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
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
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
Other Forerunner Commentary entries containing John 15:6:
Song of Solomon 2:15
Hosea 14:6-7
Matthew 13:3-9
Matthew 13:18-23
Luke 13:7
1 Corinthians 1:26-29
2 Peter 1:2-8
