CHRIST AND OUR BARRENNESS

"I AM the Vine, ye are the branches: he that abideth in Me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit; for without Me ye can do nothing." — St. John xv. 5.

The allegory of the True Vine is, in a sense, complementary to that of the Bread of Life, and expresses a different side of the same truth. Both of them are designed to show that intimate union of Christ with His people of which the Sacrament is the sign and seal: the truth that they dwell in Him and He in them. But while the figure of Bread is best adapted for showing the one side of this relationship, the figure of the Vine best shows the other. The message of the Bread of Life is "Christ in us"; the message of the True Vine is "we in Christ." As partakers of the Bread, we take Christ into ourselves, and have Him dwelling within us. As branches of the Vine we are grafted into Him, merge our lives in His, and participate in His Divine life.

This distinction carries us farther than we are apt to think. For it is here that we realise for the first time how our relation to Christ takes us beyond the mere satisfying of our own wants. Hitherto it has been because we could get so little good elsewhere that we came to Christ. Here, on the contrary, it is because we can do so little good otherwise that we come to Christ. Hitherto, while no doubt the good of others has been implied, the satisfying of our own wants has been the chief end and aim. Christ has offered Himself as a Light to our darkness, a Door which we may enter, a Way by which to travel, a Shepherd whom we may know and follow. And in the great allegory of the Bread of Life He has said, "He that cometh to Me shall never hunger, and he that believeth in Me shall never thirst" But our present allegory is quite different It is not "He that abideth in Me, the same shall eat much fruit," but "he that abideth in Me and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit." We are not to be consumers, but producers. We are to measure life "not by the wine drunk, but the wine poured forth." Not our faintness, but our barrenness, is the chief trouble here. ‘‘Eat fruit and live" expresses a great truth; but "Bear fruit and live" expresses a greater. Our coming to Christ is to lead us far beyond ourselves. We are not only to be disciples; we are to be apostles. Faith without works is dead. Privilege cannot be divorced from responsibility. Freely we have received; let us freely give. Gladly would we learn; let us gladly teach.

The lesson, no doubt, is not entirely new. We have had glimpses of it in what was said of the Light and the Shepherd. But here for the first time is fruit-bearing put in the foreground. We need not therefore be surprised that this I am was spoken later than the others, or that it was one of those spoken to the inner circle, not to the multitude. Its appeal is to those who have advanced some little way in the Christian life; to those who, having been helped, are prepared to become helpers in turn.

The Occasion.

It is perhaps just for this reason that our Lord here makes use of the figure of the Vine, though other causes may have contributed to bring it to His mind. He had alluded to the Vine in instituting the Holy Supper, saying that He would drink no more of its fruit until He drank it new with His disciples in His Father’s Kingdom. In the valley of the Kedron, where He walked with them shortly afterwards, there were vines with spreading branches; and over the gateway of the Temple there was a wreath of golden vines with large clusters of grapes. Often had Israel been compared by the prophets to a vine or a vineyard. And one reason for this lay in the fact that the vine, more than any other tree, has the production of fruit as its one end and aim. Eliminate the fruit, and its usefulness is at an end. Ezekiel gives a striking parable of a vine — a fruitless vine. "Shall wood," he says, "be taken thereof to do any work? or will man take a pin of it to hang any vessel thereon? Is it meet for any work P" The sole end of the vine is the producing of fruit; and for this it is cut and pruned and held back in every other way. Nothing could better suggest the sacrifice, the devotion, the consecration of a true Christian life. And therefore Christ

           did not choose the summer corn.

That shoots up straight and free in one quick growth,

And has its day, and is done, and springs no more;

Nor yet the olive, all whose boughs are spread

In the soft air, and never lose a leaf,

Flowering and fruitful in perpetual peace)

But only this for Him and His in one,

The everlasting, ever-quickening Vine,

That gives the heat and passion of the world,

Through its own life-blood, still renewed and shed.

Christ the Vine: We the Branches.

In what our Lord says of the Vine and the branches, He dwells less upon Himself than in any of the other figures we have studied. While He says, "I am the True Vine, and My Father is the Husbandman," the main interest of the picture is made to centre in the branches. The message He gives is a bracing rather than a soothing one. It is an invitation to work, not to rest. On the branches is thrown the responsibility not only for their own usefulness, but for the credit of the Vine and the Husbandman. It is through the branches alone that the Vine can work, and on them that its success must largely depend. In the branches’ fulfilment of their task lies the ethical import of the parable.

The functions of a branch, as here set forth, are two in number, and they are very closely and intimately connected. One is, to bring forth fruit; the other is, to abide in the Vine. Every branch, to fulfil its proper end, must do both. The branch stands midway between stem and fruit, deriving life from the one, and communicating it to the other. Its business is at once to get and to give; to derive sap from the true source, and to impart this in some form to the fruit. So must it be with all Christian profession and service. In it all there must be a getting and a giving. We cannot communicate to others what we have not ourselves received. Nothing can flow out where nothing has flowed in. "As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the Vine; no more can ye, except ye abide in Me." Yet we cannot properly receive without being ready to give. "He that abideth in Me and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit."

1. Bring forth Fruit.

No more important lesson could have been put before the apostles at that hour. The personal ministry of Jesus on earth was about to close, and theirs was about to begin. There was an immense work ahead of them, of which as yet only the firstfruits had been gathered. Fruit, then, was the end at which they must aim. And what holds good of them holds good of us. "By their fruits ye shall know them," our Lord had said; and by fruits men, like trees, are known still. The world is becoming less and less satisfied with anything short of fruits. High-sounding titles with no reality behind them; offices of profit with no corresponding duty — the days of such things are numbered. And the demand for fruits is surely a reasonable one. Carlyle’s "What hast thou done, and how? Out with it — let us see thy work!" is a test which no one, least of all the follower of Christ, has any right to resent. For it is not only the world that asks for fruits. God asks for fruits, and He is a far better judge than the world as to whether fruits are of the right kind. Our Lord accordingly draws a sharp distinction between the branches which bear fruit and those which do not. Fruitfulness is to be the all-important test; and on the presence or absence of it our fate is to depend.

Barren branches. — "Every branch in Me that beareth not fruit He taketh away." No branch of a fruit-tree has the right to be merely ornamental. No follower of Christ is allowed to be inactive. If we are not helping His work, we are hindering it. We are not only doing no good; we are doing positive harm. We are taking up the place that might be occupied by others who would do better work than we, and the sooner we are taken away the better for that work. "To go through life," says Froude, "and plead at the end of it that we have not broken any of the commandments, is but what the unprofitable servant did who kept his talent carefully unspent, and yet was sent to outer darkness for his uselessness." It is true that God has infinite patience. But there comes a limit to the opportunities a man ought to have. The fig-tree that bears nothing but leaves is doomed. The candlestick that carries no light is removed out of its place. So must the barren branch be removed. The tree is not dependent on the life of any one branch.

                  God doth not need

Either man’s work or His own gifts

He can accomplish His purposes quite well without us; we are not indispensable. If we fail to produce fruit, ours will be the penalty; we shall simply be taken away, passed over, done without. The vine will flourish, but we shall have no part in its flourishing. Those who live for self, and not for others and for Christ, are not wanted; they are of no use in the kingdom of God.

Fruitful branches. — "Every branch that beareth fruit. He purgeth it, that it may bring forth more fruit." We must not complain if we are not rewarded at once when we do well. Part of the branch may have to be removed that the rest may do better work; trials often only begin when we determine to do right But just as fire tries the gold, and turns iron into the finer steel, and as pruning helps the fruit, so has many a man been helped by the trouble God has sent him. Pascal turned his ill-health into a means of spiritual perfection. Wesley accepted the wreck of his domestic happiness as another call to his public work. John Henry Shorthouse regarded the painful stammer from which he suffered as a means of concentrating his energies on literature. If our end and aim be fruit-bearing, we must be prepared to put happiness or unhappiness on one side as of comparatively little account "I never allow myself," said Gladstone, "in regard to my public life, to dwell upon the fact that a thing is painful. Indeed, life has no time for such broodings." After all, we are not here for pleasure but for work; and much that is pleasant, and even beautiful of its kind, may have to be given up that the one end may be served. The choice is here put plainly before us. We must be thrown aside as useless, or else tried in order to greater efficiency in the Master’s service. Let us choose the higher and harder path.

Fruit-bearing, however, is dependent on a prior condition.

2. Abide in the Vine.

This watchword was no less necessary for the aposdes than the other. There was to be no loosening of the tie that bound them to their Lord. Bewildered as they were by the tidings that He was soon to leave them, the bond between Him and them must be strengthened, not. relaxed. They must realise that His bodily absence really involved a spiritual presence. Henceforth He was to be nearer them than when on earth. His Holy Spirit, the Comforter, was to dwell with them and enter into them. But there must be two sides to every spiritual relationship. The prayer, "Abide with us," cannot be answered unless the command, "Abide in Me," is obeyed. The unity between Christ and His people must be a real one — a unity of spirit and life. A branch plucked from the tree may, like flowers gathered for a nosegay, look well for a time, but its real life is gone.

"The branch cannot bear fruit of itself." To realise this is a crying necessity in our busy age. The life of any earnest man' becomes so full of outward activities that it is quite possible for the servant of Christ to become so concerned over so-called fruit-bearing as to lose sight of Christ’s other command, "Abide in Me." Even William Wilberforce’s celebrated retort to the lady who asked him, in the midst of his self-denying work, whether he ever took thought for his soul — "Madam, I had forgotten I had one" — is not altogether to be commended. If fruit is to be real, the branch must abide in the Vine. The life for Christ can only be blessed if it is also a life in Christ.

These words of our Lord, "Abide in Me," bring into view a deeper distinction between branches than even that afforded by the presence or absence of fruit. If the barren be opposed to the fruitful branch, still more sharply opposed to one another are the dead branches and the living.

Dead branches. — "If a man abide not in Me, he is cast forth as a branch, and is withered; and men gather them, and cast them into the fire, and they are burned." A branch that was merely barren might be spared for a time; but a dead one never. "Without * Me ye can do nothing." A Christian without 1 Christ is like a severed limb or a broken | twig — good for nothing, and possessing no life. Yet individuals and even Churches may be found in this condition. "Thou hast a name that thou livest," says the Lord’s messenger to the Church in Sardis, "and art dead." It was a Church "on paper"; it had lost all reality, because it had lost touch with Christ. It was like a dead branch, differing from it only in this, that it was not beyond the power of Christ’s reviving hand. It is sad to think that there have been branches of the Vine not only barren, but dead. Only by abiding in Him can we maintain our spiritual life. Apart from Him we not only fail in our influence over others; we are devoid of life in ourselves. We are like salt that has lost its savour; like branches that have lost their sap. To be cast forth, gathered, burned — not even as fuel, but as a waste-heap — is all that such branches are good for.

Living branches. — "If ye abide in Me, and My words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you." The idea involved here is greater than can well be confined within the fetters of an allegory — even such an allegory as that of the True Vine. The framework is discarded when it has served its purpose. Christ speaks here of living members rather than of living branches. It is when there is unity of life between Christ and His people — when He is in them and they are in Him — that they get from Him the strength they need. As a living branch can draw from the Vine sufficient strength for its needs, so there are no limits to the strength which the man who "abides in Christ" can draw from Him. We have but to "ask what we will." And the best thing of all we can ask is a fuller measure of that self-sacrificing love which is in Himself, that we may bring forth the Vine’s own fruit. Each one of us has it in his power to become, in the words of Whitfield about Isaac Watts, "a bit of Christ." The worth of our influence on others will be measured by the extent of Christ’s influence on us. As we realise our own helplessness and barrenness, we shall rely more and more upon the fountain of strength within. To Christ’s words, "Without Me ye can do nothing," we shall add these of St. Paul, "I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me."

"I am the Vine" is perhaps the most closely-reasoned and suggestive of all the allegories of our Lord about Himself. A recapitulation of its main features may be helpful. Christ is the Vine, His Father the Husbandman, His people the branches. These branches must (1) bring forth fruit: they must not be (a) barren —else they may be "taken away" — but (b) fruitful— even though they may have to be purged to ensure greater fruitfulness. To accomplish this, they must (2) abide in the Vine: they must not be (a) dead — else they will be cast out and burned — but (b) living — that they may receive from the Vine the strength they need.

The picture is a vivid one, and whether we have rightly interpreted all its details or not, it brings into prominence the two essentials of the Christian life — union with Christ and service for man. These it focuses in the two commands, "Abide in Me," and "Bring forth fruit." There we have life in Christ and life for Christ; the one enabling us to say "Whose I am," the other "Whom I serve." As the life of the Vine abides in the branches and the branches in the Vine, so must Christians dwell in Christ and Christ in them. And as the branches are the only means whereby the Vine can produce its fruit, so are Christians the means whereby the life and power of Christ are to be communicated to the world. While the Christian life is hid with Christ in God, its fruits are known and tasted of men.