John 15:2 Commentary - Dr Peter Masters

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John 15:2

Comments

Every person who professes belief in God, and equally everybody who professes to be a member of a Christian church; ‘every branch in me that beareth not fruit he taketh away.’ That is a warning that God will tend this vine and keep it only to His own people. A vine requires a lot of attention. It’s a wonderful symbol. Here is the vine; it is kept for its fruit. The vine itself is not much use. You can’t use it as timber, you can’t build things from it, make things from it; it is totally unsuitable for anything like that. All you look for in the vine is the fruit, and it requires more attention than any other plant they had in their farms and vineyards of those days. It wanted constant pruning, constant cutting away of dead wood and useless parts in order to flourish and to be vigorous. ‘My Father’, says Christ, ‘is the tender of the vineyard, and he will with infallible insight prune the vineyard. He will not have in heaven, in this Church of mine, he will not allow people who do not really have spiritual life, people who have not really had their sins forgiven, people who do not live for Me and love Me, to go all the way to heaven and to glory,The Saviour has deserved heaven and taken away sin, and we secure these blessings by virtue of being in him. We cannot do it of ourselves. The source of the fruit – spiritual life and communion with God – is Christ alone. He now is the vine, the covenant is between the Father and the Son.But ‘every branch that beareth fruit, he purgeth it, that it may bring forth more fruit.’ He gets rid of anything that obstructing fruit bearing. Progressive sanctification. He is improving us all the time, sometimes with discipline, sometimes by other means. Fruit is so vital that if we are true believers and yet we are not bearing the fruit of righteousness, the fruit of witness for Christ, then we will in some way be pruned and disciplined. Actually it goes on all the time. What is the Christian life? It is a constant process of pruning. We examine our hearts every day, we lament and repent of things that we have done wrong and things that we haven’t done that we should have done, and there is this constant self-examination repentance, mortification, putting to death sins.

Application

Questions

Is there somebody with no fruit? You have not got a new nature from God. You have not been greatly changed. You are the same person you were before you believed. You have not got a burden for holiness, so that you repent of your sins every day before God, and you strive by his help for righteousness. You are not separated from the world. You worship only minimally and not with a full heart. There is no fruit, no self-abasement, no private prayer earnestly offered. No word for others, for lost people. ‘Every branch in me that beareth not fruit he taketh away.’ It was only a nominal branch, it was not a real branch. The Father will take it away. At some time, maybe even in life, you will drift away and renounce your church attendance. But certainly at the end of life, in the time of judgement, he will take you away.

What is meant by fruit? There are three schools of thought. One says the fruit is the fruit of righteousness, advancing godliness, good deeds, living a better life. Good deeds will not get us to heaven: we are saved by grace alone, free forgiveness, and the power of God to change, but after we are converted the fruit is good deeds, improving character. Another camp says, No, the fruit is the winning of souls: the fruit of evangelism. And another camp says it’s both of those things. There is no doubt that character is included in this. In Matthew 3.8 John the Baptist says, ‘Bring forth therefore fruits meet for repentance … every tree which bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire.’ The fruits of repentance are evidences of repentance, which show your life is changed. The same is taught in Matthew 7.16-19 and in Matthew 12.33. But the results of soul winning is also called fruit: ‘And he that reapeth receiveth wages, and gathereth fruit unto life eternal: that both he that soweth and he that reapeth may rejoice together’ (John 4:36). So there the Lord uses fruit as an illustration of souls that are brought into himself. And in John 12.24 Christ says, ‘Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.’ In Romans 1.13 Paul uses the same language: ‘Now I would not have you ignorant, brethren, that oftentimes I purposed to come unto you, (but was let [prevented] hitherto,) that I might have some fruit among you also, even as among other Gentiles.’ Early in John 15.16 the Lord uses the same language: ‘Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you, and ordained you that ye should go and bring forth fruit.’ That is the language of the great commission. So the fruit here is both: the fruit of character, worship, righteous living, and also the fruit of souls winning.

Outline

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Introduction

John 15:2 Commentary and Bible Study