"I am the true vine, and My Father is the vinedresser. Every branch in Me that does not bear fruit, He takes away; and every branch that bears fruit, He prunes it, that it may bear more fruit. You are already clean because of the word which I have spoken to you. Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it abides in the vine, so neither can you, unless you abide in Me. I am the vine, you are the branches; he who abides in Me, and I in him, he bears much fruit; for apart from Me you can do nothing. If anyone does not abide in Me, he is thrown away as a branch, and dries up; and they gather them, and cast them into the fire, and they are burned. If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it shall be done for you. By this is My Father glorified, that you bear much fruit, and so prove to be My disciples."
As if it was not clear, there is a connection here to Matthew 7:21-23. In that passage, Jesus makes it abundantly clear that not everyone in Him belongs to Him. John 6:66 is another reference, which informs us that all Christians are disciples of Jesus, but not all disciples of Jesus are Christians. This passage bears out the same information. There are two qualifying statements in this passage that identify the apostates in contrast with the true believers. In the first statement, Jesus says, "
Every branch in Me that does not bear fruit, He takes away." The "He" here is God the Father. The Greek word translated "takes away" is
airo (αιρω), which means "to take away, remove, usually with the idea of violence and authority" (particularly,
Luke 6:29-30; 11:22). It is also used in Matthew 9:16 and Mark 2:21 with regard to the new piece of cloth that tears away still more of the old garment. Spoken of persons, it means to take away or remove from the world by death (
Matt. 24:39). In the second statement, Jesus says, "
If anyone does not abide in Me, he is thrown away as a branch, and dries up; and they gather them, and cast them into the fire, and they are burned." The words "throw" and "cast" are the exact same Greek word. The last half of this verse is reminiscent of the truths of Jesus' parables in Matthew 13 where the wicked are gathered out of the kingdom and cast into the lake of fire.
How are we to interpret this admittedly difficult metaphor? As always, we must consider the context. And here we find an important clue to Jesus' meaning. Remember what was happening in the upper room. Take not of the characters in that night's drama: "Jesus knowing that His hour had come that He should depart out of this world to the Father, having loved His own who were in the world, He loved them to the end. And during the supper, the devil having already put into the heart of Judas Iscariot, the son of Simon, to betray Him" (John 13:1-2).
Here, then, is the cast: Jesus, the Father, His disciples, and Judas the betrayer. All of them were weighing heavily on Jesus' mind that night. He was eager to affirm His great love for the Eleven. He must have also been grieving over Judas, who had utterly rejected His love and set out to betray Him. Most of all, He knew that He and the Father shared an infinite love; yet He was burdened with the knowledge that tomorrow He would be the object of the Father's wrath as He bore the burden of our sin on the cross.
It is not surprising, then, that Christ, the Father, the eleven faithful disciples, and Judas all play a part in the vine-and-branches metaphor. Christ is the True Vine. The Father is the Vinedresser. The disciples (along with all true disciples) are the fruit-bearing branches. And Judas (as well as all false disciples) represents the barren branches.
And so the fruitless branches represent counterfeit disciples—people who were never truly saved. They do not abide in Christ, the True Vine; they are not truly united with Him by faith. They are Judas branches. They can bear no genuine fruit. In the end the Father removes them to preserve the life and fruitfulness of the other branches.
...our Lord was teaching His disciples a truth that would help them to understand Judas's treachery. Judas's faith was a sham. His commitment to Jesus was superficial. He was a fruitless branch. "It would have been good for that man if he had not been born" (Mark 14:21).
John MacArthur, The Gospel According to Jesus, ch.16, pp.166-167, 172.
The Greek word translated as "abide" in this passage (and in many others) is
meno (μενω), which means "to stay (in a given place, state, relation or expectancy); abide, continue, dwell, endure, be present, remain, stand, tarry." It brings to mind the passages that state explicitly that those who endure until the end will be saved (
Matt. 10:22; 24:13; Mark 13:13; Luke 21:19). Those who do not endure until the end have revealed themselves to be apostates—false converts. The ones who endure until the end have perseverance, and genuine faith always results in faithfulness. The entire idea of faith is that it remains
faithful because faith cannot be
faithless. With these two statements from this passage, Jesus is revealing both sets of apostates: the ones who leave (
v. 6), and the ones who remain as "hidden reefs" (
v. 2; cf. Jude 13).
