Bibles to John chapter 15 beginning at the first verse. John writes and Jesus says, ‘I am the true vine and my father is the vine dresser. Every branch in me that does not bear fruit, he takes away. And every branch that does bear fruit, he prunes that it may bear more fruit. Already you are clean because of the word that I have spoken to you. Abide in me and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me. I am the vine, you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit. For apart from me, you can do nothing. If anyone does not abide in me, he is thrown away like a branch and withers, and the branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned. If you abide in me and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. By this my father is glorified that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples.’
From there we turn to Paul’s letter to the Romans chapter 11 beginning at the 11th verse. Paul writes, ‘So I ask, did they stumble in order that they might fall? By no means. Rather, through their trespass, salvation has come to the Gentiles, so as to make Israel jealous. Now, if their trespass means riches for the world, and if their failure means riches for the Gentiles, how much more will their full inclusion mean? Now, I am speaking to you Gentiles. In as much then as I am an apostle to the Gentiles, I magnify my ministry in order that somehow to make my fellow Jews jealous and thus save some of them. For if their rejection means the reconciliation of the world, what will their acceptance mean but life from the dead? If the dough offered his first fruits holy, so is the whole lump. And if the root is holy, so are the branches. But if some of the branches are broken off, and you, although a wild olive chute, were grafted in among the others, and now share in the nourishing root of the olive tree, do not be arrogant towards the branches. If you are, remember, it is not you who support the root, but the root that supports you. Then you will say branches were broken off so that I might be grafted in. That is true. They were broken off because of their unbelief. But you stand fast through faith. So do not become proud but fear. For if God did not spare the natural branches, neither will he spare you. Note then the kindness and the severity of God: severity towards those who have fallen, but God’s kindness to you, provided you continue in his kindness. Otherwise, you too will be cut off. And even they, if they do not continue in their unbelief, will be grafted in, for God has the power to graft them in again. For if you were cut from what is by nature a wild olive tree and grafted contrary to nature into a cultivated olive tree, how much more will these the natural branches be grafted back into their own olive tree?
This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. Let’s pray.
Lord, we thank you for your word. We thank you for the gift of understanding you give us by your holy spirit. We thank you for the gift and use of metaphor and plain speech alike. Help us to understand your word, to hear you speak, and the wisdom to apply it to our lives by the grace of your holy spirit. We pray this in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Now proclaiming, I am the true vine and my father’s the vine dresser. Every branch in me that does not bear fruit, he takes away. And every branch that does bear fruit, he prunes that it may bear more fruit. Proclaiming this, Jesus declared a message about God’s transcendent sovereignty. He proclaimed how God is sovereign over our election, whether unto salvation, being grafted into the vine of Christ or unto reprobation of being cut off and taken away.
And when Jesus said, ‘I am the true vine,’ he claimed to be the true Israel. And when he said, ‘My father is the vine dresser,’ he claimed that God the Father is the one who plants, cultivates, and provides for Israel. Jesus is saying that Israel has received all of its many blessings through God’s grace alone, directly from the Lord’s providential hand.
God the Father in his role of vine dresser, he chooses and then grafts the branches of his choice in from all these other vines so that they may be used for the good. And he prunes those branches, all of these different branches that are growing on the vine, both the natural and those that have been grafted in, so that they can grow stronger, more healthy, and produce an abundance of good fruit. Likewise, he trims and cuts off all of the deadwood. Branches that only consume and do not produce. Branches that have become hard, dry, and brittle. Branches that are valueless except as fuel for the fire.
Now, understanding Jesus as the true vine has several important implications for our faith concerning what we believe and how we should respond to it. And the first implication reminds us of our total dependence on God for everything. Right alongside our lack of desire and our incapacity to save ourselves, our inability to do anything that justifies our deliverance.
Can a leafy branch transplant itself? Can it cut itself off of one plant, move itself, and then graft itself into another plant? No. Of course not. Can a leafy branch prune itself? Can it choose to have certain of its particular leaves or shoots just fall off so that others might receive a greater portion of limited resources? Of course not.
See, every domestic and cultivated plant and vine needs someone separate, someone that is outside and above themselves to tend and to take care of them. Every vine needs a transcendent vine dresser who is able and willing to do all that is necessary so that they grow well, so that they may grow healthy, strong, and productive. This vine dresser needs to be imminent and intelligent, needing to be present and close, engaged, and active in the work of cultivating the vine.
Otherwise, the vine will just run rampant and wild, taking over the entire field, spreading out broadly and consuming every available resource without hardly producing any fruit or without producing any good fruit. Because fruit that’s produced by such wild vines are liable to be small and bitter, because what is needful is spread out much too thinly across far too much vine. Again, this is an expression of God’s sovereign power and control over all things, over those he dearly loves and cultivates, and over those whom he permits to run wild according to their nature.
The next implication that grows as a consequence of God’s sovereign work concerns our abiding. As Jesus next told his disciples, ‘Abide in me and I in you.’ Now, to abide is not a verb commonly used in our modern vernacular. Miriam Webster defines it as to bear patiently, functioning synonymously with to tolerate. It says it’s to endure without yielding, being synonymous with to withstand or also to accept something without objection. It’s also used in the sense of to remain in a stable or fixed state or to continue in a place, being synonymous with to sojourn.
Now while abide is not most commonly used in the sense of toleration today, that is not how it’s meant when it’s used to translate New Testament Greek. Neither of those senses of abiding, of the tolerating and withstanding, are the sense that Jesus or John meant it here in John 15. The Greek term that gets translated as abide is ‘meno,’ a word that has several related and similar meanings. It does mean to remain or to stay in one place. It means to dwell permanently, to remain unchanged and to continue to exist.
Shared across these meanings is a universal sense of eternal immutable permanence. And this effect causes ‘abide’ to describe an unequal binary. Unequal because either one abides or one does not. Except once somebody chooses to abide, they can never again choose to not abide. So the implication of this is that Jesus’s command to abide in me and I in you becomes a wonderful promise of security of our perseverance and preservation because once we begin to abide in Christ, we never will not.
And Jesus explained, ‘As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me.’ See, a branch that’s disconnected from the vine, tree, or plant, it cannot produce fruit of any kind because it is dead. And while it may look alive and fine, it dies and begins to decay the moment it’s cut off because life is unable to reach or flow through a branch that has been severed. There is no sap, meaning that there’s no water or nutrients moving to the branch. A cut branch no longer serves any functional purpose in relation to the plant.
Likewise, a person who does not abide in the true vine of Jesus Christ, a person who’s cut off from God is spiritually dead and unable to produce spiritual fruit. They may look alive, walking around and talking, but they are spiritually dead inside and simply just waiting for the physical to catch up with the spiritual. They’re unable to produce anything that’s living or life-giving. They can have that semblance of life just like cut flowers in a vase, but they lack something essential. They lack that essential quality which gives existence meaning, purpose, and functional value.
So Jesus next adds, ‘I am the vine and you are the branches.’ Proclaiming clearly again our unity. Just consider a tree. Look at its leaves, the branches, its trunk or root. You can point at none of those things and say that this is not the tree. And while we can name and we identify each part of these individually, every part serves a different purpose and function for the good of the whole tree. And every part is going to look outwardly differently, but when you look at it down to the microscopic level at DNA, they are all identical. One tree with all of its many different parts.
Similarly, the Apostle Paul uses this image in 1 Corinthians 12, saying that there are many parts yet one body, describing the church. And he argued that this idea is about our union in Christ. That even while we each have different purposes and functions, different roles and capabilities, we each look differently, we continue to remain united and are each working together for the one united purpose of God’s will and plan.
So Christians, we are branches on the one true vine of Christ. We are extensions of Jesus, living and working and loving in the world for his sake according to his purpose and plan. And in his name, we do his work as his branches, while he supports us, while he strengthens and encourages us, and while he directs us, where and how we should go.
Then Jesus described two groups of branches: those who abide in him and those who do not, saying, ‘Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me, you can do nothing. If anyone does not abide in him, he’s thrown away like a branch and withers. And the branches are gathered, thrown into the fire and burned.’
See, those who abide in Christ will bear much fruit, while those who do not will simply wither and be discarded. They will be thrown and cast into the eternal fire and burn. And this is an implication which gives us cause to both grieve and be thankful. This may and should cause us to grieve that there are people who have not been, are not, and will not be saved by God’s grace. We should grieve that there is a need for justice to be meted out for the imposition of divine condemnation and vengeance. This should also make us to be more thankful and more grateful for having God’s mercy, grace, and favor. This should make us to be more appreciative of all that Christ has done for us and to help us reflect on how terrible the cost was for him.
But now let’s consider the people who are abiding in Christ. There are two different types of fruit that we may expect a Christian to produce: tangible and intangible. And yet, regardless of type, this fruit will be knowable and recognizable. It will prove a Christian’s faith. But this also does not suggest that every Christian will produce every possible kind of fruit or produce it in the same quantity or to the same degree as every other Christian.
And tangible fruit often appears through our different Christian works of charity, love, and kindness. Tangible fruit often manifests in how we treat others, although it is sometimes not reflected by how we’re treated in return. Root-filled good works are not done for our own selfish benefit but for the good benefit of others without any regard for their deservedness. Such fruit shows the world that you belong to Christ, that you are like Christ and that you are a disciple of Christ.
Intangible fruit, however, is personal and internal to each individual Christian. It can even be invisible to an outside observer, where the perceived effect of it is not always associated with the root cause. The Apostle Paul describes the fruit of the Holy Spirit as love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Spiritual qualities that we feel as emotions or quietly express in different ways as we go about our ordinary lives. We feel love and joy. We experience peace. We must practice patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.
Because none of us have perfected any of these spiritual qualities, and because they are the positive opposites to the world’s spiritually negative fruit, even when we fail to practice these fruits, our guilt and the remorse that we feel for those failures is just as affirming as their presence. It confirms our faith because we are repentant, because we are remorseful for when we aren’t as good as we know we should be.
Similarly, people who do not abide in Christ—atheists, pagans, idolators, Satanists—they still may do some of the same kinds of physical and practical works as Christians, like being kind or being charitable towards other people. For example, giving charity to the poor is the third pillar of Islam, which they call zakat. And it is something that is required by their religion as an obligatory act of charity that must be given once every year.
Meanwhile, the fruit that gets produced by the worldly and the spiritually dead is something that’s stale, tasteless, or bitter, and no more than a mockery of the Holy Spirit’s produce. To them, love, which we call selfless agape love, is corrupted into just mere feelings like the sensations of eros as sexual desire, or it’s transactional as phileo, as being a sense of mutual camaraderie and fellowship. Joy gets substituted with a superficial sense of happiness or gladness. Peace, which we know is the wholeness of shalom, is replaced by just the absence of conflict without hope or need of reconciliation or restoration.
Patience is negated by instant gratification. Kindness and goodness get reduced to mere moralism, to just simply do unto others as you would have them do unto you or perhaps even just do no harm. Faithfulness is reduced to mere legalism, obedience that’s enforced by the threat of legal action, fearful of hearing somebody say, ‘I’m going to sue.’ And gentleness gets recharacterized as weakness and replaced by a sense of strength through fear or strength through power. Self-control and temperance get replaced with self-indulgence, hedonism, and self-gratification.
So when the good spiritual intangible fruits are absent or lacking in these people, they neither feel guilt nor remorse for their lack. They’re utterly unconcerned about it. So it’s clear that those people who do not abide in Christ will quickly burn themselves out because these are all naturally self-destructive practices and attitudes. These people will wither and dry themselves, proving not to belong as part of the vine. Truly they judge themselves, and they begin their condemnation in this life while they still live.
And then Jesus concludes this thought with an opposite bookend of John 14:13-14, telling the disciples, ‘If you abide in me and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. By this my father is glorified that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples.’
Thus he closes out this teaching here about proper prayer so that we know that if we abide in Christ and if his word abides within us, then because of our union with him, we shall always be praying according to the will and purposes of Jesus, of God the son. And so we shall truly wish for whatever it is that the Lord desires. And so his will shall always be done.
If we abide in Christ and if his word abides within us, then because of our union with him, everything that we do will be done for his glory. And we shall regularly bear good fruit, both tangible and intangible, and prove ourselves to be Christ’s disciples, proving it to the world, to one another here within the church, and to ourselves. It’s part of the Holy Spirit’s encouragement for us.
But there is another wide implication that we need to consider concerning Jesus’s status as the true vine, as the true Israel. And some people may think that this implication might sound harsh or feel unkind, unloving, and unpleasant because of certain common cultural assumptions that people make.
This implication concerns modern-day Judaism, the Jews in the modern state of Israel. There is a popular assumption that ethnic or cultural Jews are saved simply by virtue of their race and also that the modern state of Israel is the specific fulfillment of biblical prophecy. Now, regardless of whether or not a person agrees with those interpretations, a consequence of this assumption is that presently the Jews and Israel reside in an unusual and unique place in our American mindset, a cultural position that should be described as even idolatrous, especially because of the intense feelings that people have about the Jews.
People have feelings of uncertainty and doubt. Some have animosity against them, and others have a hope of redemption and restoration for the Jews and for Israel. Ironically, those feelings are nothing new. Similar feelings have echoed across history, and we find evidence for them in the New Testament.
The Apostle Paul wrote about the Lord’s rejection of ethnic Jews in favor of gentile inclusion into his elect Israel. And sometimes the things that Paul writes on this subject may seem to be contradictory, but when you closely examine them, Paul remains remarkably consistent. Paul explains across both Romans 4 and Galatians 3 about how our salvation is the result of God’s gracious promise to Abraham for Abraham’s offspring.
This begs the question, who are or who is Abraham’s offspring? And God told Abraham that through Isaac shall your offspring be named. And Paul identifies Isaac as the child of promise, concluding that not all who are descended from Israel belong to Israel, and not all are children of Abraham because they are his offspring. That it’s not the children of the flesh who are the children of God, but the children of the promise.
So, while the Apostle Paul affirms a Jewish hereditary right to the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises in Romans nine, he counterargued as well that the ethnic Jew, Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ who is God over all and blessed forever, that he possessed the ultimate and sole right to all those things as Abraham’s singular offspring.
See, Paul taught that the free gift of salvation was never a matter of ethnicity, race, descent, or family relations, but always by union with Jesus Christ, the true vine, through faith in him alone. Paul taught that if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to promise. If you are abiding in Christ, the true vine, as one of his many branches, then you are a fellow heir of Abraham according to promise, you are one of the elect, the chosen people of God, and you belong to the true Israel.
And then Paul turns and quotes Isaiah, speaking about the Gentiles’ relationship to the Lord, saying, ‘I have been found by those who did not seek me. I’ve shown myself to those who did not ask for me.’ But while he speaks about the Jewish Israel, Isaiah says, ‘All day long, I’ve held out my hands to a disobedient and contrary people.’
This prompts the apostle to ask, ‘Has God rejected his people?’ Paul answers, ‘By no means, for I myself am an Israelite.’ Using the example of Elijah, Paul taught that a remnant of Abraham’s natural descendants are and will be always preserved for the Lord as part of the true Israel, a remnant chosen by grace.
Therefore, neither Judaism nor being born an ethnic Jew has any bearing upon a person’s salvation or right standing before the Lord. The many promises of God are not effective for or applied to all of Abraham’s ethnic descendants as natural birthright. Yet being united into Jesus, who is an ethnic Jew and Abraham’s ultimate heir, some ethnic Jews who believe in Jesus as the Christ are receiving the promises right alongside us Gentile Christians. Every one of us has the same absolute foundational requirement of possessing God-given faith in Jesus as the Christ.
This makes everyone who is redeemed and saved by Jesus equal in God’s eyes. We’re equal in our standing and we are equal in his favor and love because we are each saved according to his grace alone. But this is where the supposed problem begins.
Because once we add people into the mix, for even including sinners that are redeemed by grace, some people throughout history have misrepresented Paul’s position and have used his words to terrible and hateful effect against ethnic and religious Jews. But the Apostle Paul was not an anti-Semite. His doctrine does not encourage or support anti-Semitism, and such views are out of accord with the Christian faith and are contrary to our Christian witness.
We should not feel any kind of special hatred, dislike, or animosity towards ethnic Jews or to people who profess the Jewish religion. We should also not ascribe them any special favor, preference, or difference since functionally they are the same as any other person before their regeneration by the Holy Spirit.
And after he rebuked the Judaistic perspective and argued that the Jews have no claim upon the love, favor, or a right relationship with God just because of their birth lineage, Paul turns his attention to gentile Christians like us and chastises them for our own sense of self-righteousness. Paul argues two points towards the Gentiles, saying that they and we should remain prayerfully hopeful for the Jews to come to faith in Jesus, and that they and we should not be arrogant or feel ourselves superior to the Jews because no one is naturally better than any other in relation to receiving God’s grace.
Paul happily proclaimed, ‘I magnify my ministry,’ meaning his ministry to the Gentiles, in order to somehow make my fellow Jews jealous and thus save some of them. You see, Paul retained hope for his race, his kinsmen, and his nation and people of origin. He earnestly desired their salvation as much as he desired the salvation of Gentiles. He denied the suggestion that the Jews were sacrificially written off so that the rest of the world could be reconciled.
For if their rejection means the reconciliation of the world, what will their acceptance mean but life from the dead? Rather, he taught that their disinclusion as a corporate body should build up confidence that their potential salvation as individual persons would be an encouragement for other believers, increasing our expectant hope of our future bodily resurrection with Christ on the last day.
Paul implies that since ethnic Jews are grown from Abraham’s faithful branch through his grandson Jacob, called Israel, that if the root is holy, so are the branches, and that perhaps some of this holiness might still be retained even in those that are cut off. So he admonishes the gentile Christians to be mindful, saying that if some of the branches were broken off and you were grafted in, do not be arrogant towards the branches. Remember, it is not you who supports the root, but the root that supports you.
He taught them to not believe that they are better than the Jews because they now enjoy God’s love. He warned them against arrogance, saying branches were broken off so that I might be grafted in, reminding them that they were grafted in for no reason of greatness within themselves, saying, ‘Do not become proud, but fear. For if God did not spare the natural branches, neither will he spare you.’
But since we believe in God’s sovereign election, believing and knowing that God does not change his mind and trusting Jesus when he said that no one is able to snatch them out of the father’s hand, we know that Paul was not suggesting that the Jews or Christians can lose our salvation. Rather, we understand that he’s talking about God’s work of pruning, not cutting off. He was talking about sanctification, describing how we may feel like we are suffering when really what we’re experiencing is pain from the Holy Spirit cutting off unhealthy, harmful, and dangerously sinful things from our hearts and lives.
And he encourages us. Note then the kindness and the severity of God: severity towards those who have fallen but God’s kindness to you, provided you continue in his kindness. Otherwise, you too will be cut off. Reminding them that while the Jews were separated because of their unbelief, true Christians shall stand fast through faith. Again, he was not warning against a Christian losing their salvation, but warning about those who make false professions of faith.
Paul warned that while such people may enjoy some of the same benefits present, they are ultimately doomed. He warned that they are like cut flowers in a vase, having a semblance of life, but lacking meaningful connection to the true source of life.
And finally, Paul again expresses his hope for the salvation of Jews, saying, ‘If they do not continue in their unbelief, they will be grafted in, for God has the power to graft them in again.’ Paul taught that even still their salvation is not beyond God’s power and that their full inclusion would result in an even greater increase in God’s glory. And all that’s required for their restoration is for them to repent and believe, to turn to Jesus in faith no differently than anybody else.
And so the Jews are saved the same way as anyone else—the same way we are—through the grace of God by faith in Jesus Christ alone. The Jews are saved the same way as the pagans, atheists, heretics, and Islamists—through the grace of God by faith in Jesus alone. The Jews are saved the same way as were the patriarchs, the ancient Israelites, the Hebrews, and the Jews of the second temple period—through the grace of God by sincere faith in the Lord Jesus Christ alone.
And so while we can and should be prayerfully hopeful for the salvation and conversion of Jews, just as we’re hopeful and prayerful for the salvation and conversion of Muslims and all other types of non-Christians, we cannot assume that anyone is saved except and unless they profess faith in Jesus Christ and exhibit signs of positive spiritual fruit. It does not matter whether a person is born as a Jew or a Gentile. The means of salvation is the same: faith in Jesus. And our opportunity for salvation is the same.
God’s sovereign election, the doctrine of election, you see, is not something harmful, hateful, or unloving for us to declare and believe. Instead, it emphasizes our reliance on God’s grace and our thankfulness for his covenantal redeeming work, which means that the Jews and national Israel do not enjoy any special divine privilege in the world.
And likewise, neither do we Christians or Americans in the United States, nor should we expect to. Because as Christians, our true hope and expectation lies beyond this world in this present life where we shall abide with Jesus Christ in his eternal kingdom. An abiding that even now we partly experience and enjoy through our personal devotional scripture readings, through gathering together on Sunday mornings for worship, in our fellowship meals, and through our own private and public moments of prayer.
So to conclude, consider your answer to last week’s question regarding your sense of fruitfulness. How are you doing? If you want to bear fruit as a Christian or if you want to bear more and better fruit, then you must do as Jesus said and abide in him. Whereas the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you are abiding in him.
Lastly this week, I ask you, are you abiding in the vine of Christ or are you abiding in the world? Are you abiding securely being united into Christ, unshakably and unchangeably, or do you feel unsettled and disconnected from him?
Please stand. And let us say what we believe using the words of the apostles. I believe in God the Father Almighty.