αἴρει / καθαίρει

Πᾶν κλῆμα ἐν ἐμοὶ μὴ φέρον καρπὸν αἴρει αὐτό, καὶ πᾶν τὸ καρπὸν φέρον καθαίρει αὐτὸ ἵνα καρπὸν πλείονα φέρῃ. — κατὰ Ὶωάννην 15:2

Pan klema en emoi me feron karpon airei auto, kai pan to karpon feron kathairei auto hina karpon pleiona fere. — kata Ioannen 15:2

“Every branch in Me not bearing fruit He carries off, and every branch bearing fruit He prunes (cleanses) so that it may bear much fruit.” — John 15:2, translation mine

Dead branches require little to no provocation to break off from a trunk or vine. Without a link to the main sap line, the branch can no longer produce. It is not fed, and cannot in turn feed any flowers or fruit that might have sprung from it. So it is with those who claim Christ and yet harden their hearts against His Word.

Living branches, on the other hand, flower and fruit as they receive the sap and its nutrients. Yet a good gardener will frequently prune back branches in order to increase their yield. Although this often leaves the branch bare and exposed at its core, it will come back twofold or threefold. So it is with those who claim Christ and let the Father, the earth-worker, prune them.

John plays the verbs αἴρει and καθαίρει against each other phonetically to amplify this dichotomy in the ancient Greek. The verb αἴρει signifies the carrying off of the dead branches. There is no resuscitating the branches that are already dead. The dessicated limbs which can only be trashed or burned did not dry out in having sap pushed into them from the roots but in resisting the sap through their own hardening.

Likewise, God has not been stingy with His blessings to all men, for as God told Adam, “Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is one the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit. You shall have them for food” (Gen 1:29, ESV). But man's stubbornness in rejecting God's gift and seeking his own sustenance sealed his fate, and God turned Adam over to his own desires. Yet all the advances from Adam's time until now in farming, hunting, or even genetic engineering cannot create matter ex nihilo. The raw materials must still be provided by God.

Conversely, the verb καθαίρει signifies the pruning back of the living branches. Τhe adjective καθαρὸς (katharos), or clean, forms the root of this verb, and pruning is the cleansing of the branch. Just as a gardener trims the branches of a vine to remove dying tendrils or unnecessary and twisted growth, so God applies His discipline to the faithful who accept His pruning of all that is dying, unnecessary, or twisted in them.

The hardening or yielding of the individual's heart to God's direction and tending is a response to didactic pain. Ironically, the one who hardens his heart to escape the pain will eventually, unless he repents, suffer the eternal pain of the second death, whereas the one who yields to accept the pain will suffer for the moment but grow into new life. The apostle James admonishes us, “Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing” (James 1:2-4, ESV) and again, “Blessed is the man who remains steadfast under trial, for when he has stood the test he will receive the crown of life, which God has promised to those who love Him” (James 1:12, ESV). By accepting God's pruning in our lives, we may come before Him at the last, sanctified by the sacrifice of His Son Jesus Christ and nourished and cleansed by the indwelling of His Holy Spirit.

γεωργός

Καὶ ὁ πατήρ μου ὁ γεωργός έστιν. — κατὰ Ὶωάννην 15:1β

kai ho pater mou ho georgos estin. — kata Ioannen 15:1b

“And my Father is the earth-worker.” — John 15:1b, translation mine

Human effort has done much to subdue the world, but many things still grow wild around and inside us. If we are insufficient to the task of saving ourselves and the world, one may well ask how it can be done. Christ reminds us that God is the earth-worker. The compound word γεωργός, comprised of the words γῆ (ge, earth) and ἔργον (ergon, work, task, deed), describes this facet of God's personality.

Jesus makes an incisive point in referring to His Father this way. Man's first job, tending the garden of Eden, was patterned after this aspect of the Father. Yet upon Adam's and Eve's disobedience, God cast them out of Eden, saying, “By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return” (Gen 3:19, ESV). The earthen man, created to cultivate, became the crop in need of cultivation.

Keenly aware of the longstanding rift between God and man, Isaiah wrote:

Let me sing for my beloved my love song concerning his vineyard: My beloved had a vineyard on a very fertile hill.
He dug it and cleared it of stones, and planted it with choice vines; he built a watchtower in the midst of it, and hewed out a wine vat in it; and he looked for it to yield grapes, but it yielded wild grapes.
Isaiah 5:1-2, ESV

After man's expulsion from the garden, God had planted Israel to cultivate her as His chosen people, as choice vines, and to instill His Law in them that they might reflect it before the nations. Israel instead refused His cultivation and turned wild, yielding no good fruit.

Despite this, God in His infinite love and mercy planted Christ, the intercessor who at once incorporates and exceeds the Law given Moses. The Father “saw that there was no man, and wondered that there was no one to intercede; then His own arm brought him salvation, and his righteousness upheld Him” (Isaiah 59:16, ESV). Where man failed to obey (Isaiah 59:11-15), Christ did only the will of the Father (John 15:19) and fulfilled the Law in its entirety. Beyond this, Christ accepted the full punishment due men for all time, reconciling man to God and reinstating man in the Father's service if man will repent from his sin and believe in the salvific power of Christ's sacrifice.

For our part, all we can do is accept the gift already given, remembering that God is at work in our earthen natures through His grace. We do not work to earn a wage from God, for we are His adopted sons, not hired hands. Rather, we can accept God's ingrafting into Christ's body, the church, through repentance from sin, baptism into Christ, and confession of faith. Once connected with the vine, we can accept His nourishment by reading His Word, relying on His provision, and responding to Him through prayer. Our will shall thus align with His, and we will more readily accept His pruning, casting off the things that keep us from Him and ridding ourselves of the idols which fail to feed us.

ἄμπελος

Ἐγώ εἰμι ἡ ἄμπελος ἡ ἀληθινὴ — κατὰ Ὶωάννην 15:1α

Ego eimi he ampelos he alethine — kata Ioannen 15:1a

“I am the vine, the true one” — John 15:1a, translation mine

Christ introduces the metaphor of the vine to his disciples with an implicit dichotomy. That He qualifies Himself as the true vine suggests that other false vines exist. Strengthening this suggestion, the adjective ἀληθινὴ, true, receives extra emphasis through its postnominal appositive placement. The English equivalent would be the difference between Jesus saying, “I am the vine, the true one,” versus “I am the true vine.”

The identity of the false vine or vines is not explicitly related. The commentary by Jamieson, Fausset, and Brown, however, infers a reference to Isaiah 5, wherein the prophet talks of a vineyard planted by the Lord. Isaiah prophesies:

For the vineyard of the LORD of hosts is the house of Israel, and the men of Judah are his pleasant planting; and he looked for justice, but behold, bloodshed; for righteousness, but behold, an outcry!
Isaiah 5:7, ESV

Israel and Judah themselves were false vines, having abandoned God's righteousness for man's licentiousness and true worship for lip service. God's displeasure was made known through the prophets, but when the people did not turn from their wickedness, He sent them into exile. In the time of Jesus' incarnation, many prided themselves on slavish devotion to their interpretation of God's Law. Jesus, though, decried their devotion as false and their worship as hollow.

Lest we rest secure in our historical distance from Jesus' words or God's words through Isaiah, we should be mindful that Israel and Judah are not the only false vines. Any society or subculture that promises instant wealth, immense power, or a painless life on sheer human effort ignores the brokenness of the world and the incapacity of man. In such a vine, the branches must feed the root. Devotees must vainly hope that their subsidiary effort will make the vine healthy.

Christ as the vine feeds the branches Himself. The only sinless life became the only selfless sacrifice that could atone for our sins and purchase our salvation. With every branch in Christ an ingraft, none can live apart from Him. Living in the true vine requires a surrender, a willingness to admit one's inabilities and accept the invitation that God extends through Jesus Christ, His Son.

This cuts across the grain of the American cult of self-sufficiency, but the cutting is necessary for the ingrafting to begin. We must humble ourselves before God and place our trust in Christ, believing Him when he says, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6, ESV). If we seek other vines, there is no hope of life. If we claim Christ but reject the guidance of the Holy Spirit, the ingrafting will never take. We must allow the Holy Spirit given by the Father upon our ingrafting into the vine, Jesus Christ, to work in us and through us. Thereby we can receive eternal life, not by our own herculean efforts at righteousness, but by God's outpouring of His righteous Spirit.

κλῆμα

ἐγὼ εἰμι ἡ ἄμπελος, ὑμεῖς τὰ κλήματα. ὁ μένων ἐν ἐμοὶ κἀγὼ ἐν αὐτῷ, οὗτος φέρει καρπὸν πολύν, ὅτι χωρὶς ἐμοῦ οὐ δύνασθε ποιεῖν οὐδέν. — κατὰ Ὶωάννην 15:5

Ego eimi he ampelos, hymeis ta klemata. Ho menon en emoi kago en auto, houtos ferei karpon polyn, oti choris emou ou dynasthe poiein ouden. — kata Ioannen 15:5

“I am the vine; you, the cuttings. The one who remains in me and I in him, this one bears much fruit because without me you can do nothing.“ — John 15:5, translation mine

Christ's words planted an image of the connection between Himself and His disciples that has lasted two millennia. Calling Himself ἡ ἄμπελος (he ampelos), or the vine, Christ claims the role as root and life source. The individual cuttings, κλήματα (klemata), or branches, only have life within them insofar as they remain connected to the root vine. Just as a branch would wither and die if cut off from the sap provided by the vine, so Christ's disciples cannot live without Him.

The image of the vine and the branches is well-known, as evidenced by its popularity in the names of Christian churches. Yet popular usage does not always entail comprehension, and Christians can treat Christ's words as mere stock words and catchphrases. Repetition without reflection is mere regurgitation.

As most people in America do not grow their own food, I suspect this disconnect with the specifics of viticulture has left a deficiency in our understanding of the image Christ intended. There is a further linguistic disconnect in the translation from the ancient Greek of the Gospels to modern English. Though we usually translate κλήματα as branches, the word itself stems from the verb κλάω (klao), “I break” or “I break off.” Thus, κλῆμα literally means “a thing broken or broken off,” hence, cutting.

Is the Christian then a thing broken off in Christ? How can one remain in something and be broken off? The answer is that the breaking does not refer to our connection with Jesus. Christ wants His followers to know and understand that they are ingrafts, branches broken off from their previous lives of separation from Him and grafted into new life in communion with Him.

Just as no cutting can graft itself into a vine, so too must the Christ follower be grafted into Christ by the Father through the calling of the Holy Spirit. This is not to say that God only calls an elite few. Many are called, but in order for a gardener to graft a cutting onto a vine, the cutting must be yielding and pliable. In this way, the graft can take and the cutting's fibers be inextricably connected to the vine's over time so that the cutting may become a branch that does not fall out or wither.

Christ deliberately chose His words to invoke all the time, trouble, and toil of the ingrafting process in the listener's mind. If man is by nature apart from Christ and must be grafted in to live, then the man has no vital strength of his own. Rather, just as vine ingrafts are susceptible to disease, drought, and detachment, man is vulnerable to being corrupted, crushed, and cut off. This raises a question: how may one remain in Christ?

The exploration of that question is the primary goal of κλῆμα 15:5, specifically:

• to equip followers of Christ with a deeper appreciation for and understanding of the richness of God's Word,
• to invite believers and non-believers to seek deep into the Word of God, which is Christ (John 1:1), and engage in civil discussion about its implications,
• to go beyond rote repetition of crafted phraseology (Matthew 6:7) in the understanding and conveyance of God's Word,
• and to encourage participants to digest the heart and guts of the Word, i.e., Christ, in line with His admonition to take and eat (John 6:53) and assimilate this into their daily lives.

To achieve this, some ground rules are necessary. Differences of opinion and interpretation may be expected, but insults, slander, and profanity will not be tolerated. Incendiary comments will be pruned, and open discussion will be limited to the first day of each post. Comments will be moderated thereafter.

Creating a community and an atmosphere for civil conversation is my sincere hope and prayer for κλῆμα 15:5. I hope you will join me in this examination of God's Word. Μενῶμεν ἐν αὐτῷ (Menomen en auto. Let us remain in Him).