The True Vine

In John 15:1-4, there is a sentence that is doesn’t seem to belong. "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, and I will 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. Why in the middle of a paragraph explaining the vine and the branches, do we have verse 3--You are already clean by the word I have spoken to you? It doesn’t’ fit the context. Try reading the paragraph without this verse and you’ll see. Why is it there? One possibility is that it was a slip of the pen. Some copyist’s eyes wandered over to another page, causing him to inadvertently copies something that belonged somewhere else. This explanation does not satisfy. How could he make such a mistake? There’s no other place in John that is even remotely like this. Only one other passage uses the word “clean”--in John 13. Peter says “You shall never wash my feet.” Jesus insists. Then Peter says “Then not only my feet, but my hands and my head as well. Jesus replies “He who is washed does not need to wash again. And you are clean.” It is similar. But it is not close enough to be the same statement. Another explanation is that the words are authentic, but that they have nothing to do wih the passage. Maybe Jesus was in the middle of one thought, and another thought occurred to him. Suddenly, halfway through the discussion of vines and branches, Jesus decided to tell them they were clean. I can’t believe Jesus would just through in a random phrase in the middle of a paragraph, nor would John throw something in that didn’t belong. It sticks out like a sore thumb. No, the only reason this is here is because Jesus wanted it to be here. It was no accident. It has something important to say about this concept of the vine and the branches. “You are clean because of the words I have spoken to you.“ He was not talking about physical cleanliness but ritual or moral cleanliness. It was a constant theme to the Jews of Jesus’ day. They not only believed that cleanliness was next to godliness as Wesley said, but that cleanliness was godliness. It was the root of all their ritual. Spiritual cleanliness was at the root of temple sacrifices. The lambs sacrificed in the temple had to be clean. Their sacrifice cleansed the people. It was at the root of their diet restrictions. There were “clean” and “unclean” animals. This goes all the way back to Noah and the ark. It was at the root of the Law. The reason they did not wear mixed fabrics or trim the corner of their beard was because this was “unclean.” It was not kosher. It was at the root of their elaborate bathing rituals. At Qumron in Israel was a monastery from Jesus’ time run by a group of Jews called the Essenes. In the ruins of Qumron are no less than seven ritual baths, with seven steps each. They bathed three or four time a day, not for the prevention of disease but for the washing away of sin. Faced with this obsession, it is amazing that Jesus did not have more to say about it. He ignored the extreme Sabbath rules. His disciples ate without washing their hands. He hung around with people who were considered unclean. Even in this one book the only two references to cleanliness are Jesus saying “You are clean. You are clean.” I have known people who are obsessed with cleanliness as a ritual. Some of them were obsessive-compulsive--obsessed in a way having nothing to do with morality or cleanliness. Others want to be just clean enough to pass. How dirty can they be, and still go to heaven? Can they drink? Can they smoke? What curse words can they use and still be acceptable to God? Can they run around on their spouses, and still be clean enough for God to accept them into their kingdom? If they ask forgiveness, will they be acceptable? Our language reflects this. If we pass a drug test, we are “clean.” If we pass a background check, then we are “clean.” Many Christians labor under the mistaken assumption that religion is about being clean. If we do not commit sins, then are clean, no matter what we think about doing. If we commit sins, and we atone for it or seek forgiveness, then we are clean again, and we pass the test. It’s all about the cleanliness test, you see. Jesus has good news for us. You are clean! If you hear the Word of God and believe His promises, you are clean. You don’t have to be obsessing about being right and wrong. But to Jesus, this is only the beginning. The real question is now if we are clean, but if we abide? Living things clean themselves. Dead bodies have to be cleaned. Maybe the reason we have such an obsession with cleanliness is because we are not living. Being a follower of Jesus is not just about being accepted. It is about in Christ. It isn’t just about the future. Believers’ lives begin and end in Him. He is the vine That doesn’t mean we can go out and do unclean things. On the contrary, when we do unclean things, a part of us is spiritually dead already. We are not producing the fruits of life, but of death. Living plants produce grapes, oranges, apples, and pears. Dead plants produce flies and maggots. If we are consistently breaking God’s laws, and we naturally produce the fruit of disobedience, then it is more likely that we are dead than alive. I am the vine Jesus says, and my Father is the Gardener. If we are dead, then the Father will cut us down. If we have dead spots in us, He will, like a tree surgeon, cut those places out. This hurts, but if we are alive in him, we will welcome it, just as we welcome the surgeon’s knife if it keeps us alive. We are already clean, but are we alive. Does our nurture and sustenance from Him? Those who deeply know the Lord do not talk about cleanliness, spiritual or otherwise. They are not obsessed with the lawful but the vital. The don’t just want to please God, but to know him. “There have been believers all through the ages who have understood this. Take the Protestant minister Andrew Murray, for example. “What sayest thou, o my soul? Shall I longer hesitate, or withhold consent? Or shall I not, instead of only thinking how hard and how difficult it is to live like a branch of the True Vine, because I thought of it as something I had to accomplish,— shall I not now begin to look upon it as the most blessed and joyful thing under heaven ? Shall I not believe that, now I once am in Him, He Himself will keep me and enable me to abide? On my part, abiding is nothing but the acceptance of my position, the consent to be kept there, the surrender of faith to the strong Vine still to hold the feeble branch. Yes, I will, I do abide in Thee, blessed Lord Jesus.” Or listen to the Twentieth Century mystic and monk, Thomas Merton. “For it is the love of God that warms me in the sun and the love of God that sends the cold rain. It is God’s love that feeds me in the bread I eat and also feed s me in hunger and fasting. It is the love of God that sends me the winter days when I am cold and sick, and the summer days when I labor and my clothes are full of sweat, but it is God who breathes on me n the light winds off the river and the breezes out of the wood. . . . It is God’s love who speaks to me in the birds and the streams, but also in the clamor of he city. . . If these seeds would take root in my liberty, and His will would grow in my freedom, I would become the love that He is, and my harvest would be glory and my own joy. And I would grow together into thousands and millions of other freedoms into the gold of one huge field, praising God loaded with increase, loaded with wheat. . . .I would not be fed. I would not be full, but my food is to do the will of Him who made me, and who made all things in order to give Himself to me through them.” Or listen to the Apostle Paul in Galatians 2:19-21 For through the law I died to the law so that I might live for God. I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. Do the words make sense to you? Or are you still wondering what they mean? Do you know what it means to have a hunger and thirst for God burning in you? Do you know what it mans to draw all life and strength from Him? As I write these words the sound of the drier is going in another room. I dislike that sound. I hope it ends soon, and I can get on with concentrating on my message. As necessary as it is, it is not something I want forever. That’s the way many people think about church. They come to get clean, but get out as fast as they can because all they want is to get clean. If they really knew the Lord, they would be thinking of excuse to stay in church, not leave it. When they left, they would want to be back. As an old song goes. “How tedious and tasteless the hours when Jesus no longer I see. “Sweet prospects sweet birds and sweet flowers have all lost their sweetness to me “The midsummer sun shines but dim, the flowers strive in vain to be gay. “But when I am happy in Him, December’s as pleasant as May.” There is more to life than the end of it, just as there is more to marriage than a wedding. All of life is to be lived in Him, through him, for Him, by Him, and with Him. Like a branch to a vine, so are we to Him. This is more than just clean. That is real.