As we have been going through characters of the Old Testament over the past months, I thought it would be appropriate to look at the symbolism of the vine in the Old Testament. These images and scriptural references would be immediately familiar to many of the Jews at the time of Jesus.
Many scriptures refer to the nation of Israel as a vine. One example is Psalm 80, a psalm of Asaph.
You brought a vine out of Egypt; You drove out the nations and planted it. You cleared the ground for it, and it took root and filled the land. The mountains were covered with its shade, the mighty cedars with its branches. It sent out its boughs to the Sea, its shoots as far as the River. – Psalm 80:8-11
This sounds great, right? The nation of Israel was lovingly rescued from Egypt and placed into the Promised Land, a land “flowing with milk and honey.” And it multiplied and spread. But as we have been learning, the nation of Israel had problems, many problems, due to their own sin and unfaithfulness. In the book of Judges we saw the nation fall again and again due to their sin, until God would raise up a leader, a judge, to bring them to a place of repentance and restore their sovereignty. We saw the moral weakness of the people under David and Solomon, and even more so under the centuries of the divided kingdom. We did not go this far, but we know how it will end: the northern and southern kingdoms will fall. Listen to the powerful symbolism further in Psalm 80:
Why have You broken down its walls so that all who pass by pick its grapes? Boars from the forest ravage it and the creatures of the field feed on it. Return to us, O God Almighty! – Psalm 80:12-14a
We know why God did this – because the people rebelled against God. They refused to worship Him. Hosea, inspired by the Holy Spirit, also used this imagery:
Israel was a spreading vine; he brought forth fruit for himself. As his fruit increased, he built more altars; as his land prospered, he adorned his sacred stones. Their heart is deceitful, and now they must bear their guilt. The Lord will demolish their altars and destroy their sacred stones. – Hosea 10:1-2
Isaiah also used this imagery. As he begins, the “I” is likely Isaiah himself.
I will sing for the one I love a song about His vineyard: My loved one had a vineyard on a fertile hillside. He dug it up and cleared it of stones and planted it with the choicest vines. He built a watchtower in it and cut out a winepress as well. Then He looked for a crop of good grapes, but it yielded only bad fruit. – Isaiah 5:1-2
As Isaiah continues, it becomes clear that this is a parable. The “I” here is symbolic for God Himself.
"Now you dwellers in Jerusalem and men of Judah, judge between me and my vineyard. What more could have been done for my vineyard than I have done for it? When I looked for good grapes, why did it yield only bad? – Isaiah 5:3-4
Now I will tell you what I am going to do to my vineyard: I will take away its hedge, and it will be destroyed; I will break down its wall, and it will be trampled. I will make it a wasteland, neither pruned nor cultivated, and briers and thorns will grow there. I will command the clouds not to rain on it." – Isaiah 5:5-6
The vineyard of the Lord Almighty is the house of Israel, and the men of Judah are the garden of His delight. And He looked for justice, but saw bloodshed; for righteousness, but heard cries of distress. – Isaiah 5:7
The people are the “garden of His delight” – how I love that imagery. But they are a disobedient vine, rejecting the One who planted them. And because their fruit is bad, a time was to come when the vineyard would be trampled.
Jeremiah also is led by the Lord to use the symbol of a vine for the nation of Israel. In the midst of an entire chapter (one of many in Jeremiah) where the Lord laments the sin and unfaithfulness of the people of Israel, there is this:
I had planted you like a choice vine of sound and reliable stock. How then did you turn against Me into a corrupt, wild vine? – Jeremiah 2:21
Ezekiel, too, uses this imagery.
The word of the Lord came to me: "Son of man, how is the wood of a vine better than that of a branch on any of the trees in the forest? Is wood ever taken from it to make anything useful? Do they make pegs from it to hang things on? And after it is thrown on the fire as fuel and the fire burns both ends and chars the middle, is it then useful for anything? If it was not useful for anything when it was whole, how much less can it be made into something useful when the fire has burned it and it is charred? – Eze. 15:1-5
"Therefore this is what the Sovereign Lord says: As I have given the wood of the vine among the trees of the forest as fuel for the fire, so will I treat the people living in Jerusalem. I will set my face against them. Although they have come out of the fire, the fire will yet consume them. And when I set my face against them, you will know that I am the Lord. I will make the land desolate because they have been unfaithful, declares the Sovereign Lord." – Eze. 15:6-8
I have given you a lot of rather depressing verses, but these are the verses that Jews in Jesus’ day might think of when talked about vineyards. The vineyard is Israel. If such a person were honest, he or she would have to admit that the vineyard was an unfaithful Israel, in danger of being destroyed. In fact, I suspect that when a Jew in Jesus’ day heard a prophet or sage start to talk about vines, the immediate reaction might be “Oh, oh! This is not going to be a pleasant message.” The imagery of a vine was not just that of the nation of Israel, but that of the failure of the nation of Israel. Even Jesus used the vine as this symbol; on your own time take a look at Mark 12. But now let’s look at John 15, where Jesus calls Himself a vine.
"I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch in Me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit He prunes so that it will be even more fruitful. You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you. Remain in Me, and I will remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in Me. – John 15:1-4
What is the key word in that first phrase? The word true. The vine of Israel is synonymous with failure, but that is not the case for the vine of Jesus. Jesus is the true vine. Just like in English, there is a lot of depth with that word, true in Greek. Here I think it means “sure,” “unwavering,” “perfect.” In English we say, “His aim was true.” I think that gets closer to the meaning here. Jesus is the true vine.
If you remain in the vine of Israel as an attached branch, that’s not going to do you a lot of good, because the whole vine is corrupt down to the roots. That is the message of all these Old Testament passages. But in contrast, if you are attached to the true vine, this is something completely different.
The Father is the gardener. He cuts off branches that bear no fruit. My understanding of this – to mix metaphors – is that God separates the wheat from the chaff, the actual born-again believers from those who just say they are Christians for reasons that are not based on a living, life-transforming relationship with Christ. Pruning fruit trees and vines is important if you want to maximize the quality of the fruit. If you do not prune, the tree or vine may overbear, and the fruit may fall off before it reaches maturity, or it may just be of poor quality. In the same way, we must be pruned – the parts of us that refuse to walk in submission to Christ just have to go! Pruning looks bad – what you see as an immediate result is a bunch of dead and dying sticks, leaves withering, and the part of you that is left after pruning is about as attractive as a sheep that has just been shorn. But God the Father prunes out of love. He loves the vine – Jesus – and He will not permit anything inappropriate to stay attached to Him; and He loves the branches – us – and thus He will not allow us to stay as we are, when a few loving snips can make us so much better, so much more beautiful, so much more like His Son.
By the way, if a vine were left un-pruned, where would the fruit be? Much of it would be lying on the ground, where bugs and other things would destroy it. Fruit should be raised up high, safe and far away from these things. Pruning protects God’s fruit.
Half of this passage focuses on the idea of remaining in. The phrase is used four times; twice with regards to us, and twice with regards to Christ. We are to remain in Him, and then He will remain in us. “Remaining in” is the essence of the marriage vow. When we get married, we promise to remain in one another, for richer or poorer, in sickness or in health. When I became a believer, I made a promise to God. I didn’t promise to be good, because I knew I couldn’t keep that. And I didn’t promise to try hard to be good, because that seemed kind of meaningless to me. What I promised was, “I’m not going anywhere. I’m not going to run. I’m not going to forsake You. I have no power to live this Christian life, not in myself, but I do have the power to remain in You.” That’s what I promised God. And I don’t know how good my theological understanding of things was back then (actually, I do know that it was very shaky), but this was a good thing to promise God, because of what this passage says. He will remain in Me. If you remain in Him, He will remain in You. And, you will begin to bear fruit! Not out of your own efforts, but by your simple choice to remain in Him.
Note that this passage doesn’t say Jesus is the root or the base of the vine; He is the vine. The church is not the vine; even we are not the vine; Jesus is the vine. We are attached to the vine, and at the end, when the Father is finished pruning, all that will be left will be the vine, which means it will be Jesus. I’m sure this doesn’t mean that we will lose our identities, as some eastern religions teach; that is a concept totally foreign to the Bible. We will still be us, when God is finished pruning us. But the new us will be holy, perfect, Christlike in the deepest possible sense of that word. We should not fear that in the pruning process we will lose parts of us we like; what we will be – although still us – will be unimaginably better than the “us” we are now. I mean that quite literally; we are simply not able to imagine what we will be.
I think it is noteworthy that Jesus does not call Himself some other plant used symbolically in scripture. Jesus does not call Himself a cedar of Lebanon. He is not an olive tree. He is not a fig tree. He is a lowly vine. Compared to many trees, vines are not that impressive. Jesus is humble, as we are to be humble. (And God’s pruning will make us humble.) The vine can spread over vast distances – it can have much greater reach than cedar, olive tree, or fig tree. I think this is part of why Jesus chose this illustration – the gospel of Jesus, which is one of the meanings of “fruit,” can spread and is spreading all over the earth. Vines are also tough – they thrive in rocky, sandy, “difficult” soil – and the same is true of the gospel and the spread of believers – it thrives in persecution, in hardship, in trials.
Now, there is more to taking care of grape vines than just pruning. From a website on how to grow grapes:
Train your grapevine on a trellis. Training the vines to climb the trellis can be tricky. It is sometimes difficult to get the young vines pointed in the right direction. You may have to move them often in the first season to get them going where you want them to grow. Once you have worked with them, and get them growing in the right direction, they are easier to maintain.
Just like some people I know. (Actually, I mean myself.) The branches that are not pruned are also trained. And God trains us. At first we resist Him, but hopefully as we mature we learn to trust Him more and let Him work us as He sees fit. And why are we being trained? So we can bear good fruit.
Let’s talk a bit more about the fruit. What is the fruit that comes from a vine? Grapes. And what is the primary use of grapes in Biblical times and even today? To make wine. In Jesus’ day, a very weak wine was used as much as water, in part because it was safer to drink than water. And how is wine or juice made? What has to be done to the grapes? They are crushed.
In a way, the fruit of the vine is to be crushed and poured out so that others can live. To bear fruit is to be like Jesus, and Jesus is the example for us of being crushed for the sake of the lost and become wine so that others may be drink of it. If we are to take up His cross and follow Him, this is also the path for us. As we abide in Him, He will conform us to His image and produce good fruit – fruit that leads to eternal life in others.
Jesus takes every symbol and manages to be all things in it. He is both the sower and the seed. He is both the shepherd and the lamb. He is both the priest and the offering. He is both the vine and its fruit.
Let us now abide in Him and remember Him in the way He asked us to remember Him. From I Corinthians 11,
For I received from the Lord what I also passed on to you: The Lord Jesus, on the night He was betrayed, took bread, and when He had given thanks, He broke it and said, "This is My body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of Me." In the same way, after supper He took the cup, saying, "This cup is the new covenant in My blood; do this, whenever you drink it, in remembrance of Me." For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until He comes. – I Cor. 11:23-26
We do proclaim the Lord’s death! He died with a purpose – to pay the price for our sin. He died so that we could live. He died so that we could be the branches in Him, the true Vine.
From Psalm 80, the psalm that we began with today:
Look down from heaven and see! Watch over this vine, the root Your right hand has planted, the Son You have raised up for Yourself. Your vine is cut down, it is burned with fire; at Your rebuke Your people perish. – Psalm 80:15-16
Is this vine Israel or Jesus? It can be understood both ways. If the vine is Israel, although this vine has bad fruit, from its line has come the “Fruit of Fruits,” Jesus, the Son God has raised up for Himself. If the vine is Jesus, God has cut it down – He did not prevent the death of Jesus, the true Vine. And yet, although cut down, burnt with fire, He is raised up.
Let Your hand rest on the Man at Your right hand, the Son of Man You have raised up for Yourself. Then we will not turn away from You [that is, we will remain in You]; revive us, and we will call on Your Name. – Psalm 80:17-18
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