Commentaries:
John 15:1-6 deals with the productivity achieved in our lives after conversion begins. This teaching begins to make abundantly clear how much we need Him. Interestingly, what Jesus teaches in John 6 about being the bread of life—which also shows how much we need Him—occurred fairly early in His ministry. The exhortation here occurs at the end of His ministry, speaking to His disciples following His final Passover observance. He confirms that what the Father desires to be produced in our relationship cannot be produced apart from Christ. This passage is a final admonition for us to make every effort to remain "in" Him, not allowing what just happened with Judas to happen to us. By betraying His Savior, Judas abandoned the responsibility imposed by the New Covenant.
For the moment, consider the beginning of the relationship. We can overlook the arresting fact that, without Jesus paying the penalty for our sins, there would be no future except for death. Without it, there would be no looking forward to a joyous and productive life in the Kingdom of God. In fact, there would be no relationship at all. Without Him providing this for us, there would be no hope at all. Could we pay the penalty for sin and continue living?
Understanding the symbolism Jesus used is helpful in grasping how much we need what Christ did and does. To glean as much as we can from this, we need to tie it to its wider context, Jesus' final Passover with His disciples. Certain references to bread are made as part of Jesus' change of the Passover symbols, which helps to tie the symbolism together with His crucifixion for our forgiveness. Paul writes in I Corinthians 11:23-24:
For I received from the Lord that which I also delivered to you: that the Lord Jesus on the same night in which He was betrayed took bread; and when He had given thanks, He broke it and said, "Take eat; this is My body which is broken for you; do this in remembrance of Me."
In John 6, bread plays an important role. It is frequently used as a metaphor for Christ Himself. I Corinthians 11 clearly ties bread, also named in John 13:18, to the giving of His body in the crucifixion. I Corinthians 11:25-26 adds:
In the same manner He also took the cup after supper, saying. "This cup is the new covenant in My blood. This do, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of Me." For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death till He comes.
This second symbol is important to grasping what Christ teaches in John 15:1-6 correctly. The vine He speaks of is obviously the grape vine. He clearly states that He is the vine and that we are the branches attached to Him. Just as grapes can be produced only by a shoot that remains attached to the vine, we can produce spiritual fruit that pleases the Father and thus be in the Kingdom of God only if we remain attached to Jesus Christ. In this illustration, all nourishment that results in fruit must come from the vine. He not only pays the penalty of our sins, but He also supplies the spiritual nourishment to produce fruit that glorifies the Father and prepares us for life in God's Kingdom.
John 8:31-32 reminds us that continuing in His Word is the key to knowing the truth and becoming free. This greatly enhances the production of fruit. Thus, if we fulfill our responsibility, we are in that sense in partnership with Him in performing our duties under the New Covenant. A wonderful additional benefit of remaining in Christ is that those who faithfully fulfill their roles are not gathered up and cast into the fire, as John 15:6 warns.
John W. Ritenbaugh
Fully Accepting God's Sovereignty (Part Four)
Grafting is the process of joining two plants together so tightly that they grow together into one. The upper branch, called a scion, is tightly bound to the trunk of another plant, the rootstock. The bark is peeled where the two plants join to expose and align the cambium, the thin ribbon of actively dividing cells that produce conductive tissue for the actively growing plant. The two plants' tightly compressed cambiums develop finger-like tissues that grow together into a grafted union.
The practice of grafting has been used to accelerate fruitfulness, improve growth rates, and increase hardiness. Three key factors will result in successful grafting:
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The first factor is compatibility. The closer the two plants are alike, the higher the success rate. One cannot take a palm tree and successfully graft it to a grapevine.
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The second factor is alignment and pressure. The two plants must remain tightly bound, and their cambiums must line up as closely as possible.
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The third factor is proper care of the graft site. The grafter must keep the joint alive, hydrated, and free of disease while the two plants grow together.
These three key success factors of a physical graft are the same elements required for a successful spiritual graft. The first, compatibility and likeness: Paul tells us, as the root is holy, so too must the branches be holy. God has called us to become holy, and if we desire holiness, we must plant holiness! Growing holiness is expensive because it costs us our complete devotion. We must learn to love—as God so loves us—sacrificing and holding nothing back! We must lay down our lives for each other (John 15:13).
The second success factor, alignment and pressure: The more tightly pressed together we are to Christ—the more we love Him and strive to emulate Him—the more aligned we are with Him and His way of life and the tighter our grafted union grows.
The third success factor, keep the joint alive, hydrated, and free of disease: It takes daily care—prayer, meditation, study, and occasional fasting—to ensure our grafted union remains active, nourished, and healthy through the Spirit of God and His living Word. These things, along with putting the things of God into practice as we learn them, help us develop and maintain the right attitude to bear much fruit. Through our strengthening grafted union to Jesus Christ, we receive the nourishment to produce the daily fruit of self-sacrificial love. This is how we become holy and pleasing to God.
We were the wild, unfruitful branches with no potential. But God the Father, the Vinedresser, called us and peeled back our thick, carnal, and sinful bark. Through the sacrificial death of our Savior and the New Covenant, He bound us tightly together in a grafted union to the holy Root. Through Him, we receive the spiritual nourishment and water of life (see Revelation 22:1) required to grow together and produce fruit.
The apostle James uses a similar metaphor of implanting or engrafting, this time in reference to God's Word: “Therefore lay aside all filthiness and overflow of wickedness, and receive with meekness the implanted [engrafted, KJV] word, which is able to save your souls” (James 1:21).
We must work harder to remain aligned with Him in all things. As mentioned, the cost of holiness is complete, self-sacrificial love. If we hold back love or forgiveness, we cannot be in Him. If we put anything in this world over our relationship with Him, we cannot be in Him. As James urges, we must repent of everything in us that is not like Christ.
We must reach out to Him with all our might and literally cling to Him! He is our everything, and without Him, we can do nothing! As we abide in Him, He abides in us. As we draw near to God, He draws near to us (James 4:8). In this way, our grafted union will grow strong as we produce the righteous fruit that pleases Him.
We are the branch of God's planting, grafted into His Family. As we humble ourselves and embrace His engrafted Word of life, we grow in union with Him, transformed into righteous, holy branches that produce the self-sacrificial fruit of love. One day soon, the branches of God's planting will inherit the land forever and glorify our great God and Father!
Bill Onisick
The Branch of God's Planting
Bearing fruit is another way to describe overcoming. Our Savior points out the impossibility of a branch producing fruit without being attached to the Vine—to Himself, Jesus Christ. He declares that without Him, we can do nothing. In other words, without the Unleavened Bread of Life (see John 6:53-58), we have no means to overcome—we are powerless both to avoid and put out the corruption of sin that leaven represents.
Putting this all together, the spiritual strength required to overcome is a result of eating the Bread of Life continually, and that Bread is available only to those whom He has delivered from spiritual Egypt. But to approach overcoming without that is to imply that we can overcome on our own—thus that we have no need of a Savior after our forgiveness. It is self-glorifying and self-righteous to focus more on our own efforts—which are necessary to the process—than on what makes our efforts possible in the first place and by whose strength those efforts will succeed.
Consider that during the exodus, God did not escort the ancient Israelites to the border of Egypt and then leave it up to them to make their way to the Promised Land and conquer it. In the same way, neither does God leave us to fend for ourselves when it comes to preparing to inherit His Kingdom and to overcoming corruption along the way. As the Potter, He is the principal craftsman of our transformation into the spiritual image He desires. The question is, do we trust Him enough to follow His lead, or will we try to find our own way?
As an example, imagine that we notice in ourselves a persistent lack of patience with others in our lives, and we want to get rid of that particular leavening. Currently, Amazon.com lists some 19,000 books on the subject of patience. High on the list is a book titled, How to Be More Patient: An Essential Guide to Replacing Impatience with Patience. It seems promising—it has received great reviews—and undoubtedly, the author has some insightful things to say. The word "patience" appears prominently in the title, and since patience is what we are lacking, perhaps we can find our solution in this "essential guide."
Yet, think it through from what God's Word reveals: Unless the author of this book has been given God's Spirit, what he is describing in its pages has only to do with the human spirit. Even the most patient, carnal person alive cannot guide us in producing the true spiritual fruit that God desires us to possess and display. The human spirit is entirely insufficient for the task.
The patience that God is developing in us is of a far higher quality than the patience that human wisdom can even grasp. So, if we ask God to help us to overcome our impatience—the right thing to do—He will not send us a step-by-step plan for us to carry out. Rather, the Author of the Book will Himself lead us into and through circumstances where He will develop His patience in us, because He is the only One who knows what true patience is. Ironically, His means of developing that fruit will not happen as quickly as an impatient person would like. It will happen on the Creator's terms, which is why we have to walk by faith while He does the work (II Corinthians 5:7).
This explains God's emphasis on overcoming, particularly in the book of Revelation. God does not stress overcoming because we have to achieve the Kingdom. There will be no glorying in His presence over our works (I Corinthians 1:29; Ephesians 2:9). Rather, God is pleased to give the Kingdom to those who are victorious through working with Him, which is the only way we can be victorious (Romans 8:31-37). Overcoming points to a smoothly working relationship with our Creator, one that will continue to work for all eternity—and that is what He desires.
The Feast of Unleavened Bread reminds us of our duty to put out sin. But even more than that, it is a joyous memorial of the spiritual deliverance that has been given and the salvation that comes through the Bread of Life that sustains us all the way through the sanctification process—as long as we continue to feast on Him.
David C. Grabbe
Why Do We Observe Unleavened Bread? (Part Two)
Once regenerated by the Holy Spirit from the Father, we must continually be led by it, bearing spiritual fruit throughout our lives. If we are producing the fruit of the Spirit, which exhibit a sound mind, we know it is working in us. The Spirit is the mind and essence of the divine nature, and through it God carries out His will. It empowers the mind to comprehend spiritual matters, producing conversion. It gives us the strength, will and faith to overcome our sins.
Martin G. Collins
The Holy Spirit
Christ came to this earth as THE BRANCH and fulfilled all righteousness, qualifying to replace Satan and rule as King over all the earth. He proved His worthiness by remaining in full accord with His heavenly Father, and bearing the spiritual fruit that makes redemption and salvation possible.
Likewise, we - whether natural or grafted in (Romans 11:17-24) - are also branches attached to the solid trunk of the tree, Christ. It is only by our abiding in Him - our attachment to Him - our close relationship with Him - that we produce any growth or godly works. As Paul writes in Romans 11:16, "If the root is holy, so are the branches." Our righteousness, works, and holiness come to us only because of our connection to Him.
Jesus says that God, in love, prunes us, chastens us, tries us, so that we become more profitable (see also Hebrews 12:3-11). He will do what He must to make us yield. But if we resist and eventually sever our connection with Him, we are fit only to be burned. God has no use for dead wood.
God wants us to use this connection to His Son to "bear much fruit," just as Jesus Christ did. Doing so proves to Him, to ourselves, and to everyone else that we are true Christians, disciples of His Son, the Branch. By this, we will glorify God and secure our place in His Kingdom.
Richard T. Ritenbaugh
The Branch
Jesus speaks about four kinds of branches: 1) those that bear no fruit, 2) those that bear fruit, 3) those that bear more fruit, 4) and those that bear much fruit. We will focus on the branches that bear no fruit. To get a clearer understanding, we need to understand a few points.
- Jesus is the vine: In the vineyard, the vine is the whole grape plant. Vineyard keepers traditionally keep the vine at waist height—36 to 42 inches. The vine ends in a large gnarl from which branches grow in either direction along the trellis.
- God the Father is the vinedresser: The vinedresser is the vineyard's keeper. His task is cultivating each branch to bear as much fruit as possible. God will do this with love (I John 4:16), for our ultimate good (Romans 8:28).
- We, the members of God's church, are the branches: In the vineyard, the branches are the vinedresser's main focus because they produce the fruit. They must be carefully tended to produce the highest quality grapes and the biggest yield.
But, what is the fruit analogous to in this metaphor? What fruit are we to bear? Tracing the words "fruit" and "good works" through the Bible results in the conclusion that they are used nearly interchangeably. We can see this in Titus 3:14: "And let our people also learn to maintain good works, to meet urgent needs, that they may not be unfruitful." Colossians 1:10 is similar: ". . . that you may have a walk worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing Him, being fruitful in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God." In practical terms, fruit represents good works or godly living. If we are not doing such things, we are like the branches that are not producing fruit.
Fruit, or good deeds, are evidence of what is inside a person. In Matthew 3:8, John the Baptist tells the Pharisees and Sadducees to "bear fruits worthy of repentance." In other words, they were to produce evidence in their actions that they had repented.
Is it possible to be in Christ yet produce no fruit? John 15:2 may seem to say that the Vinedresser cuts off every barren branch, but we need to look more closely at the words "takes away." This Greek verb, airo, actually means "to lift from the ground," "to lift so as to carry," and "to carry off." The translation "takes away" suggests cutting off, but in Greek literature, airo never means "cut off." "Lifts up" or "raises" is more correct in terms of vinedressing.
In his book, Secrets of the Vine, Dr. Bruce Wilkinson converses with a vineyard owner from Northern California, who says, "New branches have a natural tendency to trail down and grow along the ground, but they don't bear fruit down there. When branches grow along the ground, the leaves get coated in dust. When it rains, they get muddy and mildewed. The branch becomes sick and useless."
Dr. Wilkinson, thinking about John 15:2, asks, "What do you do, cut it off and throw it away?"
"Oh, no," the vineyard owner replies, "the branch is much too valuable for that. We go through the vineyard with a bucket of water, looking for those branches. We lift them up and wash them off. Then we wrap them around the trellis or tie them up. Pretty soon, they're thriving."
Are we not more valuable to our Vinedresser than branches in a vineyard? Certainly! So how does our Vinedresser lift us up? We can find an answer in Hebrews 12:5-6: "My son, do not despise the chastening of the LORD, nor be discouraged when you are rebuked by Him; for whom the LORD loves He chastens, and scourges every son whom He receives." The intervention of the Vinedresser in John 15:2 is similar to the discipline a parent gives his or her child. God is our heavenly Father, and we are His children. The two metaphors are parallel.
There are three degrees of discipline or lifting up in Hebrews 12:5-6:
- The First Degree, Rebuke: A rebuke is a strong verbal warning. When our children begin to misbehave, we rebuke them. Some parents can do this with just a look. God rebukes us by pricking our consciences through Bible study, sermons, and our interactions with each other.
- The Second Degree, Chastening: If the child does not listen to rebuke, a parent might intensify the punishment by sending him to his room, restricting his activities, or taking away his privileges. When God chastens us, we may feel anxiety, frustration, or distress. Pressures may increase at work or home, in our health, or in our finances.
- The Third Degree, Scourging: "To scourge" is to afflict with blows, to inflict physical punishment. The scourging Jesus received before His crucifixion caused Him excruciating pain. With rebellious children, a good paddling often does the trick, causing pain without injury. When God scourges us, the pressures of our chastening intensify: Instead of problems on the job, we may find ourselves without one. Instead of being merely sick, we may be deathly ill. The spouse may file for separation. Bankruptcy may loom over us.
These are our Vinedresser's ways of lifting us up and washing us off. They are godly discipline designed to put us in the right position to begin producing fruit again.
What about the rest of John 15:2? Pruning is indeed cutting, and cutting hurts. It might seem like punishment, like "lifting up," so we must distinguish between the two. The Vinedresser lifts up, disciplines, because we are not producing fruit. We have become spiritually sick and useless, so He needs to spur us to repent and return to fruitfulness. The Vinedresser prunes, however, because we are fruitful! That is when we need to count it all joy (James 1:2) and yield to His pruning shears, so that He may produce more fruit through us.
Why is fruit-bearing so essential and valuable? Jesus gives us the answer in John 15:8: "By this My Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit; so you will be My disciples." He continues in verse 16, "I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit, and that your fruit should remain." Paul echoes this in Ephesians 2:10: "For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them." We would do well to inspect our "branch" of God's work to see what fruit God can expect from our corner of His vineyard.
Clyde Finklea
The Vinedresser
Jesus Christ is our Mediator (I Timothy 2:5), the connection, the bridge, between God and us. Spiritual enablement flows from God through Him to us. God's power and God's faithfulness are the issues that are of supreme importance to us in these critical times. Are we constantly cognizant of the fact that our salvation lies in His hands? He has the power to save.
Notice how David expressed this in a psalm written during a time of serious trouble for him: "For look, they lie in wait for my life; the mighty gather against me, not for my transgression nor for my sin, O LORD" (Psalm 59:3). David feared the threat of murder in a situation in which he was innocent. Verses 9-10 carry his thoughts further: "I will wait for You, O You his Strength; for God is my defense. My God of mercy shall come to meet me; God shall let me see my desire on my enemies." Here, David's confidence rises because he believes in God's awareness and strength - which is strong enough to put down nations, let alone a small band of enemies. He also recalls God's mercy toward those who serve Him.
Verses 16-17 show that his thoughts extend one step further: "But I will sing of Your power; yes, I will sing aloud of Your mercy in the morning; for You have been my defense and refuge in the day of my trouble. To You, O my Strength, I will sing praises; for God is my defense, the God of my mercy." These final two verses summarize why he trusts God, and conclude in a strong affirmation of David's faith. He trusts God because of the combination of God's strengths, His power, combined with His mercy and His will to use them in behalf of those who trust Him.
John W. Ritenbaugh
Power Belongs to God (Part One)
In John 15:2, Christ describes two distinct actions on the part of the Father: "Every branch in Me that does not bear fruit He takes away; and every branch that bears fruit He prunes, that it may bear more fruit." These two actions are 1) taking away unproductive branches and 2) pruning productive ones. Both actions involve cutting, but the reasons for and the results of God's cutting are quite different.
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Concerning the cutting of unproductive branches, the apostle John uses the verb airo (Strong's #142), which means "to take up," "to bear," "to remove."
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Concerning the cutting of productive branches, he uses the verb kathairo (Strong's #2508), obviously related to airo. So, there is a play on words here, like "bear" and "forbear," but the airo/kathairo wordplay is not apparent in an English translation.
Kathairo means much the same as airo, but with a major difference in nuance or connotation. The emphasis with kathairo is on the cleansing that results through removal, while the emphasis with airo is simply on removal. Think of kathairo this way. When we use soap and water to wash a floor, we are removing dirt. No question about that. But more important to us is the fact that we are cleaning the floor. Of course, both removal and cleansing are taking place, but we are most interested in the consequence of the removal, that is, the cleaning.
In John 15:3-6, Christ elaborates on His Father's two actions: Removing (airo) unproductive branches and pruning (kathairo) productive ones. Concerned that His disciples understand that they are clean as a result of His Father's action, He focuses first on pruning (kathairo), keying in on its cleansing aspects: "You are already clean because of the word which I have spoken to you" (John 15:3).
The adjective "clean" here is from the Greek katharos, obviously a word closely related to the verb kathairo. It means "blameless," "pure," "clean," "free of sin and guilt." Its first use is in Matthew 5:8, "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God."
In verses 4-5, Christ continues His comments about the vine and the branches with a remarkable example of irony—irony to the point of paradox. Just how does a Christian experience cleansing? Not by separation, but by remaining unified with the Vine. Is there a contradiction between the idea of cleansing by removal (kathairo)—pruning—and Christ's admonition that we abide tenaciously in the Vine? No, there is not. It is all a question of who does what. We do the abiding, as Christ here commands that we do. God does the cutting.
The apostle Paul's comment in Colossians 3:10 (Good News Translation) points out God's role in maintaining the vitality of His people: "This is the new being [the new man] which God, its Creator, is constantly renewing in His Own image, in order to bring you to a full knowledge of Himself." The pruning-cleansing (kathairo) mentioned in John 15 is one of the ways God constantly renews or maintains the new man. It is an ongoing creative act on God's part. Through His pruning, He strengthens the committed Christian, the one who resolutely clings to the Vine. The one who "endures to the end" the trials sent his way will be saved (Matthew 10:22).
With John 15:6, Christ returns to a discussion of that other action performed by His Father, "taking away" (airo) nonproductive branches: "If anyone does not abide in Me, he is cast out as a branch and is withered; and they gather them and throw them into the fire, and they are burned." This action does not result in their cleansing, however, but in destruction. In His comments to the church at Laodicea, Christ uses an even stronger verb than airo to describe the cutting away of unproductive branches: "I could wish that you were either cold or hot! But, since you are lukewarm and neither hot nor cold, I intend to spit you out of My mouth!" Revelation 3:15-16 (J.B. Phillips' paraphrase).
The unproductive branches experience removal, suffering loss at the same time—annihilation. They do not experience cleansing. We should do nothing that would put God in a frame of mind where He "intends" to detach Himself from us—whether by vomiting us from Him or through cutting us off as unproductive branches. To avoid rejection by God, we need to abide in Christ, connected to the Vine.
That is our responsibility. We must take no action that signals to God a lapse of our clinging-commitment—no action that has the effect of separating ourselves from Him. Examples of such actions include failing to attend Sabbath services consistently or becoming remiss in daily prayer and Bible study. As we gradually become more unproductive, perhaps imperceptibly at first, we begin to droop, withering. Because of our lackluster approach—our Laodicean attitude toward God, which may initially be neither hot nor cold—God ultimately cuts us off, separating us from Himself. The result is catastrophic.
Conversely, the productive branches—those Christians committed to remaining attached to the Vine, not permitting "any root of bitterness" (Hebrews 12:15) to develop as a result of God's correction (or trimming)—experience cleansing, something far more desirable than burning. As we approach Passover, let us remember that God cleanses as He prunes. We need to be careful not to take any action that damages the fellowship we have with the Father, His Son, and each other, a fellowship made possible through enormous sacrifice on the part of the God Family.
Charles Whitaker
Pruning and Cleansing
There comes a point in the lives of all of God's children when we are brought face to face with this fact, forcing us to acknowledge our utter powerlessness and inability to carry out God's will on our own. This can be very uncomfortable and humbling, as much of this world's culture is based on ideas of individualism, personal achievement, and living life under one's own power.
So, we tend to avoid acknowledging our weakness, our helplessness, and our absolute inability to accomplish spiritual things—on our own. Our human nature is disposed to glory in what it has done and can do on a physical level, yet that nature is wholly insufficient for producing spiritual fruit. But wherever pride remains, we bristle at the suggestion that we are not up to any task. All too often, we may mentally—or even verbally—agree with Jesus' words here, but at the first opportunity, we try to do things without Him.
A strong, dramatic contrast to this appears in the example and words of Christ. We know that He was God in the flesh, and that He had all the resources of the universe at His disposal. Yet, the details and structure of that reality can easily slip from our minds. Consider this sampling of verses showing that Jesus harbored no notion that He was doing things by His own power:
» Then Jesus answered and said to them, "Most assuredly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of Himself, but what He sees the Father do; for whatever He does, the Son also does in like manner." (John 5:19; emphasis ours throughout.)
» I can of Myself do nothing. As I hear, I judge; and My judgment is righteous, because I do not seek My own will but the will of the Father who sent Me. (John 5:30)
» Then Jesus said to them, "When you lift up the Son of Man, then you will know that I am He, and that I do nothing of Myself; but as My Father taught Me, I speak these things." (John 8:28)
» For I have not spoken on My own authority; but the Father who sent Me gave Me a command, what I should say and what I should speak. (John 12:49)
» Do you not believe that I am in the Father, and the Father in Me? The words that I speak to you I do not speak on My own authority; but the Father who dwells in Me does the works. (John 14:10)
Clearly, while Jesus was in the flesh, He had no ability in Himself that was different from any other man's. He was flesh and subject to the same limitations as any other fleshy human. What He did have, though, was a perfect union with the Father, which was the source of all that He accomplished. The source of His authority, His power, His life-giving words, His rebukes, His judgments, the miracles, His responses to carnal men, His ability to submit to all kinds of evil without being overcome by it, and His willingness to be tortured and killed by His own creations—everything that He said and did was a result of His being in perfect alignment and agreement with His Father. Because He knew the Father's will, all He had to do was ask the Most High God to do something that human flesh could not, and it was done.
However, as we read, He could do nothing of Himself, making us exactly like Him in this regard. We are made to depend on God. We are made for union with Him, and nothing works properly without that. Our carnality tries to assert and maintain a measure of independence, but Jesus did exactly the opposite.
Not only did He proclaim that His Father was doing these things, but He also declared frequently that He and His Father were one. There was perfect union. In Him was no independent spirit, and consequently, the Father accomplished tremendous things through Him.
Jesus really means that without Him we can do nothing. Within the immediate context, the "doing" refers to bearing fruit that will glorify God. If we expand the context all the way back to the beginning of His discourse in John 13, we find other things He told them to do that cannot truly be done without Him. He instructed His disciples to keep His commandments, to keep His words, and to love one another as He had loved them. Trying to do those things without Christ will result in fruit that does not glorify the Father, because we are incapable of doing them correctly or fully on our own!
Consider verses 4-5 in the Phillips translation:
You can produce nothing unless you go on growing in me. I am the vine itself, you are the branches. It is the man who shares my life and whose life I share who proves fruitful. For apart from Me you can do nothing at all.
This clarifies that producing spiritual fruit is not simply a matter of believing Jesus or being forgiven through His blood. He says we will not produce anything unless we "go on growing in [Him]."
David C. Grabbe
Without Me, You Can Do Nothing (Part One)
Other Forerunner Commentary entries containing John 15:4:
Song of Solomon 2:15
Jeremiah 31:31-34
Hosea 14:6-7
Matthew 13:3-9
Matthew 13:18-23
Matthew 13:47-50
Luke 13:7
Luke 13:9
John 15:1-6
John 15:1-6
John 15:2-6
Romans 11:11-14
1 Corinthians 1:26-29
2 Peter 1:2-8
1 John 2:24
Revelation 3:7-10
Revelation 20:1-3