiding in Him there can be fruit.

Once again the Lord Jesus points to Himself as the vine and tells His disciples that they are the branches. It is important that we keep an eye on the correct relation. Only by abiding in Him and by His abiding in the believer there will be much fruit. Bearing fruit entirely depends on abiding in Him. Apart from Him it is impossible to bear fruit. Apart from Him, separated from Him, it is impossible to do anything to the honor of the Father. We totally depend on Him for all things.