We come now to the last of the specific “I am” statements. “I am the true vine, and my Father is the husbandman.”
The vineyard of the Lord
Both the “vine” and the “vineyard” are terms applied to the people of God. For example, Isaiah prophesied: “Now will I sing to my well beloved a song of my beloved touching his vineyard. My well beloved hath a vineyard in a very fruitful hill: And he fenced it, and gathered out the stones thereof, and planted it with the choicest vine, and built a tower in the midst of it, and also made a wine press (note the irony of Lamentations 1:15) therein: and he looked that it should bring forth grapes.” Isaiah 5:7 identifies the vineyard: “For the vineyard of the LORD of hosts is the house of Israel.” Hosea writes that “Israel is an empty vine” (Hos. 10:1.)
In Matthew 21:33-46, we see Jesus using the figure: “Hear another parable: There was a certain householder which planted a vineyard, and hedged it round about, and digged a wine press in it, and built a tower, and let it out to husbandmen, and went into a far country…” (This interesting piece of imagery is picked up later by Jesus and applied to himself, see Matt. 25:14). Jesus speaks of the various servants the “householder” sends before finally, “he sent unto them his son, saying, They will reverence my son. But when the husbandmen saw the son, they said…come, let us kill him, and let us seize on his inheritance. And they caught him, and cast him out of the vineyard (killed him outside the camp?), and slew him.” The faithless leaders of the Israel vineyard did indeed kill the faithful Son of God, but it did them no lasting good, for Jesus is the “true (real) vine.” In Jeremiah 2:21, this phrase is used to describe Israel: “I had planted thee a noble (true, real) vine…how then art thou turned into the degenerate plant of a strange vine unto me?”
God had patiently worked with the nation of Israel, making attempt after attempt to reform the nation. Jeremiah, one of the last of those prophets, recorded the “frustration” of God in these words: “I will surely consume (them), saith the LORD: there shall be no grapes on the vine, nor figs on the fig tree, and the leaf shall fade; and the things that I have given them shall pass away from them” (Jer. 8:13). Israel had borne no fruit, therefore she must be cut down. (See also Matt. 21:19.)
The husbandman
In the Isaiah passage, God planted the vine in the vineyard. God worked with that vine, He pruned it, using the Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Greeks and, in the time of Jesus, the Romans, to carry out His work. But His pruning efforts did not accomplish the results He was looking for. He at last sent His Son. His Word became flesh and dwelled among His people. Jesus had been sent to the “lost sheep of the house of Israel,” to prepare a remnant fit for God.
God nurtured His planting, “watering” it, giving it sufficient “light.” The grapes of this vine would be sweet and the vine was strong enough to support the multitude of branches that would become part of it. It would not be necessary for the Father to destroy this vine, but it would become necessary for Him to remove the branches attached to it that did not produce fruit.
Careful pruning must be done every year in order to insure a good, productive crop.
Clean through the Word
In John 15:2 and 3, there is an interesting play on words. The words involved are “taketh away,” which comes from the Greek word airo; “purgeth,” which comes from the word kathcA._w, and “clean,” which comes from the word katharos.
Airo implies a taking away or a removal; lathairo’ would thus indicate pruning or cutting off. The word lathairo’ is only used here in the New Testament, and while it does imply pruning, it does so with the idea of cleansing. The vine is pruned, thus cleansing it of an unproductive branch. Based on Jesus’ statement in verse 3, the reason the fruitless branch would be cut off, cleansing the vine, would be because the “word which (he) had spoken” had not produced any activity in that branch. The branch that had been “cleansed through the word” would produce fruit and would therefore be acceptable.
Abide in me
In John 14 and 15, the term meno or one of its derivatives is used 18 times. It is variously rendered as abide, dwelleth, be present, continue, remain, as well as the unfortunate translation “mansions” in 14:2.
The Father dwelt in the Son as completely as is possible, abiding in his emotions, intellect, understanding and knowledge. The impact of the Word on our lives, the degree that it affects our manner of living, is a reflection of the degree we have allowed the Father and Son to abide in us. The indwelling Word is the way we may be cleansed of our iniquities, both real and potential. The Word can help us overcome. We will not always be victorious; that much is certain. But we can be victorious more often than we are.
We are all drawn away of our own lusts; that is why it is imperative to allow the Word to work in our minds so sin might not reign in our mortal bodies. Down with king sin! Jesus did it; through him, we can challenge sin.
The Origin of the Organic World – Part One