"I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser. Every branch in me that does not bear fruit he takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes, that it may bear more fruit. " (John 15:1-2)
A vine is planted solely for the sake of its fruit. There are many sorts of vines, each with its different sort of fruit. When a vinedresser plants a vine or a vineyard, he selects the type that produces the desired fruit. The fruit will be the manifestation of his purpose. When God planted the Heavenly Vine, it was that its fruit might bring life and strength to dying men. The very life of God, which man had lost by the fall, was to be brought back to him by Christ from heaven; Christ was to be to us the True Tree of Life. In Him, the True, the Heavenly Vine, in His Word and work, in His life and death, the life of God was brought within reach of men; all who should eat of the fruit should live forever.
More wonderful still, Christ's disciples should not only eat and live, but in turn become fruit-bearing branches. The Divine life entering into them should not only dwell in them, but so assert its life-giving power that it should show itself in the fruit they bear for their fellow men. As truly as the Heavenly Vine, all its branches receive the life of God.
I. The Life in the Vine
We often speak of receiving Christ, following Christ, of Christ living in us, when our ideas of who Christ is are very vague. Christ gave Himself as a sacrifice to God for men, and in that proved what is the true nobility of man as partaker of the Divine nature. We speak, and rightly too, of the obedience of Christ as the praiseworthy cause of our salvation: "By the obedience of One many were made righteous." But we do not sufficiently recognize what it was that gave that obedience its redeeming power. It was this—that in it Christ restored that which is the only thing that the creature can render to its Creator, and so rendered to God what man owed to Him. It is because of this obedience He became a Redeemer, and this nature is the very life which as the Heavenly Vine He imparts. "Let this mind be in you, which was in Christ Jesus, who became obedient unto death. Therefore God has highly exalted Him." The life of God in human nature is obedience to the death.
And with that Christ loved men. In that He fulfilled the will of God. He gave Himself to the mighty Redeeming love of God towards men, and so gave Himself as much to men as to God. There is no possible way of living for God but by loving and living for the men whom He loves and lives for. The human life in Christ could be nothing but a surrender to His love to be used in saving and blessing men. Whether in God, or in Christ, or in us, the Divine life is love to men. This is the life-sap of the True Vine, the spirit that was in Christ Jesus.
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