The Vine and the Branches Pt. 1

I am the vine; you are the branches.

John 15:5

Many of the deepest mysteries of the Christian life are revealed in Jesus’ Parable of The Vine and Its Branches. As Andrew Murray wrote, “If you would know Jesus study the vine.”

The parable features three main elements: the vine, the gardener, and the branches.

Jesus himself is the True Vine, the divine reality we seek. His purpose is to bear much fruit and through it bring the new wine of the kingdom into the world.

Every vine needs a gardener to plant, cultivate, prune and finally, to receive its fruit. Jesus wants us to know the Father is the gardener. The Father has planted Christ, the True Vine, in Earth’s soil through the incarnation. 

We, Christ’s disciples, are the branches. Here is both our humility and our dignity. Separated from the vine a branch is nothing. It withers and is cast into the fire. But united to the vine it shares in all the vine is, has, and does. Everything a vine is to a branch Christ is to us. And as the branch is dependent on the vine, so also the vine needs the branch. Without the branch the vine can bear no fruit.

This is true Christianity. It’s not merely a belief system; it’s an organic spiritual union, like that of a vine and its branches. The vine and the branch united in a fruitful relationship -- this is our promise and potential in Christ.