The Unique Jesus (7):I am the True Vine
- Rev Norman Cameron

We come to the last of the seven I am statements of Jesus. In this series we have drawn attention to the uniqueness of Jesus. Of all religious leaders he is the only one who claimed to be the Son of God, both fully human and fully divine; of all the leaders he is the only one who claimed to be perfect and sinless; of all faith leaders he alone claims to be alive today and dwelling in his followers by his Spirit. Jesus is unique, he is the one and only, there is no-one like him. He put himself on the same level as God. He used the name of God – the I am – to refer to himself.

He is the bread of life – just as bread was the staple physical food of people then and now so he is the bread of spiritual life that we must eat if we are to live eternally. He is the light of the world who dispels the darkness of unbelief and opens eyes blinded by sin. He is the doorway through whom we may enter into God’s pasture and he is the shepherd who leads us and lays down his life for the sheep.

He is the resurrection and the life – the one who has conquered the last enemy, death, and who was raised and promises to us that what happened to him will happen to those who trust in him. And then last time we saw that he is the way the truth and the life – he is the way to be followed if we want to reach God, he is the truth to be believed if we want to know God, he is the life to be lived if we want to live life to its fullest.

When we add these claims and statements together we cannot ignore this man called Jesus Christ. We are driven to one of two conclusions – either he was mad or he was the messiah; either he was the liar of liars or he is the Lord of Lords. We cannot have any half way houses with Jesus of Nazareth. He must be dismissed as deluded or he must be worshipped as God.

This is what John in his gospel wants us to consider. He wants to present the evidence so that we may fall down as Thomas did as he saw the nail pierced hands of Jesus and say “My Lord and my God.” (Jn.20:28) for John wrote his gospel “that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.” (John 20:31)

And so today I want us to focus upon that life as we consider the last of the seven I am statements of our Lord. In John 15:1 Jesus says “I am the true vine”. What did he mean by this?

The Culture

Well we should first remember that vines and grapes were important in this culture. Vines were common because with no clean water supply wine was the only general drink which it was safe to drink. The wine was usually fermented for two to four months and was probably not as strong as our wine tends to be today. Also it was often watered down three parts water to one part wine – this seemed to have been the custom at the Passover meal for instance. As well as being the customary drink at meals it was of course used at wedding feasts, coronations and other religious celebrations.

An abundant harvest of grapes and good wine was taken to be a sign of God’s blessing but of course the Bible in both testaments condemns drunkenness. So as Jesus said I am the true vine he was surrounded by a vine growing culture. Was he saying something similar to what he said in his first saying – I am the bread of life? Is he again taking a staple part of the middle eastern diet and saying just as you need to drink to live physically so you need me to live spiritually. Just as the wine refreshes your thirst and brings some pleasure into your lives so I am the true vine, I refresh parts that wine cannot reach. I refresh your soul, I gladden the heart. Is this what he was communicating also in John 2 where he turns water into wine?

He asks the servants to fill six large water pots each holding between 16 and 24 gallons. His wedding gift to this couple and their families was between 96 and 144 gallons of wine – good quality wine we are told. What a wedding gift.

Something else I want you to notice is that the first I am statement is I am the bread of life, the last I am statement is I am the true vine. Now what did Jesus give to us as the sign that we are to use to remember his death. He gave us bread and he gave us wine, and he said this is my body broken for you, this is my blood shed for you. Here is all that Jesus offers us encapsulated by bread and by wine. He gives us his life; and as we take that life, as we take him into ourselves through faith we find that we too shall live.

So Jesus is saying to his culture, and to ours, I ought to be as central to you as eating and drinking. I am necessary for fullness of life.

Old Testament

The other background to this saying of course is in the Old Testament as we have seen with some of the other sayings. The vine was a common symbol for Israel. In Psalm 80:8f it says “You brought a vine out of Egypt; you drove out the nations and planted it. You cleared the ground for it and it took root and filled the land.” It then goes on to speak about the vine being under God’s judgement and it ends with a prayer that God would restore it. God has punished the vine for its waywardness and unfaithfulness.

In Isaiah 5 again we have a picture of judgement and disappointment in the vine. “I will sing for the one I love a song about his vineyard. My loved one had a vineyard on a fertile hillside. He dug it up and cleared it of stones and planted it with the choicest of vines. Then he looked for a crop of good grapes, but it yielded only bad fruit….Now I will tell you what I am going to do to my vineyard: I will take away its hedge, and it will be destroyed. I will break down its wall and it will be trampled. I will make it a wasteland, neither pruned nor cultivated and briers and thorns will grow there.”

Here we see God’s utter disappointment with Israel – his vine. But in the same prophecy of Isaiah we also hear these words of hope. Isaiah 4:2 - “In that day the Branch of the Lord will be beautiful and glorious, and the fruit of the land will be the pride and glory of the survivors in Israel.” Or in Isaiah 11:1 - “A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse, from his roots a branch will bear fruit. The Spirit of the Lord will rest on him – the Spirit of wisdom and of understanding.”

The Jews of Jesus’ day were familiar with these prophecies. God would not forsake his vineyard – one was coming who would rise out of the tree stump of Jesse, who was King David’s father. Jeremiah 23:5 “The days are coming declares the Lord when I will raise up to David a righteous branch, a King who will reign wisely and do what is just and right in the land…This is the name by which he will be called. The Lord our righteousness.”

In summary – the vine of the Jewish people had been planted and nurtured by God. But it had forfeited its privileges and had been pruned severely and many branches had been thrown away. But a remnant, a stump survived and out of that stump a new shoot was springing up, a true vine, a true Israelite who would live as Israel should have lived. And Jesus said - “I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful.”

Can you imagine the impact this would have had on a first century Jew for whom the image of the vine was so important. An image that used to be on the back of some of their coins, an image that was found carved in gold leaf at the temple. Jesus is saying I am the true vine and you had better become attached to me for in me is life God wants you to live, and in me is the fruitfulness that you need to bear. “You cannot bear fruit unless you remain in me…apart from me you can do nothing.”

Abiding in Jesus

So how does this apply to us today? The key is that we are to abide in Christ by faith. You see Jesus abides, or remains, in the Father and he calls us to remain in him. As the life of the Father is in the Son so he wants that life to flow through him into us. But for that to happen we need to be grafted into Jesus which happens as we trust in him by faith. The word abide or remain appears 11 times in 16 verses here. Jesus is emphasizing the vital importance of relating to him if we are to achieve anything of spiritual and eternal value, if we are to have life as God intended us to have life or achieve anything of kingdom importance.

Note he says “If a man remains in me and I in him he will bear much fruit, apart from me you can do nothing.” Nothing is an extreme word. It is an all encompassing word. It is a scary word. He did not say such a life achieves only a little, or a bit. No he said nothing. That’s a bit extreme.

How would you like your life to be summed up by someone saying he lived on this earth for seventy years but he achieved nothing. Jesus of course is talking in kingdom terms. He is talking about doing that which is worthwhile in God’s eyes. He is talking about so living our lives that God is at the centre and all that we do is flowing from that centre and with the purpose of glorifying God.

You see many are living lives that have no room for the one who created them; what would God say about a life which was created firstly to love God, to enjoy God, to relate to God, and to fulfil the purposes of God for the generation in which we live but which is not connected to God. What about a life where God should be central, but at the centre is everything except God. Where God should be there is a blank – there is nothing.

What about a life which tries to produce fruit in its own strength, which tries to manufacture or make fruit when fruit is something that is usually grown? Such a life just produces plastic fruit, an imitation which looks ok from a distance but up close is seen to be fake.

This is scary. Jesus says “If anyone does not remain in me he is like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned. This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples.”

And this is the nub, the point of life is it not? The catechism asks what is man’s chief end or purpose? Man’s chief end is to glorify God and enjoy him forever. Now if that is our chief purpose for being here perhaps we can see that if we do not abide in Jesus, as Jesus abides in the Father, then when it comes to the chief reason for being here we can end up by achieving nothing of significance.

Here is another reason why Jesus is unique. I cannot think of anyone who would say unless you are rightly aligned to me, trusting in me, abiding in me, then your life will count ultimately for nothing. That is so extreme. There is a lot at stake here. In other words this seems to be saying our relationship to Jesus determines the worth of our lives. This is so because our relationship to Jesus determines the glory that we give to God. When we are attached to the true vine then we produce fruit that brings glory to God, fruit that will last (Jn.15:16).

Which leads me to my final point. The job of the vine is to produce fruit – grapes. That is the natural outcome of the vine. We do not need to struggle or strain. If we are abiding in Christ a natural outcome is that we will produce good fruit. The more we abide the more we produce fruit. Jesus is saying that a natural outcome of being attached to him by faith is that we naturally produce lasting fruit. What kind of lasting fruit? The fruit of good deeds but also the fruit of good character – supremely the first fruit of the Spirit which is love – “my command is this love each other as I have loved you” (Jn.15:12).

Our responsibility is to abide, to remain, to get close to Christ by trusting him, by reading his word, by prayer and through the other spiritual disciplines. Once we do this the fruit will naturally follow.

The idea of the vine is a brilliant image because it speaks of something living. We have a living relationship with Christ. Church and the Christian life is not so much an organization as it is an organism. The key to Christianity is relationship, if you don’t have relationship with God you have nothing.

Not only does a vine speak of something that is living but also something that is growing. God wants us to grow and through nurture and sometimes through pruning, which can be painful, God aims for growth and fruit. This is the point. And if we do not abide we will be abandoned.

Jesus is God, the great I am, the word made flesh who lived, who died, who rose again. Today he invites us to be joined to him, to be in Christ and to bear much fruit which is to the Father’s glory.