Spirituality Column #769

August 10, 2021

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

The Vine of Truth

By Bob Walters

“I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener.” – Jesus, John 15:1

I am hard-pressed to think of anything Jesus says in the Bible that is not in some way an attempt to explain to a mostly unbelieving Israel who He was … and still is.

Mary and Joseph understood (Matthew 1:20-24, Luke 1:31-32, 46-49).  John the Baptist understood (Matthew 3:11).  The disciples, eventually, understood (Matthew 16:16).  The Angels of God understood (Luke 2:9-12).  Even Satan, “the devil,” “the tempter,” understood (Matthew 4:1-3).

The Pharisees and other Jewish leaders?  They mostly hated Jesus for the threat he posed to their positions of power.  If they knew so much scripture and prophecy, how could they not understand?  If they were truly close to God, how could they not love Jesus?  Yet for all but a few, the scales never fell from their eyes.  They had bent covenant Law to their own purposes, and had grown as a rogue, unproductive vine outside the Father’s will.

People in general were fascinated by Jesus’s miracles and healings, the authority of His teaching, and the power of His interactions.  But the Jews were looking for a Messiah who would kill the Romans, not to love sinners and prove the fruitfulness of God’s vine.  By the time of His crucifixion, Jesus was no longer the savior they were seeking: “Crucify Him!”

It is especially fascinating to me that in His final few hours with the disciples – at the last supper and then on the way to Gethsemane where He would be arrested – Jesus focused His final words to them not on sin and salvation, but on His identity as the Son of God, His mission of obedience and love, the disciples’ mission of love and perseverance, and the persecutions they would face ahead.  Faith would be their only way forward.

Most of us tend to seek God on our own terms.  We want Him to be and do what we want Him to be and do … for us.  We don’t immediately understand how surely that separates us from His fruitful vine and impedes the relationship Jesus brought to humanity as a saving, divine gift.  As Jesus expressed His faith in and obedience to God, He was also sharing his love and identity with these very frightened friends: God’s vine, on God’s terms.

“I am the true vine” is Jesus telling the disciples that He himself, not the covenant of Israel, is God’s one, true, fruit-bearing vine.  Throughout its existence Israel kept the vine as its national symbol.  Jesus was saying that God’s true fruit in humanity is shown by the fruit of Him in the Spirit, elegantly listed in Galatians 5: love, joy, peace, long-suffering, patience, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, and self-control. 

Pause and think how Israel over time soured that fruit (Isaiah 5:1-7).  Pause also and imagine what the Pharisees thought every time Jesus intoned that God – their God – was His Father.  “Father-Son” had never been a part of Israel’s relationship with God.  And now the disciples learn that the “Son and Father” are “vine and gardener.”

Grapevines grow quickly, deep, and have branches that produce fruit and branches that don’t.  Fruit-bearing branches are pruned heavily to increase the fruit, and since the “wood” of a vine is useless, non-fruit-bearing branches are cut, gathered, and burned.

For all Jesus said about His identity, there is no biblical signal that anyone deeply understood His mission, gift, or truth until His resurrection. The branches were yet to grow.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) hopes the fruit-prunings, i.e., our sins, are burned too.  Still today, some folks catch on and some don’t.