John 15:1 Commentary and Bible Study

We may turn back to Psalm 80 as an example of where this parable of the vine is used in the Old Testament. ‘Thou hast brought a vine out of Egypt; thou hast cast out the heathen, and planted it. Thou preparest room before it, and didst cause it to take deep root, and it filled the land’ (Psalm 80:8-9). So the vine is the children of Israel, and God has planted them in ancient times, in a land of their own. Verse twelve: ‘Why hast thou then broken down her hedges, so that all they which pass by the way do pluck her?’ It is an illustration. Why has so much misfortune befallen Israel? Well, it was because of their disobedience and their idolatry. But then verse 14: ‘Return, we beseech thee, O God of hosts: look down from heaven, and behold, and visit this vine; and the vineyard which thy right hand hath planted, and the branch that thou madest strong for thyself. It is burned with fire, it is cut down; they perish at the rebuke of thy countenance’. And in the 17th verse: ‘Let thy hand be upon the man of thy right hand, upon the son of man [a title for Christ] whom thou madest strong for thyself.’ Here is one of the prophecies of Christ. The vine will be restored because Christ will be the true vine. The same picture occurs in Isaiah 5, Jeremiah 10:21, and Hosea 10:1 where God warns the nation that he will ultimately abandon them. The people of the Old Testament, the Israelites were the pleasant plant, but they forfeited that and they fell. And here is just a little insight into the doctrine of the covenant. Back in the Garden of Eden God made a covenant with the human race, which we call the covenant of works. God said to man in effect, if you will obey me and trust me, then I will bless you, and I will give you everlasting life, and I will be your God and you will be my people. God for his part would give life and blessing. Mankind in Adam and Eve for its part would obey and trust, but the covenant was smashed, possibly on the very first day, the same day that it was made. The covenant was broken and man disobeyed, and fell into sin, and the whole human race with our first parents. God immediately announced another covenant. Actually, it was the oldest one because it existed in the mind of God in eternity past. This covenant was different in that it would not be between God and man, because man would always fail like he failed the first time. The covenant this time would be between the members of the Godhead, the Father and the Son. The Father would say to the Son, I will give you a people for your own possession, for all eternity, over whom you will rule, and give life and glory and blessing. If you for your part will go into their world, and take human nature, and be their representative, and under great provocation live a life of such abundant righteousness, so that your righteous life will earn heaven for all who I give to you. You will not only earn heaven for them and the reward of righteousness, but you will die for them and pay the price of their sin, and suffer and die in their place. I will punish you instead of them. In revealing this to mankind, God took the Israelites and announced this gracious covenant to them. ‘If you circumcise your hearts, if you believe in my promise of a Saviour and repent of your sin, then I will bless you through the Saviour who will come and die for you. But if not, the only arrangement that is left for you is the covenant of works which I gave to Adam and Eve, and which is reiterated in the law. If you can keep it perfectly then you will be blessed, but you cannot because man is a sinner, and this is a failed covenant. Therefore you had better believe in the Saviour and trust in him, because the only alternative is to seek acceptance with God by your own righteousness, and you will fail.’ The Israelites in olden times were the vine, the pleasant plant, but it failed, and they did not, or at least the majority of them did not turn to the promised Saviour. So in John 15 Christ says to the disciples, ‘If you have not understood this before, I say it to you clearly, I am the true vine, the real vine. I am the Son of God who has come to live a perfect life to secure salvation of all who believe in me. I am the fulfilment of the Old Testament picture of the vine.’