John 15:1 - Exposition

The vine of the Lord of hosts ( Psalms 80:1-19 .) brought forth wild grapes ( Isaiah 5:1-30 ., Ezekiel 19:10 ); Israel became " an empty vine" ( Hosea 10:1 ). The failure of Israel to realize the ideal leads our Lord, as the true Israel of God, to say, I am the veritable (or, ideal ) vine , including (as the context shows) in the idea of his complete Personality all the branches that derive their life from him. I with the branches, I involving my relation to the branches, and theirs to me—I as the Life-principle of humanity, together with those who are living in me—constitute and are the veritable vine of prophecy, the true Israel of God. So that this passage, from John 15:1-10 , denotes and expounds with all detail the idea elsewhere expressed by the head and the members of a body. Sometimes the idea of the parts predominates over the idea of the unity, and sometimes the unity triumphs over the parts; but in the relation between Christ and the people of his love they are often lost sight of in him, and he becomes the only Personality. The "I" of this passage is not that of the eternal Loges, nor is it the mere humanity, nor is it simply the Divine-human Personality, but the new existence which, by union with him, formed one personage with him,—the believer being united to him as he to the Father. My Father is the Husbandman , not simply the ἀμπελουργός , or vinedresser, but also γεωργός , the owner of the land as well. It is a term applied in connection with the traditional significance of the vine to the head of the theocratic family. In Isaiah 5:1-30 . it is the "Lord of hosts;" in 2 Chronicles 26:10 and in the parable of the vinedressers it is applied to the rulers of the people. The Arians were wrong in concluding from this a difference of essence between the Father and Son. The vine dearly includes the branches; and the owner of the vineyard, who is also the dresser of the vine, deals here with the whole reality. All, however, which the Husbandman is said in 2 Chronicles 26:2 to effect is the taking away of the fruitless though proud branch, and the cleansing and gentle pruning of the branch that beareth fruit. Now, Christ, as the Son, has all judgment committed to him, and, as the great Organ of Divine providence and rule in the Church, he is the Administrator of discipline. Christ is not disclaiming the operations which he in other places assumes, nor representing his own Personality as perfectly passive in the matter, but he is claiming for Jehovah of hosts the same relation to the true vine as he sustained to the degenerate vine of the old covenant; but he calls him "my Father." Alford says, "The material creations of God are only inferior examples of that finer spiritual life and organism in which the creature is raised up to partake of the Divine nature" (see Hugh Macmillan, D.D., 'The True vine').