Hear the word of God:
"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. You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you. Remain in me, and I will remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me.
"I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing. 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. If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be given you. This is to my Father's glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples.
(John 15:1-8, NIV)
You are the vine, I am a branch
Life flows from the vine out through the branches. When Jesus calls himself the true vine, he describes our relationship with him as one of dependence. We cannot bear fruit without remaining connected to the vine. A branch by itself is nothing; the only thing to do is cut it off. A vine has a special connection with its branches, though. As long as the branches are connected to the vine, the vine sends out life to the branches
You are the vine, I am a branch
"Remain in me and I will remain in you," Jesus says, indicating the scope of that connection. The fullest realization of who Jesus is comes when we are so fully consumed and subsumed in him that we are unable to distinguish who we are apart from who he is. When we remain in Jesus and he remains in us, we know who he is at a gut-level. We have become so saturated with who he is that we know his identity deep down, in the pits of our stomachs.
You are the vine, I am a branch
This call means letting go of the pride and self-sufficiency that suffocate us. Holding to the true vine means acknowledging that he is the vine and we are branches. We cannot do anything on our own, so we must learn to abide in the vine. We cannot produce fruit without him, without the power that always flow from vine out to branches, never the other way around.
You are the vine, I am a branch
Our fruitfulness brings glory to God, and so he prunes us to make us even more fruitful. Here is yet another dimension of Jesus' metaphor - as branches, we are the agents of God's work in the world, the hands through which he touches the world. We are the fruit-bearers of the true vine, receiving life and power from the vine and bearing fruit that is visible to all. A vine does not simply bear fruit itself, it breathes life into its branches so that they can bear fruit.
You are the vine, I am a branch
Blessings,
Greg
