Scripture Reading: John 15:1—16:4
In this chapter we come to the sixth sign in John 14 through 17 — the sign of the true vine. This sign is related to the spreading of the vine. Whereas most trees grow vertically, a vine spreads by growing horizontally. For example, a cedar tree shoots upward into the sky, but a vine grows along the surface of the earth. Hence, the growth of the vine is a matter of its spreading to cover the earth. In chapter 15 of John’s Gospel we do not have a cedar tree; we have a vine tree spreading on earth.
While visiting London in 1958, I was taken by a friend to see the Queen’s vine, which is housed in a large glass room. My friend boasted to me concerning this vine and asked what I thought of it. I answered, “This vine is not a surprise to me, for I have seen a much greater vine. The Queen’s vine is rather small, and the greenhouse in which it is located is not very large. But the vine I have seen is so vast, so immense, that it covers the entire globe. Have you seen this vine?”
Of course, the vine I was referring to is the true vine, the vine revealed in John 15. In John 15:1 the Lord Jesus said, “I am the true vine.” Only Christ is the true vine. Any other vine is false. As the true vine, the Lord is permanent, but other vines, including the Queen’s vine, are temporary. There is on earth one vine that is permanent, and this vine is Christ. Christ is the universal vine spreading over the whole earth.
Unbelievers may think that we are dreaming when we say that Christ is the universal vine covering the earth. But this is not a dream. Today there are millions of Christians around the world. When the Lord Jesus was on earth, He was restricted to traveling in a small area. But now Christ has spread throughout the world. Can you name a country to which Christ as the universal vine has not spread? Wherever we may go, we can see the spreading of the universal vine.
In John 15:1 the Lord said, “I am the true vine, and My Father is the husbandman.” This true vine, which is the Son, with its branches, which are the believers in the Son, is the organism of the Triune God in God’s economy to grow with His riches and express His life. Christ Himself is the true vine, and the Father is the husbandman, the Farmer who cultivates the soil so that the vine may spread.
In the Lord’s recovery we have seen the spreading of this vine to the uttermost parts of the earth. For example, when I visited Germany in 1958 and stayed in Hamburg, I did not meet a single Christian. But now, twenty-five years later, there are a number of churches in Germany. What a spreading of the vine has taken place in Germany!
The vine in chapter 15 is a sign of Christ’s universal spreading. The abode, the dwelling, is a sign of the mingling of the Triune God with His chosen people. But the vine tree is a sign of universal spreading. It is foolish for politicians and statesmen to think that Christians can be terminated. Those who persecute the believers in Christ do not realize that the more the believers are terminated, the more the Christians, all of whom are branches in the vine, will carry out the universal spreading of the true vine.
We have pointed out that the true vine is the organism of the Triune God. The Son Himself is the vine, the Father is the husbandman, and the Spirit is the Testifier. In the very chapter that reveals the universal vine, we have a word concerning the Spirit as the Testifier: “When the Comforter comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of reality, who proceeds from the Father, He will testify concerning Me” (v. 26). Therefore, in John 15 the vine is growing, the husbandman is cultivating, and the Spirit is testifying.
In relation to the true vine, the organism of the Triune God, what does it mean that the Spirit is the Testifier? Doctrinally we may not be able to understand this, but experientially we do know what it means for the Spirit to be the Testifier. When we see the spreading of the vine, the Spirit within us says, “Amen! That’s it!” Many have testified that the Spirit within them responded in such a way when they first came in contact with the Lord’s recovery. This is the Spirit’s testifying within us concerning the spreading of the true vine.
Having seen that the vine in John 15 is the organism of the Triune God, we need to go on to see that this vine, this organism, is the Father’s house (14:2). The Father’s house is the subject of chapter 14, and the vine is the subject of chapter 15. We know that chapters 14, 15, and 16 are one message given by the Lord in the night He was betrayed. Because the first part of this message is on the Father’s house and the next part is on the vine, it is certainly correct to say that the vine is a definition of the Father’s house. Would you like to know more about the Father’s house spoken of in chapter 14? If so, go on to chapter 15, where you will find a further definition and more information. Actually, the Father’s house is an organism, a spreading vine. Therefore, we should not regard the Father’s house as something physical and lifeless. No, the Father’s house is the vine, and the branches of this vine are the many abodes, the many rooms, of the Father’s house.
Have you seen that you are a branch in the universal vine and that the branches are rooms of the Father’s house? The vine has many branches, and the Father’s house has many rooms. Praise the Lord that the branches of the vine are the rooms of the house! We may say that we have become branches in order to be rooms. The room is a place for abiding, and the branch is for growing, for spreading.
The Greek word translated “abide” not only means to remain or stay but also means to dwell. When the King James Version was translated, the English word abide had the meaning of “dwell.” However, in today’s English this word primarily means to stay or remain.
Ephesians 3:17 says, “That Christ may make His home in your hearts through faith.” The Greek word translated “make home” in this verse is a strengthened form, an intensified form, of the word for abide. The word in Ephesians 3:17 has the prefix kata, and the meaning of the word is somewhat similar to the English expression settle down. In this verse Paul speaks of Christ settling Himself down in our hearts. It seems that the best way to translate this Greek word here is to say that Christ is making His home in our hearts.
Christ not only dwells in us, but He desires to make His home in us. To make your home in a certain place means that you are settled there. For example, I may dwell in a brother’s home for a short period of time, but I do not make my home there. I have not settled down there. In John 14 and 15 we have the words abodes and abide, and in Ephesians 3 Paul prays that Christ may make His home in our hearts. He prays not only that Christ will dwell in us but also that He will make His home in us.
Ephesians 2:22 says that in Christ we are “being built together into a dwelling place of God in spirit.” The Greek word rendered “dwelling place” is the noun form of the verb make home in Ephesians 3:17. Furthermore, the word in 2:22 has the same prefix as that in 3:17. This prefix points to something deep, not something superficial. God has a habitation, a dwelling place, in us in a deep way, in a way that is settled down and even rooted downward. He has not only a habitation; He has a “settled-down habitation.”
These verses reveal that in the New Testament there is the crucial thought that God, the Creator, longs, desires, to make His home in us. His home is a matter of mingling, and this mingling is also a vine that is growing, spreading, and covering the entire earth. Today we are branches of this vine and abodes of the Father’s house.
With the vine we also have the glorification of the Father through the expression of the riches of the divine life in fruit-bearing. Fruit-bearing is not the result of a deliberate practice; instead, fruit-bearing is organically natural.
The Gospel of John is unique in that it is concerned with divine things. By divine things we primarily mean God with His life, nature, and expression, which is His glory. Whereas the first three Gospels — Matthew, Mark, and Luke — charge us to preach the gospel, we do not have such a charge in the Gospel of John. In this Gospel, preaching is replaced by fruit-bearing. In 15:8 the Lord Jesus said, “In this is My Father glorified, that you bear much fruit.” In fruit-bearing the Father’s life is expressed; hence, in fruit-bearing He is glorified.
Among today’s Christians, preaching the gospel in order to win souls is emphasized. It is true that we may win souls through the preaching of the gospel. However, we may not bear much fruit. Preaching the gospel may be merely an activity, a practice, or a movement. Life, on the contrary, is a matter of living, not a matter of activity or of a movement.
In the Gospel of John the preaching of the gospel is not an activity; it is a living. This living may be illustrated by a tree bearing fruit. When a tree brings forth fruit, the tree does not engage in any deliberate activity. Fruit-bearing is simply the issue of the tree’s living. There is no need to give a command to a peach tree to produce peaches. It would be foolish to say, “Peach tree, you must be faithful and diligent to produce peaches.” A peach tree produces fruit simply because it is a living organism. Only artificial fruit can be produced as a result of making requirements. If you need a thousand artificial peaches, you may require workers to produce them in a day. But it is unnecessary to require a living peach tree to bear fruit, and it would be useless to tell it to produce fruit overnight.
The Lord does not want us to produce artificial fruit. The Lord’s desire is that we bear fruit in the way of life. Concerning this, the Lord needs a genuine recovery. The Lord does not want a gospel-preaching movement. He wants genuine fruit-bearing.
I would not say that there is nothing of life in today’s gospel campaigns or movements. Nevertheless, the amount of life is limited. Of course, the Lord is merciful. Whenever His word is preached and whenever people call on His name, He will extend His mercy. For this reason, many are saved in gospel campaigns. However, this does not necessarily indicate that such a campaign or movement is truly according to the Lord’s way of life. What the Lord wants is that we have a living that results in fruit-bearing.
In John 15:1 the Lord said that He is the true vine and that the Father is the husbandman. As the husbandman, the Father cares for the vine. He waters the vine, cultivates the soil, and protects the vine from everything that would damage it. As John 15 indicates, the vine is not for a movement; the vine is for fruit-bearing.
The fruit-bearing of the vine is the glorification of the Father. The propagation, or multiplication, of the divine life through the vine is the glorification of the Father, that is, His expression. The Lord said that if we bear much fruit, the Father will be glorified (v. 8). Hence, our fruit-bearing is the glorification of the Triune God.
Our fruit-bearing is the expression of the Triune God from within. Today the Triune God is within us as our life and nature. The expression of the life and nature of the Triune God from within us is glory. Therefore, when the divine life with its nature is expressed through us in fruit-bearing, the Father is glorified.
We may also use electricity as an illustration of glory. When the switch in a room is off, electricity is still present, but there is no expression of electricity in the shining of light. We may say that light equals glory. When the switch is turned on, electricity is expressed, and this expression is light, which is glory. Thus, the shining of light is the glorification of electricity.
The principle is the same with the glorification of the Father in fruit-bearing. We have the divine life within us, and now this life needs to be expressed. When the divine life is expressed in fruit-bearing, that expression is the glorification of this life.
As we will see in forthcoming chapters, in John 17 the Lord Jesus prayed concerning the glory which the Father had given Him and which He had given to His disciples. The glory given by the Father to the Son and by the Son to the disciples is the divine life with the divine nature for God’s expression. The Father has given His life and nature to the Son so that the Son may express the Father’s glory. This is the glory given by the Father to the Son. The Son has given us this divine life with its divine nature so that we also may express God in glory. In this chapter we are emphasizing the fact that in John 15 this expression of the divine life, this glorification of the Father, is in fruit-bearing. Fruit-bearing is a matter of our daily living. Day by day we need to live a life that bears fruit, and in this way we glorify the Father.
According to John 15, what does it mean to glorify the Father? To glorify the Father is to express the riches of the divine life in fruit-bearing. Concerning this matter, we need to see that every life is according to its own kind. An apple tree will produce apples and a peach tree will produce peaches because both an apple tree and a peach tree are according to their own kind. There is no need to instruct an apple tree not to bear peaches or to warn a peach tree not to bear apples. A peach tree simply bears peaches, and an apple tree simply bears apples. This fruit-bearing comes from the life within the trees. The principle is the same with the fruit-bearing in John 15. The Lord’s way in fruit-bearing is the way of the propagation of life, the multiplication of life. As the divine life is multiplied, propagated, this life is expressed. Therefore, the fruit-bearing of the vine is the expression, the glorification, of the divine life in the vine.
If we see the vision concerning the spreading of the vine and the fruit-bearing of the vine, we will realize that there is no need for us to strive in ourselves to preach the gospel. There is no need for our own activity. Instead of natural or religious activity, we simply need to live the divine life, and we will bear fruit. As we live this life, those around us will realize that we are persons living the divine life. As a result, they will be attracted, convinced, and subdued. This life will shine upon them, and eventually the Lord Jesus will be imparted to them. In this way they will become fruit produced by our living.
The proper way, the way ordained by God, for new believers to be produced is through the imparting of life. Fruit-bearing, therefore, is a matter of imparting the divine life to others so that they may be born of God. The more we express the divine life in fruit-bearing, the more the Father will be glorified.
