The True Vine

“The True Vine”

John 15:1-8

Jesus and His Disciples are about to leave the Upper Room where Jesus had just washed the feet of His Disciples, they had shared a final meal, and now He walked with them to the Garden of Gethse-mane, where He prays, and later will be arrested. By midday, the very next day, Jesus will be on a cross. The evening in the upper room ended when Jesus said, “Arise, let us go from here.” (John 14:31.) They go down the stairs and out into the night. The Disciples follow Jesus out of the city and into the Kidron valley.

In John chapter fifteen Jesus begins a discus-sion of the vineyard. Why does Jesus use the vine and its branches as a parable? Some speculate that it because He and the Disciples have just passed by the huge gold grapevine, the symbol of Israel, which decorated the gates of the Temple in Jerusalem - which some have estimated was worth 12 million dollars. Or it could be that as He and His Disciples head out of the city into the Kidron valley that there is a vineyard readily visible on their walk and Jesus uses what is close at hand to make His point. I don’t know that it matters which is the case, perhaps both are true.

But one thing is for sure, every good Jew understood that the image of the vine had been used many times to describe Israel and its relationship to God. (Psalm 80:8-9). The vineyard portrays God’s concern and care for the vineyard in planting his people in the Promised Land. And the Lord expected a rich harvest of fruit from his vineyard. The problem was that Israel never produced the fruit the Lord had desired. Through the prophets the Lord had expressed his displeasure with the fruit that Israel had produced calling them a “degenerate and wild vine” (Isa 5:7, Jer. 2:21)

It is in contrast with this picture of Israel that Jesus declares Himself to be the “true vine.” Israel had become the wild vine with which God was displeased and Jesus was the true vine that would produce and bear good fruit.

Perhaps Jesus stops and stoops down and picks up branch of the vine that surrounds them as an illustration and then He says beginning in verse one, “I AM the true vine, and My Father is the vinedresser. (2) Every branch in Me that does not bear fruit He takes away; and every branch that bears fruit He prunes, that it may bear more fruit. (3) You are already clean because of the word which I have spoken to you. (4) Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in Me. (5) “I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing. (6) If anyone does not abide in Me, he is cast out as a branch and is withered; and they gather them and throw them into the fire, and they are burned. (7) If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, you will ask what you desire, and it shall be done for you. (8) By this My Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit; so you will be My disciples.”

For a few moments Jesus talks quietly with them about branches, and grapes and how a vinedresser cares for the vineyard. Here He revealed to them the secrets of fruitfulness. Jesus now gives His seventh and final “I AM” statement in the gospel of John. All conversation must have stopped as He made this powerful declaration. Every time Jesus uses the phrase it conveys the same thought as the covenant name of God which was given to Moses in the wilderness, “I AM that I AM.” So that when Jesus said, “I AM the Door,” “I AM the Good Shepherd,” “I AM The Way the Truth And the Life,” or “I AM The Resurrection and the Life,” and now “I AM the Vine.” Each time He is identifying another aspect of Himself as God in the flesh. But this passage is unique among the “I AM” state-ments of Jesus in that is the basis for an extended metaphor or parable.

First, Recognizing the Parable. (15:1)

“I am the true vine, and My Father is the vine-dresser.”

Understanding the basics is not very difficult. There are three essential things that we need to understand to grasp the word picture that Jesus is using.

First, Jesus is the vine. Most of us, when we think of the grape vine we think of the limbs that runs along the trellis. But what is actually being described here is the trunk of the plant where it grows out of the ground. It is the trunk that provides life and nourishment to the branches.