The true vine: remaining in Christ, loving one another and facing the world

Jesus speaks these words on the night he was betrayed, as part of the Farewell Discourse that runs from 13:31 to 16:33. The Gospel of John gives long speeches of this kind where Matthew, Mark and Luke give short sayings and parables. The Synoptic Gospels do use vineyard imagery, in the parable of the tenants (Mark 12:1-9) and in the saying about the 'fruit of the vine' at the supper (Mark 14:25), but only John has Jesus call himself the vine. Scholars explain the difference variously. Some hold that the evangelist reports Jesus' own manner of teaching in Jerusalem, which differed from his Galilean parables. Others, such as Raymond Brown, think the speeches are Jesus' words developed in the reflection of the evangelist and his community, guided, as 14:26 promises, by the Spirit. Either way the Synoptics and John agree on who Jesus is and what he did.

The evangelist writes that readers 'may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God' (20:31). His audience was probably mixed. He explains Jewish customs and Aramaic words for readers who did not know them, yet he assumes they know the Old Testament. The warnings in 15:18 to 25 fit a setting of tension. John 9:22 and 12:42 speak of being put out of the synagogue for confessing Jesus. Some scholars, following J. Louis Martyn, see here a rift with the Jewish community in the 80s or 90s AD. Others question how widespread formal expulsion was at that date. Whatever the answer, Jesus speaks first to the eleven who will face the same opposition as he does.

Authorship and date follow the discussion in the earlier class. The Gospel is anonymous, tradition attributes it to John the son of Zebedee, and some scholars attribute it to an eyewitness 'John the elder' or to a community tradition, usually dated about AD 80 to 100.

The vine passage is an extended figure of speech. Later in the discourse Jesus calls his teaching 'figures of speech' (16:25), and the Greek word covers images that need to be unpacked. The image gets its meaning from the Old Testament, where the vine stands for Israel, planted and tended by God and judged when it yields bad fruit (Psalm 80:8-16; Isaiah 5:1-7; Jeremiah 2:21; Ezekiel 15 and 19:10-14; Hosea 10:1). Readers should begin there and not from modern gardening or from private associations. Josephus describes a golden vine on the front of the Herodian temple, and some suggest that the figure may play on that, though the text does not say so.

In an allegory, readers have to decide how far each detail carries meaning. Here the Father, the vine, the branches and the fruit are all named, and Jesus himself explains them. Details not explained, such as the fire in verse 6, should not carry more weight than the passage gives. The main question is who the branches 'in Me' that are cut off and burned represent. The class sets out the main answers in the tradition note. A second principle is to read the chapter as a whole. The vine (verses 1-8), love (9-17) and the world's hatred (18-27) share the same pattern: the Father sends the Son, the Son sends the disciples, and the Spirit joins their witness. Fruit means, at least, love and obedience, joy, answered prayer and a mission that wins disciples (compare verses 8, 11, 12 and 16).

Verses 1–3

'I am the true vine, and My Father is the keeper of the vineyard.' 'True' (alethinos) means real or genuine, the original of which others are copies. It is not a contrast with false vines, since Israel was God's vine, but a claim to be what Israel was meant to be. The Father 'cuts off' fruitless branches and 'prunes' fruitful ones. The verbs are a wordplay in Greek: the verb for prune (kathairo) is related to 'clean' (katharos) in verse 3. 'You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you.' The same cleansing is described in 13:10 and 17:17. Some scholars think the first verb means 'lift up', as a vinedresser lifts a trailing branch off the ground to help it, but most translations render it 'cuts off'.

Verses 4–8

'Remain in Me, and I will remain in you.' The verb meno, to remain or abide, runs through verses 4 to 10 and links the chapter with 14:2 and 14:23. Branches bear fruit only by staying in the vine: 'apart from Me you can do nothing.' Verse 6 describes a dead branch gathered and burned, in the way Ezekiel 15:1 to 8 treats vine wood as useful only for fuel. The sentence says what happens to fruitlessness, not how an individual's standing is decided. Verse 7 returns to prayer, qualified by 'My words remain in you', and verse 8 gives the purpose: the Father's glory and proof that they are disciples.

Verses 9–11

The love moves in a chain: from the Father to the Son, from the Son to the disciples. 'Remain in My love' is then explained by obedience, 'just as I have kept My Father's commandments'. Jesus' obedience is not a burden but the form of his love for the Father, and he says its purpose is joy: 'that My joy may be in you and your joy may be complete'.

Verses 12–17

'This is My commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.' The measure is Jesus' own love, which he then defines: 'Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.' He is about to do this. He then changes their title: 'No longer do I call you servants... But I have called you friends.' Abraham was called God's friend (Isaiah 41:8) and Moses spoke with God as with a friend (Exodus 33:11), so the title is honourable. Yet friendship does not cancel his authority, since verse 14 says 'if you do what I command you'. The mark of the friend is knowledge: 'everything I have learned from My Father I have made known to you.' Verse 16, 'You did not choose Me, but I chose you', stresses that the initiative is his (compare 6:70 and 13:18). It also adds a purpose: they are appointed to go and bear fruit that will remain.

Verses 18–25

Jesus turns to the hostile 'world' (kosmos), here human society organised against God. 'If the world hates you, understand that it hated Me first.' The reason given is 'because of My name, since they do not know the One who sent Me'. The disciples will share their master's fate, and Jesus recalls 13:16: 'No servant is greater than his master.' Verses 22 and 24 do not say that the people would have been sinless; they say that after his words and works they are without excuse, as in 9:41. Verse 25 cites 'their Law', a phrase that shows the evangelist's distance from the synagogue, and quotes 'They hated Me without reason', from Psalm 35:19 and 69:4, two psalms of a righteous sufferer. John uses Psalm 69 elsewhere (2:17; 19:28-29).

Verses 26–27

The Advocate is 'the Spirit of truth who proceeds from the Father', whom Jesus 'will send' from the Father, and he 'will testify about Me'. The disciples also testify, 'because you have been with Me from the beginning'. That qualification of eyewitness presence matches Acts 1:21 to 22 and 1 John 1:1 to 3.

Several doctrines meet in this chapter.

• The first is union with Christ. The New Testament speaks often of being 'in Christ' (Romans 8:1; Galatians 2:20), and Paul's picture of the olive tree in Romans 11:17 to 24 also has branches cut off and others grafted in. John's account differs in picture but not in point: life and fruit depend on connection to him.
• The second is the relation of grace and fruit. Branches do not produce fruit by effort (verses 4 and 5), yet Jesus commands them to bear it and to obey. Galatians 5:22 to 23 calls the same fruit the Spirit's.
• The third is God's initiative in love and election: the Father loves the Son, the Son loves the disciples, and he chose them (verse 16).

A fourth is the church's relation to the world. Hostility is neither accidental nor a sign that something has gone wrong (compare Matthew 5:10-12; 2 Timothy 3:12; 1 Peter 4:12-14). A fifth is witness. Testimony is both the Spirit's work and the disciples' work, and the two are joined in Acts, where the apostles witness in the Spirit's power (Acts 1:8; 5:32). Finally, the commandment to love one another, repeated in verses 12 and 17, runs through the New Testament as the sign of discipleship (13:34-35; 1 John 3:11-18).

Here Christ is not a shadow but the one speaking, and he claims to fulfil the Old Testament picture of Israel as God's vine. The vine of Psalm 80 and Isaiah 5 failed to bear the fruit its keeper looked for. Jesus is the vine that does not fail, the faithful Israel in whom God's people now live. Matthew makes a related move when he applies Hosea 11:1, God's call of his son out of Egypt, to Jesus (Matthew 2:15). A more tentative echo is Psalm 80:15 to 17, where the vine is joined to a son of man whom God made strong; John's readers may have heard the phrase in his own title.

He is also the one who loves to the point of death. The words about laying down one's life for friends in verse 13 point to the cross, and John gives them again in 10:11 and 10:17 to 18. The New Testament elsewhere reads the cross as the proof of love (Romans 5:6-8; 1 John 3:16). And he takes to himself the words of the psalms. Jesus applies 'They hated Me without reason' to himself, as the righteous sufferer of Psalm 35 and 69, and John says explicitly that this fulfils what is written. Finally, he is the one who sends the Spirit from the Father, a function no mere teacher could claim.