THE REFORMED WITNESS HOUR
"I Am the True Vine”
Rev.
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prca.orgDear
radio friends,
In our past radio messages we have been following the “I Ams” in John, the “I Am” sayings of our Lord Jesus Christ
as recorded in the Gospel According to John—beautiful words, telling us of who
Jesus is and what He is to us.
Jesus said, “I am the Bread of Life, I am the Light of the
world, I am the Door, I am the good Shepherd, I am the Resurrection and the
Life, I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life.” Now today we come to His statement in
John 15:1-8,
where He begins with
these words: “I am the true vine.” Jesus Christ explains to us that He is the
true vine, whose roots are sunk deeply into God. He is the source of all spiritual life. And we are the branches, graciously engrafted
into Him, united to Him by a true and living faith in order that we might bring
forth fruit.
Jesus Christ goes on in that passage to say that God prunes each
branch in order that it might bring forth more fruit, and that the heavenly
Father, the Husbandman, cuts away all fruitless branches out of the vine, Jesus
Christ. God is telling us that, by
grace, He has united us to Jesus Christ in order that we might bring forth
fruits of good works, fruits of repentance, unto the glory of God. He is telling us that in Jesus Christ we must
grow up in our faith and in knowledge and in good works. We are saved in order that we might live a
holy life, that we might walk with God in truth, and
that we may love Him and love one another even as He has loved us.
The question, then, that we are confronted with as we face these
words of Jesus, “I am the true vine,” is this:
“Are we bringing forth much fruit, fruit to the glory of God?” Jesus said that, as trees of grace, as
branches of grace inserted into Him, the living vine, we have not been inserted
in order that we bring forth leaves, but fruit.
So Jesus says, “Abide in Me and I in you, for I am the true vine.”
When Jesus says that He is the true vine, He means that He is
the source of all spiritual life. Only
by being united to Him in a true and living faith can we live and bear fruit to
the glory of God.
Let us remember a moment the setting in
John 15
in which Jesus
speaks these words.
John 15
is part of our Lord’s farewell. He is going away from His disciples. He is going to go the way of the cross and
the resurrection and back to His Father through the ascension. And He says that they cannot follow Him
now. He is going to leave them. And the question, of course, is: “What had these disciples ever been able to
do without Jesus?” Whenever they were
out of His sight, they were flops.
So Jesus says, “I am the true vine.” He speaks that in words of comfort. In fact, these words are drenched with the
wonderful dew of the comfort of Jesus Christ.
He says to you and to me: “Though
I am in heaven, you are not abandoned. I
am the vine, and you are inserted into me by a true and living faith.”
But there is also a warning in the Lord’s words. The warning is this: He is telling His disciples and us that there
would certainly be severe dangers for them and severe dangers for us. We would be in a world that would close in
upon us, and the devil would tempt us, and our own sinful nature would be prone
to go astray and lead us astray.
Therefore Jesus says, “You must abide in Me. By faith, you must abide in Me. You must walk by
faith and not by sight. This is not an option. This is an utter necessity. Abide in Me, little
children.”
So He speaks not only for our comfort, He speaks not only for
our warning, but, therefore, He speaks of our calling. Jesus says, “Abide in Me,
for I leave you on earth in order that you might bear much fruit.” Jesus is saying that the church on earth is
not to be a flower garden, merely with the fragrance of religion. But the church on earth is to be a vegetable garden, it is to be one that brings forth fruit to God. The church is God’s vineyard in the desert,
producing the sweet fruit of praise and service and love to God in all the
actions of the church.
“I am the true vine.”
Jesus now is again using a figure of speech, a figure of speech that
would be well known to His disciples and audience at that time, for there were
many vineyards in
So Jesus says, “I am the true vine. I sink my roots eternally into God. I am God.”
Therefore John can say in chapter 1:4 that in Jesus is life. He is the Alpha and Omega–the beginning and
the ending. He is the eternal God. He is the second person of the Trinity, in
our flesh. He is the crucified
Savior. And as the
crucified Savior He possesses not only the eternal life of God but the
reservoirs of spotless, perfect, and eternal righteousness. He is the One who possesses perfect
acceptance with God for sinners. He is
the risen Lord Jesus Christ. He is the
living One who was dead and now is alive forevermore. He is eternal God with life in Himself. He is the crucified Savior with perfect
righteousness, with all the fruits of the Spirit within Him. “I am the true vine.”
He means that all vines are a picture of Him. For God has made the creation to reflect
Him. He is the source, the only source,
of life, spiritual life. The only source of good.
By contrast, when He says, “I am the true vine,” He does not
simply say, “I am the vine.” He says “I
am the true vine.” He means to
warn us that there are false vines; there are many who claim to do what Jesus
can do. False religions are always
talking of ways whereby they can give life through whatever it may be: karma or who-knows-what. There will be many who will come to say, “But
I, we, can give. Our religion can give
pleasure and satisfaction and awareness and assurance and self-worth. Or we can give money and drink and self and
lusts. We can give things that will
please and satisfy.” Jesus says they are
all false vines. There is but one true
vine who alone can give life and satisfaction and joy. That is Jesus Christ. “I am the true vine.”
“And My Father is the husbandman.” Husbandman, there, is caretaker or owner of
the vine. The heavenly Father, God
triune, planted the vine Jesus Christ in His eternal counsel. And in time He gave His Son, Jesus Christ, to
be the vine—the babe in the manger, the Christ upon the cross, and the Lord of
the resurrection. Therefore, the
heavenly Father hath given life eternal through His Son.
But, as the husbandman, God is also the One who cares for the
branches that are united to Jesus Christ.
He inserts them into Christ by His wonderful grace. But He also prunes each vine, each
branch. He selects the branches to be in
Jesus Christ out of mere grace. Jesus says that in verse 16 of
John 15.
There
He says to the disciples: “Ye have not
chosen me, but I have chosen you, and ordained you, that ye should go and bring
forth fruit, and that your fruit should remain:
that whatsoever ye shall ask of the Father in my name, he may give it
you.” It was the Father who chose the
branches and inserted them into Jesus Christ.
Other, dead branches, externally connected to
Jesus Christ but not truly by grace—they are chopped down. They are from the old dead tree Adam. And Jesus says in
John 15
that they shall be
gathered up by the angels and they shall be burned in everlasting fire.
But the point is that we must be united to Jesus Christ by a
true and living faith or there is no life in us, for there is no possibility
for any good to come out of us. “I am
the true vine.” He does not simply say
this for information. But He says that
to you as a child of God in order that you might learn to live out of Him by a
true and living faith. It must be a true
faith—a God-given, Holy Spirit-produced faith—that gives you to know your sin
and to know the value of Christ and to work in you the heart of thankfulness. True and living faith, whereby we are united
to Jesus Christ, is not a mere human and emotional attachment. It is not a mere intellectual acquaintance
with Jesus Christ. To have true faith
does not simply mean that you know about Jesus, or even that at one point you
might have had an emotional event connected with Jesus. True and living faith is a
spiritual bond that God has made between you and Christ whereby, united to Him,
you draw out of Him all things and place your trust in Him alone, and receive
from Him the assurance of righteousness and also the motivation to live to the
glory of God in everything that you do.
You must be careful. You
must not be a plastic branch. You must
not be an artificial tree that looks like the real thing, but is not the real
thing—does not produce fruit, does not grow, has no life. So Jesus says, “My children do not have
simply an artificial attachment to Me. But they have a true and living attachment to
Me. They live
out of Me.”
They are not plastic branches, but they are living branches. A living branch is one whose heart is broken
over his personal sin, who has come to know the ugliness and the awfulness of
sin within him. A living branch is one
who places no trust in himself for salvation but in Christ alone for
righteousness and salvation. A living
branch is one who repents daily over his sins and desires to bring forth the
good fruit of repentance and holiness and desires to grow up and increase in
the knowledge of God and to do that which is pleasing to Him.
“I am the vine, ye are the branches:…abide
in me, and I in you,” said Jesus. He
says, “I am not the vine simply for Myself, but for
you. Draw from Me
your life, your comfort, your strength, your understanding.”
What is it to be a Christian, then? Is there really a difference between the
Christian and the world? What is a
Christian? Is it only, merely, that one
goes to church, that one wears different clothes, that
one is decent and well-mannered? Is that
what it is? Is there a difference? Yes. A
Christian is one who is alive. And those
who are not Christians are not alive.
They have only the life of the world that perishes. The Christian is one who has been given the
sap, the life, of Jesus Christ to flow within him through faith so that he
weeps—the branch weeps over sin, tears of repentance, and the sap flows and
brings forth fruit to the glory of God.
Christ is identifying Himself as the Lord and the Giver of life,
as the crucified, risen, and ascended Lord Jesus. He lives.
And only by being united to Him can a man, a woman, a child, a boy, a
girl live. “I am the true vine.”
The Lord calls us, then, to exercise our faith. “Abide in me and bring forth much
fruit.” “Abide in me,”
He says, “and I in you.” That is
a call to every child of God. That is
the call to elders and deacons, to parents, to aged, to teenagers, to boys and
girls.
Maybe you ask me, “But you said God engrafts us into Jesus
Christ. He picks us up by grace and puts
us into Christ, right? And it is all by
grace, right? And He creates within us a
desire for Christ, right? Well then, why
does He say: ‘Abide in Christ’?” Because that is faith. Because that is the work of
God in you. Because by faith He
gives you to desire to lay hold of Christ, to depend
on Christ, to need Christ, to realize that apart from Christ there is nothing
and you have nothing, that everything must be Christ.
There are many dangers for us.
When Jesus says, “Abide in Me and I in you and bring forth fruit,” He
means that there are many dangers and many threats to exactly that—threats to
cause us not to abide in Jesus Christ.
There is, of course, the threat of our pride, that awful, sinful pride
against which we must struggle day by day.
So that we begin to do things in the Christian faith, we begin to do
things in the church, out of love for self, so that others may see what we do
in order that we might receive the praise and the credit. There is also the danger of worldliness
—perhaps the worldliness whereby the things of this life become so very
important. Christ becomes less important
to us. Then there is the danger of unconfessed sin, which can stifle and destroy and wither
our spiritual life. So Jesus says,
“Abide in me.”
He goes on to say that the Father will purge us through trials,
through prunings, in order that we might bring forth
more fruit. The heavenly Father will
send into the life of His children chastisements and trials and
difficulties. The whole idea that a Christian
is one who will escape the hard things of this life is an ungodly and
unbiblical idea. It is that which is
taught by those who are not shepherds of Jesus Christ but shepherds of the
lie. Jesus says that all the branches
that belong in Him the Father will purge.
That is, He will prune them. That
means that He will take out His pruning shears, called “trial, chastisement,
difficulties.” And He will go to His
work of pruning us and bringing us into ways of trial and sorrow. Why?
Because the fruit-tree must be pruned, it must be cut back, if it is to
produce lush and wonderful fruit. Of
ourselves, we would want to go the way of the world. Of ourselves, we would want to be left in our
own ease. We want our Christian faith to
make our life easy. Should not the
Christian be on “Easy Street”? And
should not the Christian be absolved from the problems of this present
life? The Lord says, “No, it won’t work
that way. That’s not the way it
works. But I will see to it that you are
pruned through chastisement, in order that you might draw more and more and
more out of Christ. That ye bring forth much
fruit.”
That is what is spoken to the
So, any Christian who does not want to be active in his faith,
who says, “Well, it’s not important, you know. We’re saved by grace, so it really doesn’t
matter how I live.” Such a person is
revealing either a very weak faith, which is dishonoring to God, or that he
does not have faith at all. We must not
come to this word of God and say, “Well, then the church doesn’t have to be
interested in evangelism, and we don’t have to be interested in growing in
faith. It’s all of God.” No, Jesus says, “Abide in Me. Bring forth much fruit. Be active.
Abide, abound, in Jesus Christ.”
We must not live at a distance from Christ. We must not be apathetic. We must not be indifferent. We must not be complacent. We must not simply slide along with the
world. It is not OK if, as a
child of God, as a confessing Christian, you lack vibrancy and vigor and you have
nothing to say about Him. You have
everything to say about movies. And you
have everything to say about this world.
And you have everything to say about all kinds of things. But you have nothing to say about Christ in
your soul. That is not OK. That is not normal. That is dangerous. That reveals either a weak faith or no faith.
We must contend with our sins.
Abide in Christ. We must contend
with our pride. We must cast away
worldliness. We must cast away unconfessed sins. We
must confess those sins. Jesus is
saying, “Abide in Me.
Be active. Persevere—the
perseverance of the saints. Continue in Me and I in you.
Continue in the Scriptures.
Continue in prayer. Continue,
constantly, in union to Me.”
In order that God might be glorified! In order that we might
bring forth much fruit wherein the heavenly Father is glorified. Be careful that you do not disparage in the
Christian life the need to work out your faith, to work out your salvation, and
to be active in good works. Be careful that
you do not do that. Why did God, why did
the divine Husbandman plant His vine, Jesus Christ, in the soil of
Be very careful that you do not accept as orthodox this view of
the Christian life, that salvation by grace means that we do not care about
living a godly and a holy life and we are not interested in good works and good
fruits. That is a heresy. That is a God-dishonoring, unbiblical
heresy.
Why did God save us (
Eph. 1)?
He elected us eternally out of mere grace in order that we might be holy
and without blame before Him, in love having predestinated us. Why does He bestow this abundant care upon us
in Jesus Christ, giving us Jesus Christ and inserting us into Him by a true and
living faith? In order that we might
bring forth fruit. Why does He bring
chastisements and difficulties and disappointments? In order that we might bear much
fruit, that we might be pruned to bring forth much fruit. For God is glorified by the
fruit that is produced through Jesus Christ in us.
“Herein is my Father glorified, that ye bear much fruit” (v.
8). God is glorified. That is what matters, after all—what pleases
God. And this is what pleases God: that He gave His Son to be the vine and that we, by grace, united to Him, bring forth much fruit to
the honor of His name.
Is there fruit in your life?
I am not asking how much? I am
asking, Is there fruit? Is it evident that you are united to this
living vine, Jesus Christ? Is your
spiritual life shriveled and spoiled? Or
is it vibrant and healthy? Do you have a
broken heart over your sin? Do you trust
in Jesus Christ for righteousness? Do
you desire to serve God in everything that you do, that God might be glorified
in you, that Christ may be confessed?
Jesus says, “You are My disciples. I have chosen you. I am the true vine. You have been inserted into Me as living branches that you might bring forth much
fruit. Now, abide in Me. And in this way the Father is
glorified.” God grant it to us.
Let us pray.
Father, we thank Thee for the Word. Bless the Word to our hearts today, to the
honor and the glory of Thy name. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
Last modified: 4-Apr-2007