If you would please turn within your Bibles to John chapter 14 beginning at verse 27. John writes and Jesus says, ‘Peace I leave with you. My peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give. Let not your hearts be troubled, and neither let them be afraid. You heard me say to you, I am going away, and I will come to you. If you loved me, you would have rejoiced because I am going to the Father, for the Father is greater than I. And now I have told you before it takes place so that when it does take place, you may believe. I will no longer talk much with you. For the ruler of this world is coming. He has no claim on me, but I do as the Father has commanded me, so that the world may know that I love the Father. Rise. Let us go from here.
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 he that does bear fruit, he prunes that it may bear more fruit. Already you are clean because of the word that I’ve 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.
From there we turn back to Psalm number 80. The psalmist writes, ‘Give ear, oh shepherd of Israel, you who lead Joseph like a flock. You who are enthroned upon the cherubim, shine forth before Ephraim and Benjamin and Manasseh, stir up your might and come to save us. Restore us, oh God. Let your face shine that we may be saved. Oh Lord, God of hosts, how long will you be angry with your people’s prayers? You have fed them with the bread of tears and given them tears to drink in full measure. You make us an object of contention for our neighbors, and our enemies laugh among themselves. Restore us, oh God of hosts. Let your face shine that we may be saved.
You brought a vine out of Egypt. You drove out the nations and planted it. You cleared the ground for it. It took deep root and filled the land. The mountains were covered with its shade, the mighty cedars with its branches. It sent out its branches to the sea and its shoots to the river. Why then have you broken down its walls, so that all who pass along the way pluck its fruit? The boar from the forest ravages it, and all that move in the field feed on it. Turn again, oh God of hosts. Look down from heaven and see. Have regard for this vine, the stock that your right hand planted, and for the son whom you’ve made strong for yourself. They have burned it with fire. They have cut it down. May they perish at the rebuke of your face.
But let your hand be on the man of your right hand, the son of man whom you have made strong for yourself. Then we shall not turn back from you. Give us life and we will call upon your name. Restore us, oh Lord God of hosts. Let your face shine that we may be saved. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.
Let us pray. Lord, save us. Let your face shine upon us and open our hearts and our ears to hear you speak and to receive truth from your mouth and from your word. Help us to be like the plant, the vine that you have planted. Establish us, strengthen us, provide for us, and help us to grow in the light of your love. We pray these things in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Now, better comprehending our union with Christ is one of the most important spiritual and thoughtful endeavors that Christians should strive for. Our union with Christ is such an important doctrine because every consequential effect of our predestined faith, our regeneration, justification, adoption, sanctification, and our future glorification is derived from it. But yet, we must also recognize and appreciate the fact that we will never fully understand.
We may understand the fact of our being united to him with our minds, and that’s good. But the means and the why of this union often escapes our true comprehension. I mean, we know that we have been united to Christ through our baptism, united into his death and into his resurrection, that we have been brought into covenant with him and adopted as fellow children of God like him. We know that we are clothed with the garments of salvation and covered with Christ’s robe of righteousness, being justified before the Father with Christ’s righteousness through our faith in Jesus and not by our works under the law.
So that now we do have peace with God through Jesus Christ. We know that we are made to become a temple of the Holy Spirit. That we are made to become the spiritual dwelling place of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And that we have been and that we are being sanctified to live lives of holiness.
So the great importance of our union with Christ is a significant reason for why Jesus spent his last evening teaching it and explaining it to his disciples, making it a central theme running throughout the whole conversation because our union is the cause for our hope. And because it is such a great source for our spiritual encouragement, remembering and meditating upon our union with Christ is comforting.
When we feel alone, when we feel as if we have been abandoned or forgotten by God, because then we are remembering what Jesus has promised us: that he would not leave us as orphans, that we would know that he is in our father, that we are in him, and that he is in us. So remembering our union and keeping it in the forefront of our minds will be helpful as we proceed.
Because Jesus next tells his disciples, ‘I will no longer talk much with you. For the ruler of this world is coming. He has no claim on me,’ but I do as the Father has commanded so that the world may know that I love the Father. Let us now put ourselves in the disciples’ place and think through what Jesus has just said and has been saying.
Jesus has been telling them that he is leaving, that soon he was going to go somewhere without them, somewhere that they could not now follow. Jesus had told them that he would soon be betrayed by Judas and that also soon he would be denied by Peter. And then he said to them, ‘Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God and believe also in me,’ telling them to have faith, to trust him, and don’t be anxious or worried about all.
Jesus explained that him leaving was going to be a good thing for them because he was leaving to go prepare a place for them. That he was going to return and then bring them to himself. And that also when he was gone, he was going to ask his Father to send them another Paraclete to remain with them until he returned.
Now obviously if Jesus were about to leave them, then of course he would not be able to talk with them. That’s just common sense. But what may not have made as much sense was the reason he gave, his explanation for why he will not be able to talk with them and for why he would be leaving them: because the ruler of this world is coming. But who was that? I mean we know the answer. Satan, the devil. And eventually John will help us to understand and reach that answer and that conclusion when he records the revelation.
But in that moment for the disciples, that answer would not have been as obvious or plain. That answer seems obvious to us today as 21st-century Christians because we have nearly 2,000 years’ worth of Christian theology and interpretation to teach it to us. But Jews during the second temple period did not have that luxury.
Instead, the better question to ask would be: who did they understand the ruler of this world to be? Who did they understand, think, or assume Jesus was meaning in that moment? That question still does not have an easy answer because within their cultural context, being Jewish Jews and their political moment, because Judea was a territory within the Roman Empire and under Roman rule. There may have been three reasonable interpretations of that expression.
The first was the current Roman emperor Tiberius, who would have been entitled to claim the moniker of ruler of the world because the Roman Empire was the largest and most powerful contemporary political entity in the known western hemisphere. The second option was the Lord, the God of Israel, whom second temple Judaism affirmed as being the ultimate sovereign over all of creation, sovereign even over the Roman emperor.
And then the third option may have been Satan, also called the devil, Beelzebub, or Belial. But it’s a difficult point to argue because of our interpretive Christian bias. We do not well understand what degree of power, influence, and control second temple Judaism assumed Satan possessed over and within the world. Although the Dead Sea Scrolls provide us with some insight into the views of the Qumran community, where they describe an expected final eschatological war between the Lord and his righteous forces against the devil’s forces, the sons of darkness.
But it is not clear whether first-century Jews would have considered Satan to be the ruler of this world. We know that they were aware of his negative, corrupting, and evil influencing presence, but we really do not know if they considered Satan to be as great of an adversary or as powerful of an enemy as we Christians understand, believe, and know him to actually be.
My opinion and expectation is that here they would have thought, if they thought about it at all, that Jesus was implying he would soon be arrested by the Roman authorities in the name of the emperor. After all, Jesus had just been acclaimed king by the Jewish Jerusalem crowd six days before, an event that could be used as a pretext to arrest him for sedition or for promoting rebellion against Rome. And if so, the disciples had just cause to be nervous and anxious in that moment.
Then Jesus declares that this ruler, whomever he might be, has no claim on him. So if the disciples thought that this was a reference to Rome, then they may have understood Jesus to be proclaiming his innocence in regards to transgressing Roman law. Or perhaps he was denying Rome’s right of authority over him, proclaiming his own personal freedom from Roman rule and assuming the revolutionary mantle that he had been offered.
Then Jesus asserts, ‘I do as the Father has commanded me so that the world may know that I love the Father.’ See, Jesus explained and qualified precisely whose authority he recognized and was subordinate to, if not the ruler of this world, the Father’s. Jesus was not rejecting all governmental authority, though; rather he was claiming to be acting under the Father’s authority, acting according to his divine command.
And then lastly, Jesus explained why he was going to allow these things to come to happen, why he was going to submit himself to abuse by their exercise of unjust and unrighteous authority: so that the world would know that he loved the Father. His willing submission would be a public and spectacular demonstration of his love for God the Father through his active obedience to God’s will and command.
But returning to Jesus’s emphasis upon our union with him now, he utters his seventh and technically last ‘I am’ declaration saying, ‘I am the true vine and my Father is the vine dresser.’ Now, when we study the ‘I am’ statements, usually we are only considering them within their small immediate context of being in John. We only consider the most obvious or superficial aspects of them and we tend to consider them more in light of our recent theological understandings and developments rather than from the perspective of biblical theology, which is really whole Bible theology.
By doing that, we only just scratch the surface and hardly touch the meat of what Jesus was saying. Now, mind you, there is still a lot of good benefit in such studies because there are countless good applications and great comfort that we may still draw out from simply seeing Jesus as the light of the world, the bread of heaven, the door of the sheepfold, the good shepherd, the resurrection, and as the way, the truth, and the life.
But there is so much more fullness to be found in why Jesus was using these specific analogies. Previously, I explained that Jesus identifies himself with the Lord through these declarations and that he claims to be something to possess or to be an expression of something that is indicative of a divine attribute or quality.
Whenever he does this, he is always drawing upon something from the Hebrew Scriptures, from something older back in redemptive history. Back when Jesus said, for example, ‘I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me shall never hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst,’ he was drawing on that memory of the Lord providing Israel with manna in the wilderness in addition to claiming to be the divine source of life.
And Jesus in this was also claiming to be our provider and sustainer, characteristics that are closely identified with the Lord and his covenant promises. So here when Jesus says, ‘I am the true vine,’ we need to be asking what vine he is drawing upon and what he is saying about himself.
If we think about this only in the superficial sense as being a horticultural metaphor, we can still understand this passage as an invitation for us to abide in Christ, to rest in him and find our comfort and succor in him, and to draw upon our faith in him to strengthen us and help us to go out and bear good spiritual fruit.
And while those interpretations and applications are greatly enhanced when we better understand the originating root of this vine. See, unlike the prevalence of shepherds and sheep imagery in the Old Testament, which were used commonly as metaphors for kings and their subjects or for leaders and their followers, vines are an uncommon image.
But the type of vine that is most commonly mentioned in Scripture is the grapevine, a symbol which was notably used as a sign of earthly and temporal prosperity. Several times, we see, ‘And Judah and Israel lived in safety from Dan even to Beersheba, every man under his vine and under his fig tree,’ such as all the days of Solomon.
Meanwhile, grapevines have a thick and woody central vine that has many smaller and softer, greener, and more flexible branches that shoot off in every possible direction. Some of these branches go ahead and wrap themselves around things to help hold and support the vine, while other branches tend to grow flowers. And, Lord willing, they eventually bear fruit.
The fruit, the grapes, would become transformed into wine, which was used as a symbol for joy and for gladness because it was used in celebrations and it was a symbol of prosperity and contentment. This is because wine is a product of surplus and abundance, not immediate need. The most common analogical use of the vine in Scripture was as a descriptor for God’s chosen people, Israel, not God.
And this fact makes Jesus’s seventh ‘I am’ declaration more unusual and special. Therefore, it becomes even more important for us to understand rightly and wholly. To help us better understand it, we need to consider Psalm 80, where the psalmist wrote about the Lord’s providential work for Israel, his chosen people, saying, ‘You, the Lord, brought a vine out of Egypt. You drove out the nations and planted it. You cleared the ground for it. It took deep root and filled the land. The mountains were covered with its shade, the mighty cedars with its branches. It sent out its branches to the sea and its shoots to the river.’
This is describing the Exodus from Egypt, the conquest of Canaan, and the establishment of the Davidic and Solomon’s kingdom. Then the psalmist prays, ‘Have regard for this vine, the stock that your right hand planted, and for the son whom you made strong for yourself,’ describing the vine as the totality of God’s people as being God’s son.
This is a moment where our stronger biblical literacy improves our ability to interpret Scripture because we should remember that the Lord first declared this as fact back in Exodus 4 when he said, ‘Thus says the Lord, Israel is my firstborn son.’ So if the vine is understood as Israel, and if Israel is God’s son, God’s firstborn son and heir, then this analogy of the vine also describes God’s Son.
And if the vine is God’s Son, then the Son of God, Jesus Christ, is also the vine. A vine to which everyone who believes and trusts in Christ belongs and is united to. But that’s not all there. The psalmist continues to pray, ‘Let your hand be on the man of your right hand, the son of man whom you have made strong for yourself,’ expressions that describe the Lord’s regent and delegate, describing the one to whom the Lord has ascribed all of his same power and authority, whom he charges to act on his behalf as his image.
This is the eschatological son of man seen by Daniel, a title and a role expressly, publicly, and repeatedly claimed by Jesus. Start the dots connecting here? Do you find this internal consistency and connectivity within Scripture so wonderfully beautiful? Jesus has been building up to this moment throughout the entire evening’s discourse.
I mean, Jesus just said, ‘I am the true vine, and my Father is the vine dresser.’ Or better said, ‘I am the true Israel, and my Father is the one who cultivates me, who takes care of me, and provides everything for me.’ Here, Jesus is making a federal claim with serious covenantal implications for us.
But before we examine those implications, let’s look and see why Jesus needed to make this claim. Why does Jesus need to be the true Israel rather than the Jewish people, the natural ethnic descendants of Jacob? See, echoing that language from Psalm 80, the prophet Jeremiah proclaimed against the people of Judah, ‘For long ago I broke your yoke and burst your bonds,’ echoing the Exodus, ‘but you said, ‘I will not serve.’ Yes, on every high hill and under every green tree, you bowed down like a harlot. Yet I planted you a choice vine, holy of pure seed. How then have you turned degenerate and become a wild vine?’
Though you wash yourself with lye and use much soap, the stain of your guilt is still before me, declares the Lord God. The prophet recalls the Exodus from Egypt and then the incident of the golden calf at Mount Sinai, where Israel rejected the Lord in preference of an idol of gold. And then not only that, he also recollects all of the many times when Israel succumbed to Baal-idolatry and Asherah worship.
All of their countless altars built upon high places— all of Israel was guilty of apostasy, of habitually turning away from the one true God. Likewise, the prophet Hosea had earlier proclaimed the same charge against the northern kingdom, saying, ‘Israel is a luxuriant vine that yields its fruit. The more his fruit increased, the more altars he built. As his country improved, he improved his pillars. Their heart is false. Now they must bear their guilt. The Lord will break down their altars and destroy their pillars.’
‘For now they will say, ‘We have no king, for we do not fear the Lord.’ And a king, what could he do for us?’ Hosea went even further with his charges against Israel, accusing them of not even fearing the Lord, the one who had planted them and provided them with all of their bounty, accusing them of desiring to be their own masters, to be free from obedience to either God or his king.
The prophet charged them that although they produced fruit, their apostasy had turned it sour and bad. Truly at that point, the vine of Israel was in grave danger of being cut off entirely. Surely they deserved it. But there was not a total absence of hope for God’s chosen people.
The prophet Zechariah prophesied, ‘But now I will not deal with the remnant of this people as in former days,’ declares the Lord, ‘for there shall be a sowing of peace, and the vine shall give its fruit, and the ground shall give its produce, and the heavens shall give their dew. And I will cause the remnant of this people to possess all these things.’
The Lord would not deal with the remnant of Israel in the same way as he had done before—a clear reference to the new covenant that was also prophesied by Jeremiah. And he promised a sowing of peace similar to what Jesus had just promised his disciples, telling them, ‘Peace I leave with you. My peace I give to you.’
Then God promised this remnant fruitfulness and possession of all these things, all of his promised blessings. But the presence of a remnant logically implies that, although diminished, the Jewish people should still remain Israel.
Accept, and if I am wrong about this metaphor, I hope that one of our many gardeners here will correct me, but a plant that’s been cut back extremely far, especially after being cut back to remove dead, rotten, and diseased portions of the plant, does not stand a good chance of survival if it’s left in place.
But its chances for survival and thriving may improve if it is transplanted or repotted, or if it’s grafted into a stronger and healthier plant. So that this surviving remnant of God’s chosen people, Israel—meaning everyone who belongs to Christ, all of those who’ve been given to the Son by the Father, everyone whom the Lord has predestined unto life, all of God’s elect—they still were needing to be regrafted into the true vine of Israel.
They needed to be brought into full union with Jesus Christ, God the Son, the logos, and the most important part of this to remember as relating to us is that everyone, everyone who belongs to God, everyone who belongs to Jesus Christ must have been and must be grafted into the true vine of Israel. Everyone, even from before the very beginning, and that this engrafting only ever happens through God-given faith and little in Jesus Christ because our heavenly Father is the vine dresser.
He alone is the one who chooses which branches to cut and which branches to graft in. He is the one who makes the cuts and he grafts them in together with the Holy Spirit, a regenerating, faith-filling, and sanctifying Paraclete. We remember Adam and Eve receiving God’s grace and promise after their transgression; they were grafted into the vine of Christ through their faith and trust in God.
Noah, Abraham, and his offspring, his heirs, they were grafted into the vine of Christ through God’s gracious covenant for salvation by their faith in him. The whole great multitude, the mixed multitude of people who followed Moses out of Egypt and who became constituted as the people of Israel, they were grafted into the vine of Christ through their faith in the Lord—a faith that was confirmed and proven by their obedience, their faithfulness.
Likewise, the whole entire church, all those who belong to the old covenant and all of us belonging to the new covenant are graciously grafted into the vine of Jesus Christ through our faith, trust, and total dependence on him. But where did all these branches come from?
In addition to the vine as Israel, Scripture also describes plainly another vine, a wicked vine, a vine that grows contrary to the Lord’s design. That’s the vine of Sodom. In Deuteronomy 32, Moses writes, ‘For their vine comes from the vine of Sodom and from the fields of Gomorrah. Their grapes are grapes of poison. Their clusters are bitter. Their wine is the poison of serpents and the cruel venom of asps.’
That vine represents all of the enemies of God and his chosen people—all of the idolators and pagans, the sinners and atheists, Gentiles and Jews, everyone. Everyone who gets redeemed by the work of Christ, though, everyone who becomes a Christian and gets grafted into Christ’s covenant, into his vine, must first have been cut off from that vine of Sodom before being grafted into the true vine of Christ.
This is just another way of envisioning what Paul says in 1 Corinthians 6: ‘And such were some of you,’ that we are no longer who or what we were before we were in Christ.
Then finally, Jesus warns us that 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 much fruit, much more fruit, giving us a warning that also explains so much of Old Testament history. Because ever since Adam walked in the Garden of Eden with God, humanity—God’s image—has been expected to bear good fruit, to bear the good fruit of righteousness, of justice, mercy, and love.
Yet, we never do. Not on our own, anyway. Instead, we always choose to use our freedom of will to bear bad, wicked, and rotten fruit. Adam sinned, and so he and Eve were pruned and cut off from paradise. They were pruned from the vine of self-righteousness and then grafted into the true vine of Christ’s grace. They were removed from being dependent on themselves, being dependent entirely on Jesus.
After murdering his brother Abel, Cain was pruned away from Adam’s branch so that Seth was able to bear more fruit. During the days of Noah, nearly every branch on the vine was cut off by the flood, except for Noah’s shoot, which had grown from Seth’s righteous branch. Then later, Abraham’s branch was chosen to survive, while the branch of his brother Nahor was not. The branches of Ishmael and Esau were pruned so that Isaac and Jacob could bear more fruit.
Eventually, after the days of Solomon, during the reign of King Hoshea, the 10 tribes of the northern kingdom were cut off by the Assyrians on God’s behalf, followed by Nebuchadnezzar pruning Judah during the reign of King Zedekiah when their best and brightest were taken off into exile and captivity. Yet, as God had promised, 70 years later, the Lord grafted a remnant back into the vine when he allowed the Jews to return home to rebuild Jerusalem and the temple.
Lastly, after the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, there’s been a whole lot of gardening going on. A lot of branches were being pruned or cut off, and a lot more were being grafted in. Yet through it all, this true vine of Jesus Christ always has remained the same. He always has, he always does, and he always will.
This returns us back to where we began this passage, thinking on our union with Christ. Are you beginning to see just how important and foundational our union with Jesus Christ is?
Well, we’ve started to consider it in regards to the connection between being united to Christ and being part of the church. We’ve seen how by our union through being indwelt by the Holy Spirit, we have access to such a wonderful depth of spiritual resources. We have seen how by our union to Christ, our Christlikeness is shown out through our good works of love for one another and for others, echoing Jesus’s exemplary love for us.
And so today I will close with a question for each of us to ponder till we return as branches: Are we each not bearing or are we bearing bad fruit and thus in danger of being cut off? Or are we fruit-bearing branches that are just in need of some more spiritual care?