The Vine and the Branch (2 of 2)

Augustine preached an extended series of sermons on John 15. His central concern is to keep the doctrine of grace intact against every tendency to make the connection the believer's accomplishment. The branch does not graft itself, Augustine insists. The branch cannot, by any effort of its own, attach itself to the vine. The grafting is the work of the vinedresser, and the bearing of fruit is the work of the vine through the branch that has been grafted. The branch's part is to remain.

Cyril of Alexandria, in his commentary on John, makes the same point. The union of the branch with the vine is not a moral resemblance or a judicial assignment. It is a real union, achieved by the Spirit, in which the life that flows through the vine actually flows through the branches. The branch does not imitate the vine. The branch shares the vine's life. The fruit is the vine's fruit borne in and through the branch.

There is one feature of John 15 that often gets handled clumsily, and it is worth slowing down for. The Father, Jesus says in verse 2, prunes every branch that bears fruit so that it may bear more fruit. Pruning. The verb in the Greek is kathairo — to cleanse, to clean, to clear. It is what the vinedresser does with a knife in the early spring, cutting back branches that have borne fruit so that they will bear more in the season to come. It hurts the branch. It also makes the branch more productive. Note the precision of who gets pruned. Punishment is for the unfruitful, as verse 6 makes clear. Pruning is for the fruitful. The disciple who is suffering and cannot see why is sometimes — not always, but sometimes — being pruned. The cutting back is not a sign that the connection is broken. It is a sign that the connection is producing enough that the vinedresser is making room for more.

This is the answer to the question that probably troubles the abiding disciple more than any other. Why am I suffering if I am connected? The answer in John 15 is that the connection does not protect the branch from the knife. The connection means the knife is in the hand of the One who loves the branch and who is shaping it for fruit it cannot yet imagine. The branch cannot see the next season. The vinedresser can.

The fruit itself has a list. Paul gives it in Galatians 5:22-23. The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Note that it is fruit, singular, with nine attributes. Not fruits. One fruit, with multiple aspects. And love is named first. Love is what the Spirit produces first in the one He indwells because love is the essence the Spirit is the personal existence of, and the other eight characteristics are what that love looks like when it is working itself out through a person's whole disposition.

The fruit is not the disciple's accomplishment. This is the place where most Christians get tangled up. The disciple looks at the list and reads it as a job description. Now go produce these things. The branch reading the list and trying to produce sap by an act of will is a tragic picture, and it is the picture of most attempts at the Christian life in the modern West. The list is not a job description. The list is a fruit report. The fruit appears where the branch is connected to the vine and is remaining there. The disciple's part is to remain. The fruit is the vine's work through the branch.

This is the difference between Christian abiding and every form of religion that puts the burden of productivity on the person. The religious person, looking at the list of fruit, asks the question: how do I produce this? The abiding disciple asks a different question. The abiding disciple asks: where am I disconnected? Because where the disciple is connected, the fruit is what happens. Where the disciple is disconnected, no amount of trying produces it. The question is not how hard the disciple is working. The question is whether the disciple is remaining in the place the Spirit has grafted him.