I am the vine; you are the branches.
If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit;
apart from me you can do nothing.
If you do not remain in me, you are 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 done for you.
This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit,
showing yourselves to be my disciples.
J O H N 1 5 : 5 – 8
Reading this passage, it can be easy to dwell on the importance of abiding for the sake of bearing much fruit. And while that is a really great thing for us to remember, and a vital part of being distinguished as disciples of Jesus, becoming too fixated on how much fruit there is
I don’t know about you, but too often, I find myself focusing more on the quantity of fruit I’m producing than the actual quality of the fruit – or the fact that I actually cannot produce any fruit on my own.
Thankfully, the gardener or vinedresser, is actively involved in the cultivation and caring of the vine.
Jesus wasn’t the first person to refer to God as a vinedresser! The prophet Isaiah actually wrote about this too:
“Let me sing for my beloved
my love song concerning his vineyard:
My beloved had a vineyard
on a very fertile hill.
He dug it and cleared it of stones,
and planted it with choice vines;
he built a watchtower 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)
An interesting fact I learned while researching this passage was that sometimes, the vinedresser will actually remove the fruit from a branch if it is unhealthy!
“It’s not because I’m mad at the branch or because something wrong was done,
it [pruning the fruit] is simply the thing that needs to happen for
the health to be restored to the rest of the plant.”
– Dave the Vinedresser
Even though God as the Beloved Vinedresser in Isaiah 5 had done everything right and given exactly the best conditions for the vine to thrive, the result was still wild (or sour) grapes.
Sometimes in our own lives, we go through seasons where the “fruit” or the things we’re producing, need to be set aside in order for us to re-establish a healthy connection to the vine, the True Vine, Jesus.
Although we have loads of grapes growing in my backyard, they are incredibly sour! (Rachelle and Josh Siu can confirm this fact) And it makes for a helpful reminder for me as I look out at all these, essentially, useless grapes, to remember to check my own heart and to consider the fruit of my life.
- Are the fruits my life produces healthy fruits that have grown from abiding in Jesus?
- Do they look like love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control?
- Am I willing to set aside the quantity of fruit for a season in order to focus on the quality of relationship that is growing?
Jesus shows us such a beautiful example of humility in this imagery of him as the vine. He connects us to the earth and feeds us the nutrients we need and keeps us connected to His Father, the Vinedresser. Because of Jesus being the vine, we as branches get to bear fruit… all for the glory of his Father!