I am the true vine, and my Father is the vine grower.
He takes away every branch in me that does not bear fruit,
and every one that does he prunes so that it bears more fruit.
Divine life flows into us from Jesus who is the true vine. This life must not stagnate within us, but rather bear fruit. The Father won't allow the precious life flowing from his Son into the branches of the vine to be wasted. The Son himself does not cease to be fruitful by pouring his own life into the branches. The branches in turn must bear fruit or risk being taken away. The new hearts promised by the prophets and given by Christ through his Spirit, the power of the resurrection at work within us, cannot remain individual and isolated. The resurrection itself is a Trinitarian event, and the Spirit is the mutual love between the Father and the Son. We can't simply try to cling to these blessings for ourselves alone. We must become blessings to others. We can't truly possess mercy unless we become a people willing to show mercy to others. We should be able to recognize the vast difference between this life and practices of advanced meditation in some other tradition where the benefits could be held privately with no reference to the wider world. But the gift of life flowing from Christ Jesus refuses to exist outside of a deep relational commitment to God and neighbor.
Whoever remains in me and I in him will bear much fruit,
because without me you can do nothing.
In other religious traditions we can easily imagine that to simply possess the teaching and master the practice is sufficient. There is no sense that such adherents need to remain in any kind of vital connection to the religious founder. And this would seem to track our experience more accurately, for we do in fact see people doing good things all the time without an obvious connection to Jesus. Many atheists are highly committed to loving others and improving the world. Many Christians, by contrast, seem to sit on our hands, ignoring the problems of the world, as we wait for heaven. We have seen that Christians who fail to love are at risk. But how are non-Christians apparently succeeding in what Jesus states is only possible in connection to him? Not to short change the merit of non-Christian love in the world we may yet recognize that it is something different than the fruit to which Jesus referred. The fruit here described was something that was inherently Kingdom building and life affirming. Apart from Jesus even the best good works were like returning again and again to a deep well with a small bucket. All who drank that water would thirst again. But Jesus desired to provide water that would sate the spiritual desire of the world. This doesn't necessarily mean that the fruit we bear consists only in the spiritual works of mercy. It means that the life of Jesus in us makes even the corporeal works of mercy something more and greater than they would be apart from him, changing hearts, building the Kingdom, and glorifying the Father in heaven.
You are already pruned because of the word that I spoke to you.
Remain in me, as I remain in you.
The words of Jesus are powerful because they help remove those parts of us where the energy of his love stagnates and refuses to bear life. We are not asked to perform a complex surgical operation on our own hearts to remain in Jesus, nor to will ourselves into bearing fruit by gritting our teeth and exercising immense effort. All we are asked to be sure that we remain in Jesus and abide in him. He himself knows the plans he has for us and is more than capable of fulfilling them all.
for God is greater than our hearts and knows everything
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