Don: On the face of it, this seems to be a simple metaphor about those who are saved, those who are lost, and so on. But on closer inspection, it grows more puzzling. It seems as if the purpose of the vine is to produce fruit. Fruit is apparently the key product, the key output, the focal point. The business of pruning is the supernatural work of God, as it was in the parable of the wheat and the tares. Everything is pruned—unproductive and productive branches alike. The branches play a passive role in producing fruit. The branch does not originate the fruit, and cannot survive without the vine.
How literally can this metaphor of the vine be taken? A common tendency in pruning is to prune less than is necessary. Pruning needs to be aggressive. It should be done when the vine is dormant. Vines should be pruned all the way back to the first set of branches. Only year-old branches bear fruit. For the vine to survive, it must have some leafy branches that do not bear fruit but provide nourishment. Smaller buds are sacrificed in favor of bigger buds. Does any of this have meaning in terms of the vine as a metaphor for an attribute of God?
One of the most puzzling questions is why should a branch that is “in me” (i.e., in Jesus) not bear fruit? You would think that all such branches would bear fruit. “He who abides in me, and I in him, bears much fruit” (verse 5). Is this fundamentally a judgment statement? A statement about who shall be saved? Some branches of the vine seem to be “in” and others “out” of favor. The vine is not an inclusive community. A branch that does not bear fruit is cut out, literally. Being “in him” (in Jesus) is necessary for salvation as a branch of the vine.
Isaiah told us something about vines, in the context of the children of Israel. God the vinedresser is asking: “I did everything to get a good grape harvest, but the crop failed. What more could I have done?”’
Let me sing now for my well-beloved
A song of my beloved concerning His vineyard.
My well-beloved had a vineyard on a fertile hill.
He dug it all around, removed its stones,
And planted it with the choicest vine.
And He built a tower in the middle of it
And also hewed out a wine vat in it;
Then He expected it to produce good grapes,
But it produced only worthless ones.
“And now, O inhabitants of Jerusalem and men of Judah,
Judge between Me and My vineyard.
“What more was there to do for My vineyard that I have not done in it?
Why, when I expected it to produce good grapes did it produce worthless ones? (Isaiah 5:1-4)
What does this all mean?
Robin: Perhaps “every branch in me” refers to the inner light inside each of us.
Donna: God is always pruning everyone, even those who are not in him. He prunes us Christians because he wants us to bear more fruit; he prunes unbelievers to give them a wake-up call.
Alice: I interpret the passage as saying that the branches that produce sour grapes are in Jesus but the branches that bear good fruit have the spirit of Jesus in them.
Charles: It seems to me it’s about the relationship between Jesus and his church. His being the “true” vine is a reprimand to the people of Israel who saw themselves as the vine. Their temple even had a vine on it. A relationship with God is no longer a function of one’s religion or sect or culture or tribe; it is through and in Jesus. The fruits of the vine are a metaphor for the fruits of the spirit and being “in him” means living in Jesus through faith. The faith is manifested by obeying God’s commandments. Sometimes things happen in life that are equivalent to being pruned—they are revelatory and bring one back to one’s faith in, one’s relationship with, God. We are closest to God when he is pruning us, when he is shaping us and making us able to bear fruit. There may be a judgment aspect to the story with respect to the burning of branches, though I think it may relate more to refining through fire the way that gold is refined.
Don: This is reflected in another passage from scripture:
According to the grace of God which was given to me, like a wise master builder I laid a foundation, and another is building on it. But each man must be careful how he builds on it. For no man can lay a foundation other than the one which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. Now if any man builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw, each man’s work will become evident; for the day will show it because it is to be revealed with fire, and the fire itself will test the quality of each man’s work. If any man’s work which he has built on it remains, he will receive a reward. If any man’s work is burned up, he will suffer loss; but he himself will be saved, yet so as through fire. (1 Corinthians 3:10-15)
Dave: I see fruit as action. Pruning is basically taking away the distractions and confusion that gets between us and God. We are called to act, to worship, to spread the good news, to the fruits of our faith, to help and serve other people. I read “every branch in me” as meaning that as Christians we have faith but that does not necessarily translate into action. The following passage supports this:
Even so faith, if it has no works, is dead, being by itself.
But someone may well say, “You have faith and I have works; show me your faith without the works, and I will show you my faith by my works.” You believe that God is one. You do well; the demons also believe, and shudder. But are you willing to recognize, you foolish fellow, that faith without works is useless? (James 2:17-20)
We can be a branch, with faith, with God in us, sitting in church; while not bearing the fruit of action.
Michael: How much of a branch is one person? The whole branch, or part of it? If a branch is a community of persons, then the bearing of fruit is not an individual effort but a collective one. The vine depends on the non-fruit-bearing branches for nourishment, so fruit-bearing cannot be the sole responsibility of individual fruit-bearing branches. It is not a clear metaphor, to me.
Alice: It’s not an individual effort. The roots are Jesus. He provides the nutrients from the soil. So fruit production is a joint effort between the individual and Jesus.
Dave: But if you are not willing to bear the fruit, then you will be cut.
Michael: Scientifically speaking, if a branch is getting all the nutrients then there is no problem for that branch: It will bear fruit.
Don: It is puzzling that there are branches in Jesus yet do not bear fruit. It seems counterintuitive.
Charles: It is a matter of obedience to God’s word. We have free will. We might accept Christ yet still choose our own will over his. Even with faith, without acquiescing to God’s will we cannot bear the fruit of the spirit. The vine does not necessarily need any particular branch—be it an individual or a community as big as a nation—in order to survive as a vine. The vine still has everything to offer—life, nourishment, and so on, even after pruning. The branches that fail to produce fruit and are therefore pruned are people who are not necessarily unloved or unwanted but who, by free-willed choice, are spiritually sick. By pruning, God helps them recover their spiritual journey.
Dave: How are the fruits of the spirit manifested?
Charles: Through joy, love, and so on.
Dave: Not through actions?
Charles: To the extent that one has faith and is obedient to God’s will, then the actions are that much more likely to follow.
David: If being in Jesus and him being in us means doing his will then the statement to the effect that we can ask him for anything and he will give it to us seems somewhat cynical.
Robin: Are we overthinking this? If we take the statements at their face value, in the first and second verses Jesus is talking about his dependency on his father. He then passes that along to us, which is why in verse 3 he says we are already clean.
Donna: God still allows Satan to do his evil but he prunes it.
Don: When one prunes, one cuts the fruit, but the bud remains, it still has life.
Jay: To me, this is about the responsibility we have. It’s a quid pro quo. Jesus says “I am in you” but we have to reciprocate by having him in us. The Isaiah passage continued:
“And now, O inhabitants of Jerusalem and men of Judah,
Judge between Me and My vineyard.
“What more was there to do for My vineyard that I have not done in it?
Why, when I expected it to produce good grapes did it produce worthless ones?
“So now let Me tell you what I am going to do to My vineyard:
I will remove its hedge and it will be consumed;
I will break down its wall and it will become trampled ground.
“I will lay it waste;
It will not be pruned or hoed,
But briars and thorns will come up.
I will also charge the clouds to rain no rain on it.” (Isaiah 5:3-6)
In other words, the children of Israel did not accept their responsibility for the harvest, therefore God destroyed the vineyard he had made. If “good” does not produce good fruit then it will be cut off and no longer considered good and will be burned. It’s harsh. The issue is that we always want to tie it to people, to individuals, rather than to goodness and evil. The point is that evil will be removed at some point.
Donna: And the bud is if you believe that he is in you and you are in him. That is the bud. For the non-believer, the whole branch may have to be cut off and thrown into the fire.
Dave: I would take that a step further. Not only has he prepared fertile ground for us and has life running through us but also has promised that he will keep pruning to try to get the fruit from us. Pruning is a promise that God will continue to forge and mould us.
Donna: This explains why bad things happen to good people. We are all going to suffer the pruning. If we keep that bud then we will grow and become more beautiful. If we not in the lord then we grow ugly and hateful.
Michael: A vine’s purpose is to produce fruit, so as part of the vine it’s ours, too. It’s a natural consequence. Since we are in the vine and the vine is a part of us then fruitfulness—salvation—is an inevitable natural consequence. This renders moot the Catholic-Protestant debate over salvation through faith versus through works. It’s neither. It’s salvation through being part of the vine.
Jay: It seems impossible for God not to abide in us. That just is. It’s passive. But it seems possible, through active choice, for us not to abide in God. What does that mean? That’s the big question.
Charles: It harks back to the Garden, which was a unity, with God-in-Man and Man-in God. Free will caused separation and disunity. “I am the vine” speaks to the new covenant.
Donna: This takes us back to the sour grapes in Isaiah. Yes, a vine will naturally produce grapes, but what kind of grapes? Sour grapes can happen.
Robin: Immediately preceding “I am the true vine”, Jesus said:
You heard that I said to you, ‘I go away, and I will come to you.’ If you loved Me, you would have rejoiced because I go to the Father, for the Father is greater than I. Now I have told you before it happens, so that when it happens, you may believe. I will not speak much more with you, for the ruler of the world is coming, and he has nothing in Me; but so that the world may know that I love the Father, I do exactly as the Father commanded Me. Get up, let us go from here. (John 14:28-31)
Charles: This is an example: To show your love for Jesus, you must obey his commandments, as Jesus obeyed his father. The father revealed his will to Jesus, and however bitter it was to Jesus, he obeyed. Spiritual death occurred in the Garden because of our choice, but Jesus is offering a new way, abiding in him
Jeff: Metaphors can only be stretched so far. If I were sitting listening to Jesus make these remarks, what would I take away from them? It would not be an in-depth analysis of every word. I would not hold him to that level of literalness. We have been circling around what is a pretty straightforward concept, one that would make easy sense to the agrarian audience of Jesus’s day. Today, we might choose any number of different metaphors, perhaps talking about a source of life or a source of energy and what we do with it.
Chris: To me, it’s as simple as Jesus saying: “Nobody’s perfect. Everybody needs a pruning, of the free will and of the evil in one’s life, and there is only one person who can do the pruning safely, who knows what to cut. It comes down to trusting the cutter, the vinedresser.
Don: Is it primarily a metaphor for judgment, or for fruit-bearing? Or are these the same thing?
Jeff: I see it as a metaphor for the process that is given to us. It’s God doing his work in us and lays out our part in the equation too. Judgment comes in later, when the pruner decides whether to keep you for fruit or not. As a metaphor, it has its limitations: for example, vines don’t last forever.
David: There is a process theological aspect to the metaphor if one takes the vine as God the Being and the fruit as God the Becoming. Until it bears fruit, the vine is incomplete, but once it bears fruit, it is a unity, a whole. I agree we are perhaps overanalyzing the metaphor. Vines can be overpruned and die as a result. If Satan/evil affects enough of the branches it is conceivable that the God would end up pruning it to the point of killing it. Overanalysis leads to this kind of problem.
Charles: I don’t think this is a tale of judgment. I think it is referring to the fruits of the spirit. The equation is faith + obedience. The equation of faith is Christ, otherwise the “I am the true vine” statement makes no sense. The issue boils down to free will and the challenge we face as human beings to choose our will or God’s. The master gardener is always at work on the master plan for the Garden, constantly pruning it. He foresees problems with the branches—with our lives—and with the future history of the vine and is not likely to make a mistake and overprune it.
Jeff: As a master gardener, when he is pruning the vine he has a much bigger picture than just the vine, and something to his purpose. It cuts across the idea that the individual branch bears some responsibility—the master gardener is not likely to worry about one individual branch. He’s focused on the output of the whole vineyard.
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