The Vine and the Branches

“Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine; no more can ye, except ye abide in Me.”—John xv. 4.

When each of us asks himself in Lent, “What have I most to confess? what has been my great misdoing?” the answer does not come out very distinctly. There is a vague sense of duties omitted that might have been done; of tempers indulged that might have been repressed; of devotion to little things, of fretfulness about little things, when serious works were going on in which we ought to have taken an interest; or again, of indifference about little things, little acts of self-denial, little habits of evil, through ambition to do something fine and glorious. We may, as I said last Sunday, bring ourselves in guilty of various transgressions against the law of charity, which is set forth at the beginning of this season as the law of our lives. Still, what we probably condemn ourselves for most, is not any direct outrage upon that law, but for a kind of uselessness, lifelessness, barrenness. It seems as if we could not stir ourselves up to any course of action, scarcely to any one deliberate action; as if there were nothing for us left but to move on in an endless routine, or to float along a stream, not knowing whither it may carry us. In your services at church, in your private devotions, have you not felt oftentimes as if you were only going through prescribed rules; not acquiring strength to face the world, rather yielding to one of its fashions?

There is a dull, dead pain in these feelings, which many, I doubt not, would be glad to exchange for the sharp, even the intense pain which those experience who have been awakened to the sense of some great sin. It is a kind of pain which we are ready to soothe and lull with drugs, because we are sure that we ought to be free from it, though it does not seem as if it required severe treatment. We hope it does not betoken any inward disease. We are half afraid that it may; and so we try to hide the symptoms from ourselves, and by degrees perhaps we come to think that they do not exist. This is not an honest course for us to pursue, my brethren; therefore it cannot be a wise one. Let us remember that there is comfort as well as terror in St. John’s words, “If our hearts condemn us, God is greater than our heart, and knoweth all things.” Every reproof of conscience, be it a sudden twinge, be it repeated day after day, is the work of God’s Spirit, convincing us of sin that He may convince us of righteousness. If we really believe that all these messages are from Him, we must know that they come from a loving Friend who is grieving for us and with us; Who desires to set us right, and can make us what He would have us be.

And here, in the text I have just read to you, is the lesson which that Spirit is teaching us. He is explaining to us the secret of that inability to believe, hope, love, to act freely, calmly, manfully, which we complain of. The cause of the evil is disclosed to us, and with it the remedy. “As the Branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the Vine; no more can ye, except ye abide in Me;” there is the source of the malady. “Abide in me, and I in you;” there is the cure of it.

Let us consider each in turn.

I. Our Lord says to His disciples, “I am the Vine; ye are the Branches.” We say that this is a comparison or a parable. No doubt it is. But do we not mean when we say so, that the comparison does not express strictly the truth which it is to bring before us? Do we not mean that the truth is not what we should judge from the illustration that it was? I am sure that this thought is lurking in our minds; and I am sure it robs us of more good than we know of. We suppose a likeness is a clever artifice for telling us something about a thing or a person, not an actual presentation of that thing or that person. So we begin to think how we may translate the illustration into some abstract form of speech which shall be more exact than it is. Now I assume that our Lord knew what was in the being whose nature He had taken, as well as what was in Him from whom He came. I assume that He knew how to declare that which He was sent to declare. And therefore, when He said to His disciples at the last supper, I am the Vine; ye are the Branches, I suppose He intended them to look at an actual vine, and at the branches which grew upon it,—whether such a one was before their eyes as they walked to the Mount of Olives or not,—and to consider that by a law which was given at the Creation day every branch must be related to every other; every branch must be related to the root, and must receive all its life from that. I suppose He meant them also to understand that by a law not less old than that, they were as closely, as really related to each other, because they were as closely, as really related to Him. As a branch could not by its law be severed from any other without losing its life, the man could not by his law be severed from his fellow except at the same cost. And for the same reason: the loss of the relation between the branches was the loss of relation between them and their root; the loss of the relation between a man and his brother was a loss of relation between that man and Christ.

This was the gathering up into one complete utterance, of all that had been scattered through our Lord’s different parables and discourses. All His acts of service and grace to men, all His sympathies with them, had implied such a relation between them and Him. All stories about the Shepherd and the Sheep, the Husbandman and the Labourers, had indicated and testified of it. But there wanted something to signify that these were not arbitrary or accidental relations, that it did not depend in any sense upon the good pleasure of men whether they should exist or not. There wanted some natural emblem to say, “So it must be; you cannot by any determination or selfwill cause that it should be otherwise.” The Scribes and the Pharisees had rejected Jesus as the Christ. Did that mean that they had refused to acknowledge certain evidences which showed that He was the Person whom the Prophets had spoken of? Only because these Prophets had spoken of a Root out of which all the life of the Nation, and the life of every man in it, was derived. Only so far as the Person who was said to fulfil their words gave proofs addressed to the consciences of his countrymen that he was this root. Only so far as the Scribes and Pharisees were resisting this witness in their consciences, and were trying to exist apart from the root. If that was the case, it would be proved to be the case in the way our Lord had foretold. The dissolution of the Nation which had severed itself from its root would prove that it had no life of its own. Each man, whether of that Nation or any other, who confessed Christ to be his root, would discover how he was related to his fellows, and would show by fruits that there was a true life working in him.

This was the lesson that the Disciples were to learn at the Paschal Supper, after our Lord’s ministry to the Jews as a Nation was over. They might easily fancy that they were gathered around a leader whom they had selected for their champion, one to whom they would continue faithful whoever else deserted Him. They were to be taught that it was not so at all. They had not chosen Jesus. They could not keep their allegiance to Him. One would betray Him; one would deny Him; all would forsake Him. But He had chosen them. He had brought them about Him, that they might know the secret of their union to Him and to each other. He was the only source, the only bond, the only upholder of their union. And though He had chosen them, it was no arbitrary choice. He was fulfilling a commandment in doing it. They were actually united to Him as much as the branch was united to the vine. True, they might do what the branches could not do. They might deliberately say, “We renounce our connection with the root. We will not abide in it.” But they could not cause that He should not be their root. They would prove that He was by that very act. The withering of all life in them would supply the demonstration.

This was the secret of their union to each other. Only so far as they remembered that the Chief of all had become the servant of all, that the Master had washed His disciples’ feet as a proof that they belonged to Him and that He had given Himself for them, only so far would they have any care for each other as members of one family. And this was to be the subject of their Gospel to the Nations. They were to say, “We bring you news of that divine root from which all life has come, does come, will come into the Universe. We see you joined together in separate communities, worshipping this power of Nature, this and this good or evil quality. And we declare to you Him from whom all Nature derives its forms, forces, energies, the Lord of Air and Sea and Earth. And we declare to you Him from whom all the qualities and gifts and graces of all men proceed, Him in whom they are gathered up, Him from whom alone any have received them anywhere. And we call upon you to acknowledge Him, to claim your place in Him, that you may be rooted and grounded in Him, that you may grow up unto Him in all things, that you may refer all your functions, offices, abilities to Him, that you may seek all grace from Him to exercise them, that you may regard them all as channels and instruments through which His spirit is acting.” This was the doctrine which they preached; this was the meaning of the ordinances by which they grafted them who received their preaching as God’s word, and not man’s, into the Church. Baptism expressed this. Prayer expressed this. The Communion of the Lord’s Supper expressed this. All these ordinances were mere empty forms, if that was not true which Christ spoke to the Disciples on this night,—if it was not true for them, and for all to whom He should send them; if it was not true for all men everywhere. All these ordinances were living realities if this was indeed so, if Christ was the Vine, and if it was men’s sin and misery to separate themselves from that Vine, because they were created to be the branches of it, and so to bring forth fruits to God.

II. So they taught, and so our fathers believed; otherwise no Church would have been set up in this land; otherwise it could have done nothing for the illumination and civilization of the surrounding world. And so, brethren, we all of us profess to believe. Our Creeds, our Worship, our Sacraments, as much as those of the earliest Christians, testify to it. And the secret of our Creeds and Worship and Sacraments becoming a dull routine, and the secret of our daily existence becoming a pretence, and the secret of our having that sense of inward barrenness, that incapacity to act, or to find reasons and opportunities for action, is simply this: that we do not believe these words of Christ; that they do not come to us as the revelation of a divine, living truth which cannot pass away, though the Heavens and the Earth may. We suppose that by some acts or arts of ours we are to attach ourselves to Christ, instead of simply confessing that His Father has attached us by His own purpose and love to Him, has created us and redeemed and constituted us in Him, in order that we may do the works which He desires that we should do, and which His Spirit, by all His gentlest and all His severest discipline, is working in us to do. We have not believed this message. Oh, let this be our great Lent confession, the beginning and the end of all our confessions! The Spirit convinces us of Sin, because we believe not in Him. The Spirit shows us all our failures, weaknesses, corruptions, as flowing from this source, that we have been acting as if we were not rooted in Him, as if we could persuade or train or task our selfish, corrupt Adam nature to produce something which would be good for men or well-pleasing to God. Let us resolve, once for all, that this is impossible. A corrupt tree cannot bring forth good fruit; that is a law which has been proclaimed by Him who spoke with authority, and which can never be repealed. By no skill or discipline, by no refinements, by no religion, can you compel what is base and low and selfish to create what is manly and pure and self-sacrificing. Men have tried the experiment for six thousand years, and they have called in all politics and philosophy and religious societies to help them, and they have failed. And what then has not failed? Where has there been any success? Wherever, brethren, any body of men, or any man, has said resolutely, God has not left us to these selfish tendencies and inclinations of ours. He has grafted us into the true human and divine root. He desires us to abide in that root. He is willing to renew us day by day in Him in whom He has regenerated us. He has said, “Abide in me, and I in you,” and in His commandment is life; He does not break His promises as we break ours. Wherever any one has been brought to take this as the maxim and principle of his acts, and so to trust himself wholly in God’s hands, that He may work in him to will and do of His good pleasure, he has been enabled to overcome the world, the flesh, and the Devil,—he has been enabled to walk according to God’s will. And whenever a nation or a Church discovers that it has been going very wrong, that it has become worldly and lukewarm and uncharitable, each man seeking his own and not the things of Jesus Christ, and so that there is confusion and discontent and evil through a land on which God has poured out the tokens of His goodness, there is but one way of reformation. It is by recollecting the lore of our childhood, by returning to the old faith, the faith that we are members of Christ, and God’s children, and by earnestly confessing how little we have understood that privilege or cared for it; or cared to tell all over whom we have influence, all men in the furthest ends of the earth, that it is theirs as well as ours.

And these words then, brethren, these must be our watchword and charms in the time to come. “Abide in me, and I in you.” Let us receive them not as if we read them out of a book, but as if we knew assuredly that Christ was speaking them to us no less actually than He spoke them to the eleven Disciples as He sat with them on the night of His betrayal and agony. Let us be sure that each new morning He is saying to us, “Abide in me this day, and I will abide in you.” Let us be sure that He is saying them to us as we lie down at night. And then, day unto day and night unto night, by all their sad and all their joyful experiences, will repeat them and confirm them to us. The more sorely we are tempted by evil in any form, by vanity, by self-glorification, by lust, by indolence, by cowardice, the more certain shall we be that all these are messages of the Evil Spirit to draw us from our true Lord who has bound us to Himself, the more sure we shall be that greater is He that is with us than those that are against us. The more dreary and hopeless the condition of the world looks, the more we are reminded how utterly weak and unfit we are to do anything for its renovation, the more confident we shall be that the help which is done upon the earth He doeth it Himself; that He who died for Mankind must care for man more than we can; and that our highest ambition must be, in some little sphere to be His ministers, not fulfilling our ends, but His. If we care for that honour, we know, for He has told us so, that He is willing to bestow it upon us; that it is His Father’s good pleasure that we should bring forth much fruit; and that He came to do His Father’s pleasure, and to give us the power to do it. While you simply resolve to live as if you were His and He was in you, every lowly duty in your family circles, every effort to be useful in your neighbourhood, every body and every soul which you can comfort, will be a new bond to Christ, a new pledge and assurance of His presence. Then all things will be transformed. In the service of the Nation there will be manly purposes and clear insight, and the sacrifice of all petty ends. Power will be looked upon as a trust, to be thankfully received, and to be discharged in fear and hope, not as a prize to be coveted. The Church will never care to be anything but the witness for Him who took the nature of all that He might impart life to all who would receive it from Him. Whenever there are in us heartburnings, jealousies, suspicions, quarrels for precedence, a desire to exalt our opinions or put down our opponents, then we shall know inwardly that we are not abiding in Christ. And we shall confess that sin. And we shall ask the Father, who has grafted us into His Son, to give us repentance that we may turn to Him and cleave to Him,—to give us His Spirit, that our grudging, thankless, complaining life, may be changed into a free, manly life, which waxes stronger for all the discomforts and distresses that threaten it. Then, instead of asking what shall we get for the services we render to God, the highest blessing will seem to us the power of serving Him. For the exercise of such power will always demand more trust and dependence upon Him, and a greater knowledge of what He is. Other rewards than we, in our slothful, careless life, can dream of, are for those who have watched beside hospital pallets, and worn themselves out in encouraging, by acts more than words, the sick and dying to abide in Him who died for them. The peace which they impart returns to them again. They know that He in whom they believed is not their Lord only, but the Lord of the whole earth. They feel more of their own impotence every day to do what they wish to do, more of the evil which is fighting against them and the world, so they are obliged to think less and less of themselves, to cast all their burdens upon God, to trust Him for the accomplishment of His own blessed Will. And then, when the powers that have been spent upon their brethren become feeble in themselves,—when the eye, and the hand, and the heart fail, God will surely make all their bed in their sickness. The lesson of the whole life of toil and self-sacrifice will be gathered up in the days which call forth the endurance that is a higher and more blessed sacrifice still. The evening hour will be a Paschal supper, and He who sits at it, breaking the bread, pouring out the wine, will say, as His last, best, choicest words to His faithful disciple, “Abide in me and I will abide in thee; yea through long ages I will cause thee to bring forth fruit to the good of the family on earth, to the glory of the Father in Heaven.”

And so the thought of their deeds, which has oftener discouraged us by the contrast with our own than cheered us to follow them, will have its right effect upon us. We cannot gain strength from them, but we shall know where theirs was gained. We shall understand that it was received in weakness and perfected in weakness. When they learned to despair of themselves, and to abide in One who was the sufferer for all, the life-giver to all, then they were able to become sufferers with their fellows, to bring them life. If the disciples cannot cast the dumb and deaf spirit out of us, the Master can. If we cannot renew our youth at the spring, we can at the fountain. The sense of weakness and sin drives us from all intermediate creatures to the Mediator between the God of Love and us who have wandered from that Love. But in discovering Him, we discover again our relation to all creatures. We can be continually receiving blessings from them and imparting blessings to them, because He has said, “Abide in me and I will abide in you.”