It’s likely most (if not all) the great controversies and divisions, heresies and cultic off-shoots in the Church’s long history began with a person or group rip-ping a few verses of Scripture out of context, and making them the key by which all other Bible texts must be interpreted. It’s safe to say this has probably done more damage to Christ’s name and the Church’s testimony than all the persecu-tions and martyrdoms Christians and Christianity have ever suffered.
Reading John 15:1-11 in isolation could lead less biblically-grounded Christians (whether those who are novices to or simply neglectful of God’s Word) to some false conclusions about the nature of salvation and the Christian life, not to mention God’s love, which is of great interest to us in this ‘Loving God’ series. This is because Jesus here seems to place much of the onus (burden/responsibility) for remaining in God’s favor upon the individual. He says in v. 2, “Every branch in me that does not bear fruit He (the Father) takes away.” In v. 4, “As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, UNLESS it abides in the vine, neither can you, UNLESS you abide in me.” In v. 6, “IF anyone does not abide in me he is thrown away like a branch and withers; and the branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned.” In v. 7, “IF you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask what you wish, and it will be done for you.” And in v. 10, “IF you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love.”
We all want to believe God loves us unconditionally, but there’s a lot of conditional sounding language in this passage. It seems to say that unless certain requirements are met, and if certain conditions aren’t met there’s little hope for anyone to remain in God’s good graces. Look again at v. 10, where Jesus says, “IF you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love. Just as I have kept my Father’s commands and abide in His love.” Read in isolation, without the help of context, that’s a discomforting statement! First, it doesn’t comfort sinners who know their moral weaknesses to know that Jesus kept His Father’s commands and thus abides in His Father’s love. Sure, Jesus is God’s Son, of course He can do that—He can do anything. But I mess up all the time. Secondly, it’s discomforting to think that God the Father would require commandment keeping as a condition for loving His own Son. If Jesus had to be perfect for God to keep loving Him, there’s no hope for me.
I stress context as key in understanding this passage because many take it (along with some other texts) to mean that our salvation hangs upon our personal ability to remain in God’s favor by abiding in Christ, keeping His commandments, and producing spiritual fruit—that God’s saving love is contingent on our performance or our will. This is one of Christianity’s biggest divides: is our salvation secured by and in Christ, or must we live in constant fear of falling away from grace should we fail morally and find ourselves in sin? Even worse, should we worry that we might one day decide we don’t love or believe in Jesus anymore thus forfeiting our salvation and consigning ourselves to a Christ-less eternity?
Today I want to spend the rest of our time showing you from this passage and its context how, rather than make His disciples insecure in their faith, Jesus is seeking to do the opposite. God’s gracious love is a place where we ought to feel safe and secure. Singers and songwriters may have made millions over the years musing on the tragedy of falling out of love with another person, but when it comes to God’s love for us and our faith in Christ, we don’t take our cues from Top 40 radio or any other media but from the words of His own mouth.
Jesus says in v. 1, “I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser.” It’s one of the New Testament’s most vivid portrayals of the life-giving/life-receiving relationship between Jesus and His disciples, but where does it come from? Jesus often taught in parables and His word-pictures were often drawn from every-day things that were close at hand. Think of His statement to the woman at the well in John 4, “Whoever drinks of this water will thirst again, but whoever drinks of the living water that I will give him will never thirst again.” At the end of ch. 14, Jesus says to the disciples, “Rise, let us go from here.” Go from where? The upper room. They’re in Jerusalem for Passover, and they’ve just shared a cup of wine, which, according to the other gospels, Jesus says represents His blood about to be shed for sin. And in that vineyard-rich Mediterranean locale and climate, as Jesus and the disciples make their way out of Jerusalem toward the garden of Gethsemane, He likely sees a vine and begins relating a spiritual truth about how He is the lifeline—the ‘vine’—from which we derive our life and therefore how essential it is that we remain connected to Him in order to bear fruit for His Father, the vinedresser.
The vine and branches picture of vital connection and fruit-bearing show up in all but two of these eleven verses in our English Bibles. And I want to look at these two verses because, while on first glance the other nine might make us feel a bit uneasy about the durability and security of our salvation, these two verses help us look deeper at the others and give us hope. I’ll take them in reverse order.
That Your Joy May be Full
First, the vine and branches metaphor doesn’t show up in v. 11, where Jesus ends one thought and prepares for the next, saying: “These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full.” In a verse like v. 6, “If anyone does not abide in me he is thrown away like a branch and withers; and the branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned,” some might find evidence against salvation security. But in v. 11—in the same paragraph—Jesus says that His reason for saying all of the above—including v. 6—is JOY! He doesn’t say, “Watch out; don’t get cut off and thrown into the fire.” Instead, He says, “Guys, I’ve just told you all of this because I want you to be joyful.” I don’t know about you, but the possibility of losing my salvation is not a joy-inducing thought; it’s a joy-reducing thought! If losing my salvation is a possibility I’m always going to wonder if I’ve crossed an invisible line, a point of no return. When I serve God by serving others I’m not going to do so in a spirit of joy but in a spirit of fear. Why would Jesus to close a paragraph warning His disciples about losing their salvation by saying, “Oh and by the way, I say all this to make your joy full”? That would seem a bit contradictory.
Already You are Clean
The fact that Jesus intends his words in this paragraph to boost His disciples’ joy ought to signal for us a different meaning to His vine and branch illustration than that of trying and striving to keep our salvation lest we lose it. But thankfully we have more to go on than just v. 11. The other verse in this text from which the vine and branch picture appears to be absent—at least in most of our English translations—is v. 3, where Jesus says, “Already you are clean because of the word that I have spoken to you.” In English that verse sounds out of place—what does being clean have to do with a vine, branches, or bearing fruit? The Greek helps here, because the Greek word for “clean” in v. 3 is the same as the word for “prune” in v. 2. The only English Bible that captures this is the New Living Translation in which vv. 2-3 read, “He cuts off every branch of mine that doesn’t produce fruit, and he prunes the branches that do bear fruit so they will produce even more. You have already been pruned and purified by the message I have given you.”
That, my friends, along with v. 11, destroys the lose-your-salvation, fall-from-grace, fall-out-of-God’s-love arguments that some might use this text to support. Jesus is telling the disciples who are with Him that they can be sure of their salvation, they can be sure of God’s love, they can abide securely in Jesus’ love without fear of falling away, without fear of being cut off by God and cast into the fire. Why? Because they’ve already been cleaned; they’ve already been pruned, because apparently they’ve already begun producing fruit; and all of this, as Jesus says, is “because of the word that I have spoken to you—the message I have given you.” What word, what message is that?
Here’s where we jump from the text into the preceding context. In ch. 13 Jesus gets up from the table and starts washing the disciples’ feet. At first Peter resists, but when Jesus says in 13:8, “If I do not wash you, you have no share with me,” Peter relents and says, “wash all of me!” Jesus then says in v. 10, “The one who has bathed does not need to wash, except for his feet, but is completely clean. And you are clean, but not every one of you.” In 13:11 we see that Jesus “knew who would betray him; that’s why He said, ‘Not all of you are clean.’”
Make no mistake about it, the vine and branches story is frightening, but it’s not meant to frighten true disciples. And what was it that made them true disciples? Faith! Belief in the word, the message that Jesus had been declaring from the beginning that He is God’s Son, sent from heaven to save sinners. Belief in that word and message was the fruit that His true disciples had produced and the reason why they would remain in the branch and continue to be pruned by the Father.
Judas Iscariot on the other hand was no true disciple. He may have fooled the other eleven, walking, sleeping, and serving with them for three years, but he never fooled Jesus. It’s troubling to think there may be Judases here among us, but to not think so is naïve. Such imposters have no reason to take comfort in the vine and branch metaphor, but instead have every reason to hear it and fear for their souls. Judas-like imposters aren’t in it for Jesus’ glory but for their own gain. It’s not our business to try and pick out the Judases; they’ll be exposed in God’s good time. Judas betrayed Jesus because he didn’t believe His message, His word—he never did. He saw the miracles, but wasn’t convinced. He got his feet washed but wasn’t cleaned. He shared in the supper, but the bread and wine didn’t convert him. Dear friends, Judas didn’t lose his salvation; he never had it. He’d never been cleaned or pruned by the heavenly vinedresser because he never produced the fruit of faith in Christ. He had a lot of familiarity with Jesus, but no faith in Him. He abided in Jesus for a season, but Jesus says, “Every branch in me that does not bear fruit [His Father, the vinedresser] takes away.” Judas saw Jesus’ love poured out in so many ways, but he didn’t find in the Father’s love for Jesus and in Jesus’ sharing that love with His disciples a haven of rest for his soul; instead he found what he thought was an opportunity for exalting himself.
Let the fate of Judas Iscariot be that which makes you fear this morning. Not the prospect of losing the salvation you have by faith in Christ through imperfect commandment-keeping, but the prospect of one day being exposed as an imposter who masqueraded among the people of God but was never saved at all.
Other Comforting Statements (Context)
There are other comforting statements found in the vicinity of 15:1-11, statements that assure us of the security of our salvation. Look at 14:1-3,
“Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in me. In my Father’s house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also.”
Look at 14:6-7,
“I am the way the truth, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you had known me, you would have known my Father also. From now on you do know him and have seen him.”
Look at 14:12,
“Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes in me will also do the works that I do; and greater works than these will he do, because I am going to the Father.”
Look at 14:16-17,
“I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper, to be with you until you sin so badly or so much that you fall away from God’s grace.” No! Jesus says the Helper the Father gives “will be with you forever, even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, for he dwells with you and will be in you.”
These are forever promises, folks! Why would Jesus make such promises to those who by sin or by free-will choice could fall or walk away from salvation and make a liar out of Him? Short answer: He wouldn’t!
But what about all the ‘IFs’?
I’ve tried to show you from the text and its context that Jesus wants comfort not fear for His disciples in this passage. But you may still be troubled by all the ‘IFs’ and ‘UNLESSes’—“The branch cannot bear fruit by itself UNLESS it abides in the vine… IF anyone does not abide in me he’s thrown away… IF you abide in me, ask what you wish and it will be done for you… IF you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love…” To you these may still sound like conditions that must be met in order to continue in God’s love. But thinking this way misses something about the powerful nature of our loving God’s love. Rather than keeping Christ’s commandments as a condition for abiding in His love, we need to see keeping Christ’s commandments as a demonstration of our abiding in His love. Look at 14:15. Jesus says, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.” Which comes first, keeping commandments or loving? “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.” Love precedes commandment-keeping. So rather than see commandment-keeping as a condition for remaining in God’s love, we should see love for God as the pre-existing condition of our hearts through the Holy Spirit that makes us want to show that love by keeping His commands.
Look again with me vv. 8-10 Jesus says, “By this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples.” Not ‘become my disciples’ or ‘remain my disciples’ but ‘prove that you already are my disciples.’ To whom are we proving to be Jesus’ disciples; to Jesus? To the heavenly Father? They already know we’re His disciples. To ourselves? Yes! To each other? Yes! To the world? Yes! “As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you.” The Father’s love for the Son is the pre-existing condition giving rise to the Son’s demonstrating His love to the Father by obediently coming to this earth and extending the Father’s love to us. “Abide in my love,” Jesus says, “If you keep my commandments, you will [prove that you are abiding] in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and [prove that I abide] in His love.”
Our loving God’s love has a constraining power that compels us to love Him by obeying Him. I love my children. I know that they know I love them, and I know that they love me. How do I know all this? Because they obey me—not perfectly but they try. I have to discipline them, but they try to obey me because they know they’re loved, and because they know they’re loved they prove it, imperfectly, but my love for them is bigger than their imperfections.
God doesn’t look at you and I and see imperfect obedience; He sees the perfect obedience of His Son and counts it as our obedience. Don’t fear, dear children of God, being cut off and cast out by our loving God and Father. Let your joy be full in knowing that you’re loved. And prove you love Him by dwelling in His love for you and working to improve your obedience to Christ every day.