The True Vine

“I am the true vine, and My Father is the vinedresser. Every branch in Me that does not bear fruit, He takes away; and every branch that bears fruit, He prunes it so that it may bear more fruit. You are already clean because of the word which I have spoken to you. Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, so neither can you unless you abide in Me. I am the vine, you are the branches; he who abides in Me and I in him, he bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing. If anyone does not abide in Me, he is thrown away as a branch and dries up; and they gather them, and cast them into the fire and they are burned. If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit, and so ^[prove to be My disciples. Just as the Father has loved Me, I have also loved you; abide in My love. If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love; just as I have kept My Father’s commandments and abide in His love. These things I have spoken to you so that My joy may be in you, and that your joy may be made full. John 15:1-11 

“I AM”…Jesus is the genuine vine. The source of life. We cannot produce anything from ourselves alone.

“takes away”…non-productive, neutralized branches are cut off. There is no fruit there, and they hinder the production of the other branches. This is God’s discipline of His own. Divine discipline of believers includes being removed from one’s position or removed from this life, because of disobedience, arrogance or self-sufficiency, as in the case of King Saul. I Cronicles 10:13-14 Saul died because he was unfaithful to the Lord; he did not keep the word of the Lord and even consulted a medium for guidance, and did not inquire of the Lord. So the Lord put him to death and turned the kingdom over to David son of Jesse.

 Prune: to remove (dead or superfluous twigs, branches, etc) from (a tree, shrub, etc), esp by cutting off.

The only way for a believer to produce divine good is to abide in (remain in close fellowship with, identify with, be occupied with, totally depend on) Christ. The ones who abide in Christ bear much fruit. Those who don’t abide in Him lose their spiritual vitality and have no testimony for the Lord.

The nation Israel had been the degenerate vine; religion masquerading as reality. Fickle. Traitorous. Idolatrous. This was the pronouncement of the prophets. Isaiah 5:2,4,6:

Then He expected it to produce good grapes,
But it produced only worthless ones.
What more was there to do for My vineyard that I have not done in it?
Why, when I expected it to produce good grapes did it produce worthless ones?
“I will lay it waste;
It will not be pruned or hoed,
But briars and thorns will come up.
I will also charge the clouds to rain no rain on it.”

Jeremiah 2:21
“Yet I planted you a choice vine,
A completely faithful seed.
How then have you turned yourself before Me
Into the degenerate shoots of a foreign vine?

We have the perfect source of life in the dispensation of the Church. It is the Lord of life, Himself. The way to produce good fruit is not to hustle and compete and count points, but to simply remain as close as possible to Him in our daily life. We must saturate our souls with His Word. Then we are functioning from the mind of Christ. When He is in everything we think and do, what we produce will be divine good…good fruit, more fruit, MUCH fruit. Then, when our work is evaluated, our divine production will remain; the human good produced by the neutralized branches will be burned.

Conclusion: believers who are not bearing fruit will be purged, so as not to hinder the production of the vine. Believers who are producing fruit will be pruned (trimmed, groomed, honed, trained, shaped up) to enable the production of more abundant and even better fruit. Often, when it seems there are problems and irritations in our lives and we whine to God to remove those distractions, He will eventually make it clear that the thing, situation, person who is distracting you is His pruning tool, forcing you to focus more clearly on His Word and depend more completely on His loving care. By pruning we learn obedience, humility and unconditional love. That combination produces good fruit.

Verse 11: He taught us this so that we could share in His joy, and that the very happiness of God in us would be complete.