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Jesus The True Vine (John
15: 1-6)
by T.V. Philip
T. V. Philip, born in India and a lay member of
the Mar Thoma Church, has worked and
taught in India, Europe, USA and Australia. He
is a church historian, and a former Professor
at the United Theological College, Bangalore,
India.
The following appeared in The Kingdom of
God is Like This, by T.V. Philip, jointly
published by the Indian Society for
Promoting Christian Knowledge and
Christava Sahitya Samithy (CSS), Cross
Junction, M.C. Road, Tiruvalla-689 101,
Kerela, India. The material was prepared for
Religion Online by Ted & Winnie Brock.
SUMMARY
All the synoptic gospels record that Jesus
spoke of Israel as God’s vineyard. The
parables make it clear that God cared for his
vineyard and how disappointed he was that it
didn’t produce the expected fruit. In the
fourth gospel, Jesus is the true vine and we
are the branches.
John 15: 1-6
I am the true vine, my Father is the
vinedresser. Every branch of mine that
bears no fruit, he takes away, and every
branch that does bear fruit he prunes,
that it may bear fruit. ... I am the vine,
you are the branches. He who abides in
me, and I in him, he it is that bears much
fruit, for apart from him you can do
nothing. If a man does not abide in me,
he is cast forth as a branch and withers;
and the blades are gathered, thrown
into the ?re and burned
St. John uses different metaphors to
describe the person of Christ. He is the bread
from heaven, he is the living water and so on.
In chapter 15, he is described as the true vine.
Our relationship to Jesus is stated in terms of
vine and branches. Only as we abide in him,
we bear fruit.
In the Old Testament, the metaphor of vine
and the vineyard is used quite often to
describe Israel. Israel is the vine which God
has planted. In Psalm 80, the psalmist says to
God:
Thou didst bring a vine out of Egypt;
thou didst drive out the nations and
plant it. Thou didst clear the ground for
it; it took deep root and ?lled the land.
The mountains were covered with its
shade, the mighty cedars with its
branches; it sent out its branches to the
sea, and its roots to the river. (Psalms
80.8-11)
For Isaiah, Israel is the vineyard. He says:
Let me sing for my beloved a love song
concerning his vineyard: My beloved
had a vineyard on a very fertile hill. He
digged it and cleared it of stones and
planted it with choice vines; he built a
watch tower in the midst of it, and
hewed out a wine vat in it; and he
looked for it to yield grapes, but it
yielded wild grapes. (Isaiah 5: 1-2)
Jeremiah speaks of Israel as a vine when he
says, "Yet I planted you a choice vine, wholly
of pure seed". (Jeremiah 2:21) The prophets
wonder why after all the trouble God took to
bring the vine out of Egypt and carefully plant
it and care for it, that God’s choice vine could
become bitter and produce only wild grapes.
"When I looked for it to yield grapes, why did
it yield wild grapes?" In the book of
Deuteronomy it is said, "For their vine came
from the vine of Sodom, and from the eelds
of Gomorrah; their grapes are grapes of
poison, their clusters are bitter; their wine is
the poison of serpents and the cruel venom
of asps."(Deut. 32: 22-33)
Therefore God’s judgement comes upon his
choice vineyard:
And now I will tell you what I will
do to my vineyard. I will remove
its hedge, and it will be devoured;
I will breakdown its walls, and it
shall be trampled down. I will
make it a waste; it shall not be
pruned or hoed, and the briars
and thorns shall grow up;... For the
vineyard of the Lord of hosts is
the house of Israel, and the men
of Judah are his pleasant planting;
and he looked for justice, but
behold bloodshed; for
righteousness, but behold a cry!
(Isaiah 5:5-7)
All the synoptic gospels record that Jesus
spoke of Israel as God’s vineyard (Matt.
21:33-41, Mark 11: 142, Lk. 20: 9-19). The
parables make it clear that God cared for his
vineyard and how disappointed he was that it
didn’t produce the expected fruit. In the
fourth gospel, Jesus is the true vine and we
are the branches. Here again the emphasis is
on producing good fruit. The condition for
producing good fruit is that we abide in the
vine. The branches which do not produce
fruit are cut off and burned.
St. Ephrem, the great theologian and poet of
the Syrian church in the fourth century, has a
number of hymns on Jesus Christ as the true
vine and us as branches. He also speaks of
Jesus as the grape. He says:
This is the branch which bent
down its fruits to the thankless;
they ate and were full but turned
and insulted it. Yet it bent down,
even to Adam in the midst of
Sheol.... Blessed is he who bent it
down to us for us to grasp and
ascend by it.
Then the metaphor changes:
Blessed be the shepherd who
became the lamb for our
atonement, blessed be the vine
shoot which became chalice for
our salvation, blessed be the
grape, the source of medicine of
life.
Jesus Christ is the vine who has bent down
his fruits for us to eat and be elled. He is the
vineshoot and the grapes that became wine
in the chalice for us to drink. He is crushed so
that others may drink of him and live. This is
what it means to produce good fruit.
• In the Acts of Thomas, an apocryphal book
about the travels of St. Thomas in India,
Thomas prays, "I have planted the true vine in
the land. May it cast out its roots
downwards".
• In the Old Testament, Israel is the vineyard
of God expected to bear good fruit, but which
failed its creator.
• In the New Testament, Jesus Christ is the
true vine and the believers are the branches.
They are also expected to bear fruit.
To bear fruit is to allow ourselves to be
crushed for the sake of the world, and
become wine in the chalice so that others
may drink of it.
To bear fruit there is one condition: abide in
Christ. "Abide in me and I in you", says Jesus.
It is an interpersonal relationship where the
believer is in Christ and Christ in us. It is to
follow the footsteps of Jesus Christ who is
both the shepherd and the sheep, the farmer
and the wheat, the vine shoot and the wine in
the chalice, the sacriece and the sacriecer.
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