John 15 -observation and interpretation

Note: I am indebted to many teachers over the years, and this exposition leans heavily on their insights.

Resources certainly make all the difference in the world- what is behind you as your source as you seek to live life in this world is very important. One of the Old Testament names for God was Yahweh Yireh- “I AM provides”. It speaks of the total sufficiency of God. We all certainly derive benefits from our faith in Him. In the real world every time you get benefits there are responsibilities attached to them. This passage will clarify what it is that these benefits make us responsible for. The world likes to live as though they only have priviledges and no responsibilities. This passage keeps everything in balance while acknowledging our source.

Someone said that “living the Christian life is not difficult, it is impossible”. When you begin to ask what Christ asks of us in the scriptures, in purely human terms, that is true! But He has not left us to live alone on purely human terms! In a real sense, Christians can not honestly say, “I’m only human” if Christ lives in you. He has placed at our disposal all of the resources that belong to Him as God. With man it is impossible but with Christ all things are possible.

The greatest story is that God was not only with us at a historical in time, but also on an ongoing basis continually providing in the Lord Jesus, who lives in us, who never leaves or forsakes us.

This brings us to the question: Do we all want to live significant lives?

I think we all want to maximize our talents. We want our lives to somehow make a difference in the sphere that God has placed us in. We don’t want to dribble away our lives and let slip away like sand the significant opportunities God has given us. We do not want to see them dispersed and wasted. The scriptures have much to say about a significant life. The Bible uses the term “fruitful” and talks about living a “fruitful” life.

In John 15 we want to think of why Emmanuel, “God With Us” is not only a great truth of Christmas, but is also the basis of life for the believer.

John 15 is one of the great chapters in all of scripture because it talks about the resources and relationships that make a fruitful life possible. There are three of them in this chapter. First of all Jesus tells us about our relationship to HIM: that’s verses 1-11. Secondly he talks about our relationship to the church, to our fellow believers, the people of God- that’s verses 12-17. Then in verses 17-27 he tells us of our relationship to a hostile world.

Our relationship to Christ is abiding. Our relationship to fellow believers is loving. And our relationship to the world is witnessing. All this finds its origin in the first six verses of this chapter. As we approach our training as disciples, we need to have this passage embroidered on our minds in a very significant place so that we can appreciate what it is the Lord Jesus came to give us by the way of the LIFE that is ours through His coming.

We will focus in this teaching on verses 1-6 and the idea of abiding- or remaining in Christ. Quite literally the original says “Remain in me and I in you”. We are not quite sure exactly how that is supposed to be translated- it could be as it is in the NIV or it could be something like “remain in me and let me remain in you”. I am inclined to understand it in this second way- I will elaborate on this later.

In the last phrase of chapter 14 the Lord had said to his disciples in that upper room “Come now, let’s leave”, and the most natural reading of that is that they had gathered their things and had made their way out into the streets of Jerusalem. I suppose it really doesn’t matter if they were still in the room, or not, but the sense of the discourse indicates a call to action here. If indeed they left, at some on that journey the Lord Jesus stopped. Perhaps something caught his attention- maybe it was something on his heart. He begins to use this illustration of the vine and the branches. It is one that the disciples would immediately recognize.

When we speak of the eagle, we immediately think of the USA- it is a symbol of our nation. The lion is a symbol of Great Britain. The bear is a symbol of Russia, or at least it used to be. Those are all national symbols- and for Israel the symbol was the vine. If you were to look at a coin from the time of the Macabbees you would see a vine as a symbol of the nation Israel.

Perhaps Jesus stopped as they passed the temple, because over the main gate of the temple there was carved a hundred foot long vine, encrusted with gold and jewels that Herod had placed there as symbol of the nation Israel. Back in Psalm 80 God had spoken of the nation Israel as His vine, and in Isaiah 5 there is a description of God as a vinedresser who has cared for the vine and is looking for fruit. Over and over in the O.T. Israel is God’s vine. We need to understand that this is a part of the world in which vines and grapes, all the way through the Mediterranean, are very much a part of ordinary life. The vine was a symbol of great joy, fruitfulness and blessing. Today the symbol of the Tourist’s Association of Israel is two men carrying a huge cluster of grapes- representing Caleb and Joshua at Kadesh Barnea. The idea of was of fruitfulness and blessing, where a man could experience and taste of the joy of that which was identified with the promised land. “That’s what I want Israel to be to the world: a source of blessing to nations and to myself”, God said. But every time that illustration is used in the Old Testament it is with a sense that they had failed, fallen short. In Isaiah 5 He says- “what could anyone do more for a vineyard than I have done? I looked for fruit and there was none- wild grapes, sour grapes, worthless grapes- I look for the fruit of righteousness and justice and there was only injustice and unrighteousness.” All of that is in the background as we come to verse 1.

Here the Lord announces the ESSENTIAL relationship between His people and Himself. This is the seventh time he has said “I AM”- here in some ways is the most intimate and personal of them all. “I AM the TRUE vine.” The word “true” there is Jesus’s way of saying, “You know Israel has failed! What God wanted to see happen in the people of Israel has not come to place. But I am the real thing, the genuine vine. There will be no worthless grapes in me-- what God wants to accomplish in the world- that is going to come through me! I AM the vine!”

As the disciples thought about that, they must have had marvelous pictures of the Lord in their heads. The first one might have been - “I am the Good shepherd and you are the sheep”. They could identify with that, but here, there was a much closer connection between a vine and branches than a shepherd and sheep. There is an organic oneness, a sharing of life, a knitting together- that is the first part of this essential relationship described for us in verse one.

The second part of the relationship is also given in verse 1- “and my Father is the gardener” - the greek is literally “worker of the earth”. The worker is entitled to the fruits- this speaks of His right as the Creator. God has a purpose : eight times over in this passage the word fruit is used. God’s purpose is to see fruit manifest itself in the world through what He is doing. He wants fruit, more fruit, much fruit- it rings out over and over. GOD is looking for FRUIT! He is like a gardener caring intimately and carefully for the vine so there might be fruit.

If the vine is Christ and the Father is the Gardener, the third part is the branches. The word for branches here actually means “tendril” which is the tender shoot, and might represent the young Christian. No vineyard keeper plants a vineyard without the intention of getting grapes out of it! The wood of a vine is not worth anything except fruitfulness- it is not useful for anything else- it’s too soft, too narrow, you can’t make any thing except maybe wreaths out of it- you cannot build furniture or buildings of it. It either produces fruit or it is of no value. So God is after fruitfulness. It’s as if God says “I want a way of displaying my character and glory to the world in millions of people- I am the gardener”.

A vine requires a great deal of care. My father was a great gardener. His son did not receive that gene- don’t get me wrong- I can go through the motions, I know how to garden, but I am not a gardener. My wife on the other hand loves to see things grow. She stops short of talking to her plants and flowers (at least when I am around), but she lovingly looks after them and gets flower sitters to look in when she has to be gone a while. She has begun to trust me to water them as well.

My father had an orchard and a good friend who was a state champion orchardist (is that a word?) They would visit for hours about best practices for growing champion fruit. It is a year round effort in pruning and spraying and caring and diligently seeking to meet the needs of those trees. In the same way our heavenly father is a gardener, promoting everything he can and focusing His energies to your producing and bearing fruit for Jesus Christ in this world!

This section creates a little bit of a problem- I don’t want to dwell on it too long but I think we are forced to ask the question: Are the branches in verse 2a and verse 6 the same ones? Verse 2a is generally translated something like- he cuts off every branch in me that does not bear fruit. There are two kinds of branches mentioned in the passage- the fruitless and the fruitful branches. Are the branches that are fruitless treated with great ruthlessness? In verse 6 He cuts them off, takes them away, gathers them and burns them in the fire. The question is, who is he talking about?

There are really four answers that have been given to that question. I will explore them briefly here.

The first says the branches in verse 2 are true believers who lose their salvation by sin that comes into their life and they are cut off because of something they do that offends God Himself. If this was the only passage in the Bible that speaks to the issue, we might understand it that way, but it contradicts so many things the Lord Jesus has said that this cannot be the way we are to understand this.

Another suggestion is that these branches are TRUE believers and the Lord isn’t talking about salvation, he is talking about service. When he says ”every branch in me he takes away” or “every branch that doesn’t bear fruit” he is talking about the loss of rewards. He is talking about the discipline God can bring and we know that in 1 Corinthians 11 it can even bring the discipline of death upon the believer. While that fits with many things we know from scripture, the main problem with that view is in verse 6 which seems stronger than that. That sounds like more than reward is lost- it sounds more like eternal judgment . And besides, fruit in this passage seems to be the obvious evidence of life- of a connection with Christ.

A third way of understanding this is not without its problems either, the most obvious of which is in verse 2, which indicates these are people who are professing believers. The problem is it says “every branch in me” and those people in verse 6 are not really “in Christ” in the fullest sense of the term. Judas, for all intents and purposes appeared to be. If you would have looked at this group the night before you would have sworn that Judas was “in Christ”! This view understands the passage to speak of professing believers, because of the absence of fruit in their life are evidenced not to really belong to Jesus Christ at all. These are the ones to whom the Lord says “I never knew you!”

I must tell you however, that there is another way, equally Biblical, that the Greek seems to me to support. The greek word airo is used 22 times in John and in a couple of different ways. It can mean take up or remove, lift up, or execute (kill). In Chapter 11 John uses the same word two ways in the one verse

John 11:41 And so they removed the stone.

And Jesus raised His eyes, and said, "Father, I thank

Thee that Thou heardest Me.

Removed and raised are both the same greek word here.. In John 8:59 “therefore they picked up stones to throw at him”- they did not take the stones away or remove them- the meaning here is clearly “lifted up”. Let’s look at it this way- “if a tendril does not bear fruit, he lifts it up”- I suggest that this interpretation also makes sense. If a vinedresser would see a tendril dragging in the mud, he would tie up the shoot to the main part of the vine so it can grow and produce fruit. To nurture and encourage fits the picture of viticulture as well. If this is a true believer that is not bearing fruit, rather than a false believer, the passage still fits the context of the sequential progression of levels of fruitbearing that is evidenced: bearing no fruit, bearing fruit, bearing more fruit, bearing MUCH fruit. This would also mean the branches spoken of in verse 6 are different than the ones in verse 2 and become an issue in themselves that perhaps on of the other interpretations cover.

Either way, the ultimate evidence is whether the life of Jesus Christ is in me, making itself known THROUGH me.

The then is that fruitless believers are quite useless. Fruitless believers frustrate God’s purpose in the world. This is the essential relationship: Jesus is the vine, the Father is the gardener, and professing and possessing believers are the branches. Fruitless branches are ultimately removed, no matter what their external connection to Christ is, no matter how they cry “Lord, Lord!”- if they do not truly know Jesus Christ they will be separated from Him forever!

So- what does it mean to bear fruit? Obviously that is the central issue through this passage. We are going to be evaluated by whether or not we bear fruit. God is going to work in our life to make us even more fruitful, and then later it talks in verse 5 about bearing MUCH fruit. Let me suggest four things about fruitful people. There is obviously a scale, a progression here, but at least four things are true.

1. Fruitful people are Christlike people. Fruit is by its nature a product of the life of the vine. It is the natural expression, the overflow of life- we know a vine is alive if it produces fruit. It produces what is natural for it to produce- you do not look for apples on a vine, you look for grapes on a vine; that is the true expression of its life.

You cannot take the living part of a vine and graft it into a telephone pole, because there is no life in the source. Conversely you can take a broom handle and graft it into a vine and even though the vine is fruitful, there will be no fruit on that particular stick! It is a matter and relationship of life. The Lord Jesus is trying to tell us through this illustration that when we are truly joined to him the life of Christ will inevitably and naturally express itself in the life of the believer. The vine is Christ and so the character of Christ will manifest itself in a Christian’s life.

A vine is not like a Christmas tree- they can be very attractive with all the artificial decorations. They bear no resemblance to what the nature of that tree is itself, even if it is a real tree. The fruit Christ produces in our life is not the artificial decoration of our own good works, our religiosity- it is the authentic presence of the character of Jesus Christ! It is who He is being demonstrated in who I am becoming. The fruit of Jesus in my life transforms me and conforms me to His likeness. My attitudes are changed so that more and more I am growing into His likeness. In the Old Testament the fruit God looked for in Israel is what He did not see- righteousness and justice. If we are abiding in the vine, people will see that, because that is what He is like. In our character, and in our conduct, the likeness of the Lord Jesus is to be revealed in our life!

2. Fruitful people are useful people. Fruit is functional in purpose. It exists for the benefit and nourishment not so much for the vine, but for others. One becomes a blessing to others, for them to feast on. Fruitful people do not only display the character of Christ in life for themselves, they display it first of all so they can be useful to others. Their life begins to be a source of blessing first to other Christians so they grow and mature and also to other people so they too are drawn to the vine to be grafted in. Others are fed and nurtured, as they are shown the life of Christ. So fruit serves those who do not know the Lord too- they are drawn to taste Him and see that He is good. In v. 16 of this chapter it is clear that fruit has an impact on others who do not know Christ! We are commissioned to go and bear fruit and quite clearly this includes evangelism.

But fruit is not only useful for people- you need to see the big picture here. Fruit brings glory not just to the vine, but to the Gardener. When you look at a fruitful tree you begin to ask- who is the person who grew that? Who has caused that product to be existent in the world? That is part of what the Father is after. You are the means he has chosen to bear fruit in the world, to the praise of His Glory! We are to be displaying his character. Note this: You can boast about works, but you cannot boast about fruit! No apple branch can sit there and say “I am really producing some high powered apples!”

My grandfather used to have a beautiful grape arbor- I used to go to his house and enjoy grapes- but my memory is not just of the grapes, but of my Grandfather Pius. God’s purpose is that when our lives are fruitful , glory comes to Him! The fruit is the evidence of its source of life.

3. Fruitful people are growing people. We know fruit isn’t instantaneous- it doesn’t appear overnight. It has a process of growing and maturing. It comes over the course of time- we might want to hurry the process though we know that’s futile. We can remove barriers to growth. God is growing fruit in our lives and increasing our fruitfulness. If you walk in the light, you will grow more and more effective as time passes in manifesting His character. It strikes me that as we are nourished and pruned, as we are fed by the Word and the water of life, we grow into fullness of what we are in Christ.

4. Fruitful people are not only Christlike, useful and growing, they are also unique!

No branch on a vine is exactly like another- it is fruitful in its own unique degree, and thios is important to remember. A grapevine is like an assembly line-the branches don’t always in the same way, or perform the same function, but they work for a common product. In the same way when we are abiding in the vine, allowing Jesus to bear fruit through us we do not become less individual, we become MORE individual! We bear our fruit in the world in an unique way, in the place where God has put us. Do not look to other branches with envy or pride. Some of us are branches that are sheltered and enormously fruitful. Some are out there in public and everyone can see the fruit and others are immediately drawn to them. Some are in low places, and some are in high places. Note that the low places are nearer the source. Perhaps that is why God requires humility of His branches. The issue is not how we bear fruit or where that is displayed. God has His own unique place for us! The exciting thing is that bearing fruit is the glory of what we are supposed to be! No one is more uniquely what God wants him to be than when he is joined to Jesus Christ, the TRUE vine and the life of Christ is being manifested in him.

To change the analogy- your kitchen is never quite the same as when all the power is turned off. You can look at a bunch of kitchen appliances and you line them up and they look a little bit different but it is only when the power is on and surging through them that their true uniqueness becomes demonstrated. It is much the same way when we are plugged into the vine that is when the uniqueness of the life of Christ within us is displayed to the world. So that leads us to the central question: what is the process of spiritual fruitfulness? We have seen the product- but what is the process in our life?-There are two things that are evident from the passage-

1. Fruit is the product of abiding. Eleven times in v. 1-11 we are called to remain, to abide- the idea is quite clear- it is not so much position as it is condition- it is by this continued consistent relationship that we find the only way of fruitfulness. Intermittent participation in the vine life is impossible- you can’t take a week off and then decide you will plug back in. It is a living relationship that has to be continued and sustained; continued reliance on the vine is absolutely indispensable. He nails that down for us in verse 4. It is an imperative, a command- “remain in me”! No branch can bear fruit of itself. It must remain in the vine. That is the most obvious thing- this is our Declaration of Dependence- we cannot bear fruit for one instance. v. 5 “Apart from me you can do nothing”. The amazing thing is that in many ways that is not true- I can teach, minister, get involved in service and not be abiding- so what He is saying is that nothing that is truly spiritual and fruitful comes apart from Him. All the good deeds, all the vain service is like filthy rags without Him, Christ says. I need to abide- verse 4 says it as clearly as possible.

The term abide or remain is used for two ideas- one is faith. In chapter 6 :56 of John, it is the definition of a Christian - one who is eating and is drinking of Him- it is he who abides- to trust in, adhere to and rely on Christ is what it means to believe. Reliance is implied, moment by moment- trusting Him not only to get into the vine but for my ongoing life as I live day to day. We abide by faith and faith is demonstrated by obedience. In verse 7 “If you abide in me and my words remain in you” (obeying them) in v. 11, if you obey you will abide. Abide and obey. These are like sides of a coin: Reliance in Christ and demonstrating that faith by my life of obedience to Him.

At the same time, I must be actively responsible by keeping my fellowship with Christ active and alive- “Abide in me, believers.” He doesn’t just say the second part, let me abide in you. “Discipline your life- commit to obeying my word, walking by faith”. The other side of that is “Let me abide in you. Live trustingly, dependently, reliantly. If you do not begin to live depending on my person and my presence and my power, you will not know what it is to have my life in you working itself out and revealing itself!”

So we must aggressively maintain the relationship. Recognize that the life and source and strength comes from Christ- fruit is the product of abiding. Fruit is also the product of pruning. We will come back to this in the future, but let me touch upon it now. This passage has meant such an enormous amount to me on my own journey.

He says “every branch that does bear fruit, He prunes so it will be even more fruitful.”

When you are pruning something there are several things you can do. One way in which you prune a branch is to pinch the growth tip so it won’t grow too fast. Or you begin to thin and you take off some of the growth that is perfectly appropriate, so you are dispersing the resources, and so you begin to inhibit the growth- so it will grow not faster, but stronger. Another part of pruning is to take the little suckers that grow and break them off because they are distractions from the strength. These suckers also are the place where dirt and parasites tend to gather.

These all have parallels in the ways the Father works in our life. He removes some things, he restrains some things, he strengthens some things-and some things he cleans out. Pruning is not about sin necessarily- but sometimes it is. Sometimes the Father takes the knife to the sin that is there. Sometimes there is just too much busyness there and he takes the knife and cuts back some of the good things that are going in too many directions. Too many sucker shoots may be draining our resources. Sometimes he takes the knife because he wants to drive the strength into one area. We can flourish abundantly in one area and still see our fruit diminish. The concern of the master gardener is to strengthen the life so more and better fruit is borne. In verse 3 the tool the Lord Jesus says he uses is the Word of God.

In verse 3 You cannot tell it in the English text but the greek word he literally uses is the same as for the word “cleanses.” kaqairw (where we get the word catharsis) or purge, expiate. It is identical to the one translated prunes in one verse and cleanses in the other. You will see the play on words in the next verse- “you are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you”. The Lord says you have already had the pruning that comes from the scriptures. Then there is the experiences of life, which form the discipline of God to work in our life. The writer of Hebrews says in 12:11

“All discipline for the moment seems not to be

joyful, but sorrowful; yet to those who have

been trained by it, afterwards it yields the

peaceful fruit of righteousness.”

So God says “I will take the knife to your life, believer - but my purposes are never destructive, it is always designed for you to be able to bear more fruit.”

Some of you have seen some things that have been pruned- it is a ruthless looking experience. You might see the results after somebody who really knows how to prune something and ask- why did you do that? You’ve killed it! Often the more you know about the plant, the more you are able to cut back ruthlessly, because you know what is really going to strengthen it. God is saying “I am committed to you bearing more fruit and one part of it is- I am going to prune you”.

Some of you may be feeling like you are going through a time where you are being cut back and cut back until you think you will die. God has used the end of v. 2 in my life to encourage me. I am grateful that at times in my life I have seen fruit. I have been through times where I thought , Lord you are going for the roots! It is no fun to feel that- yet the most painful experiences of my life have brought the most fruit. The thing to hold on to is - “Lord if it hurts this much, it is going to produce fruit for You- and you are not out to destroy me- the pruning knife is the sign of your promise!”. At times you might think that it is all turning to ashes- go back to this promise in those times. God is not in the business of destroying the branches that have been fruitful, He wants to increase the fruitfulness- do not forget the purpose and this promise.

We want to live significant, fruitful lives, and the Father is telling us that apart from Christ we produce nothing and sometimes what looks like growth is like the wild growth of spring that needs to be cut back. More fruit is replaced with much fruit!.

Repeat v. 5 to yourself again and meditate on it.

If you are in the pruner’s hands- be encouraged- you may feel it in the realm of economic, ministerial, or relational areas. The knife is the sign of love, not neglect. It you want to live a fruitful life- begin to reflect to see what is your contact like- is the Word working in your life?- Remember God is not after decorations.

One of life’s most embarrassing moments- My little nephew once saw this beautiful bowl of apples on the cabinet. He grabbed one and bit into it- only to find to his (and his Dad’s) embarrassment that it was made of wax. Artificial fruit looks impressive but it doesn’t satisfy anybody’s appetite- we need to ask ourselves “Is this fruit I see in my life artificial fruit or is this the fruit of Christ?”