Jesus Christ, the True Vine!

“I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful. You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you. Remain in me, as I also remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me.

I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing. If you do not remain in me, you are like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned. If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples.” – John 15:1-8 NIV

Jesus Christ was explaining how important He is to His disciples before His crucifixion. The is probably because they would get trouble-hearted from the world later on, such as persecution and abandonment because of faith in Jesus Christ (John 15:18-25). Hence, He used some of metaphors to build a bridge for His disciples to stay connected with Him, even though He is going to be crucified on the cross. Thus, He started to tell them that He is the true vine, God as the gardener and they are like branches. To be more specific, Jesus is probably like a tree. The vital key to connect with Him is through faith. The reason that God can be considered as a gardener probably is that He is the Judge of all living (James 4:12) but a compassionate and gracious one (Psalm 103:8).

As gardeners take care of plants within their gardens and tree is a perennial plant, God compassionately and graciously sent Jesus Christ to crucify Himself on the cross for our sins (1 John 4:9-10). When Jesus was crucified, “the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom.” (Matthew 27:51) We know Matthew 27:51 means that separation between God and human being has ended because of Matthew 27:52-53. After the crucifixion and the resurrection of Jesus Christ, God has poured His Spirit into people, to let them connect with Jesus through faith and guide them through their walks in Him (John 14:15-27,16:7-15).

With the guidance of the Spirit, people are able to have and develop “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control” (Galatians 5:22-23). The reasons for this probably is that God has full potential of them and He wants us to develop them as we have been created to be the image of God. However, He gives them freely. This means we are able to have them without the guidance of the Spirit but they are only temporary as I think they often fail. I believe we do not have great mind-set like God does (Isaiah 55:8-9). For example, my top desire is Jesus Christ and everything that is to do with Him but I also love playing Pokemon games. I enjoy playing them so much, that I cannot control my mind on anything else. Thus, I had to delete them off my laptop. Another example of mine is that I thought I could control my mind and I downloaded a Yu-Gi-Oh game. After a while, I had to delete it. I did not have an addiction of it because I know where my true satisfaction lies. However, I kept wanting just to turn it on. I guess this was different kind of addiction. Therefore, we have to let the Holy Spirit to penetrate our souls as we are staying in Jesus Christ. This may take a lot of time to develop every characteristic attributes of the fruit of the Spirit but would it be wonderful to have those attributes wherever we go and whatever we do? Hebrews 10:14 states that we become perfect in Him through the Spirit. We should not think of having and improving those attributes is a religious routine but rather a godly routine that is overflowed with the grace of God. To do this, I think we have to comprehend the love of God completely (1 John 4:7-21).