The Grapevine Principle
How a common fruit plant points the way to the soul's satisfaction
Later this week I’m speaking to the opening session of our church’s student fall retreat. It’s a great group of students and I love hanging out with them and their leaders, so I’m expecting a good time. Most of all, I’m looking forward to speaking on a subject dear to my heart: how to find authentic spiritual life. The theme verse for the weekend is John 15:5, a verse in which Jesus uses grapevines—a familiar sight to everyone living in that agricultural age—as an object lesson for satisfying the deepest longings of the soul. I may call my talk “The Grapevine Principle” because, well, it sounds cool.
I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing. (John 15:5)
The imagery behind Jesus’ words is clear enough. Grapevines could be seen growing in almost every field in Jesus’ day and were even more common than the scuppernong and muscadine vines that flourish in the rural areas of my state of South Carolina. Grasping the spiritual lesson behind them, though, requires that we focus less on their familiarity and more on their form. First there’s the vine, the trunk of the plant rooted in the ground. The vine is the source of life and vitality for the whole plant. “I am the vine,” Jesus says, using a grammatical form in the original language of the New Testament that emphasizes the subject of the sentence. A better rendering of his statement might be, “I, only I, am the vine.” In other words, whatever spiritual lesson he’s teaching begins with the principle that just as a grapevine without a vine makes no sense, so a soul longing for spiritual authenticity apart from Jesus makes no sense.
The branches are the second part of Jesus’ lesson. “You are the branches,” he says to his followers. His point is that the branches of the grapevine cannot exist on their own because it’s the vine that provides the nourishment necessary for them to live, an observation made even more clear in the next verse. Branches separated from the vine, Jesus explains, will wither and die. They then “are gathered, thrown into the fire and burned.” (John 15:6)
The third part of the grapevine is the fruit. “Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit.” Those deep blue, mature, luscious grapes hanging in clusters from the branches—according to Jesus’ description—don’t happen by themselves. They don’t appear from nowhere. They’re not the result of an agricultural accident. They’re organic, the natural consequence of a branch being firmly connected to a vine. So it is with a student, a child, a man or a woman who’s deeply connected with Jesus. They will experience in their souls the vision, vitality and passion—the life—that flows from the risen Christ into the heart of every believer.
Vine. Branches. Fruit. All three elements are what make up the grapevine. But Jesus doesn’t stop there. He goes one step further and ties the parts together with a single word. The word is “abide” and it’s the key to understanding Jesus’ larger teaching through the grapevine. You could say that “abide” is the secret to the Grapevine Principle.
Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. (John 15:4)
In the original language of the New Testament “abide” has many different shades of meaning. It can mean to “remain,” “to dwell,” or even “to stay.” The students I’m speaking to on Friday might prefer the phrase “hanging out,” a phrase that’s not as disrepectful as it might appear because the Old Testament roots of the word have to do with the tabernacle during Israel’s forty years in the wilderness in which God “hung out” with the ancient Jews. To abide in our modern experience is to linger instead of moving, to stay put instead of moving on, to rest in a person’s presence instead of searching for someone new. It’s what grandparents want their grandchildren to do when it’s time for them to leave. It’s what a teen-age boy wants his girlfriend to do when her father is anxious for her to come home. It’s how a teacher feels when a student almost understands a new concept but then the bell rings for the class to be over.
Most importantly, “abide” is what Jesus invites us to do with him. When we do, he says, we’ll find our souls growing more and more attached to him, to the point where his life begins to flow through our lives and makes us more and more like him. The life flows through the vine and into the branches, producing the fruit that we so desperately need.
In his book, “Abide in Christ,” Andrew Murray, a South African devotional writer from a previous generation who continues to impact our own time because of his passion and authenticity, explains the experience of abiding in Christ as no less than a spiritual union with him:
The parable [of the grapevine] teaches us the nature of that union. The connection between the vine and the branch is a living one. No external, temporary union will suffice; no work of man can effect it: the branch, whether an original or an engrafted one, is such only by the Creator's own work, in virtue of which the life, the sap, the fatness, and the fruitfulness of the vine communicate themselves to the branch. And just so it is with the believer too. His union with his Lord is no work of human wisdom or human will, but an act of God, by which the closest and most complete life-union is effected between the Son of God and the sinner. "God hath sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts." The same Spirit which dwelt and still dwells in the Son, becomes the life of the believer; in the unity of that one Spirit, and the fellowship of the same life which is in Christ, he is one with Him. As between the vine and branch, it is a life-union that makes them one.
The Grapevine Principle is a real experience—something that I can attest to along with many other people I know. We can have the kind of rich relationship with Jesus in which we abide in him and out of that abiding to experience his life flowing into our own just as surely as a branch draws its life from the vine. But if that’s true—and it is—then why is it so hard for so many church people to find real spiritual life? Or to put the question in terms of John 15:5, why is the Grapevine Principle so hard to grasp?
The answer often can be found in our religious practices. What I mean is how the spiritual activities and habits that we observe have a way of taking on a life all their own and instead of being the means of connecting us with the Lord they become the focus of faith in and of themselves. In other words, our spiritual journey can become more about the road than the destination.
Not that there’s something wrong with religious practicies. Far from it! If the spiritual life is to have any kind of substance to it, any kind of reality, any meat on the bone so to speak, we must have concrete ways of accessing it. Otherwise, what we find is more a religious mood than the real experience of God’s presence.
The problem is that it’s easier to pay attention to the methods of spirituality—practices that we can see, touch and hear—than to the God those practices point us to because we can’t see, touch or hear him in the same fashion. That’s why we often take the easy way out, substituting the tools over the object the tools were designed to fix, focusing more on the cooking than the meal. At their best, spiritual habits like church, prayer, Bible study and spiritual community are doorways into experiencing the presence of Jesus. At their worst, they become a substitute for his presence. And it’s not just us. People in the Bible do the same thing. In John 12:37, for instance, the Jewish people are quick to ask Jesus for a miracle but having received it, refuse to place their faith in him. “We like the religious things you’re doing and want more of them,” they say to Jesus, “but we don’t want anything to do with You.”
And that’s where the Grapevine Principle is so important. It reminds us that all the religious activity in the world can’t satisfy our souls apart from Jesus. We long for him and him alone. With that truth in mind, the methods that lead us to him take on a whole new life:
When you pray, don’t focus on the words for their own sake but on the Jesus your words address. That’s the point behind Jesus’ directions in Matthew 6:7-8, “And when you pray do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you pray.”
When you read the Bible, don’t regard it as a history book that will give you more knowledge or a book of philosophy that will make you smarter than your friends. Instead, receive its words in a way that directs your attention to the God who wrote it. “But this is the on to whom I will look: he who is humble and contrite in spirit and trembles at my word.” (Isaiah 66:2)
When you attend church, don’t do look at it as a religious experience that will put you into a more spiritual mood but as the joining together with the eternal communion of saints gathered around the throne in eternal worship. That’s the amazing promise of true worship that the writer of the book of Hebrews makes clear when he explains that as we worship, we come come “to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering, and to the assembly of the firstborn in heaven, and to God, the judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, and to Jesus” (Hebrews 12:22-24)
When you connect with other people in community, don’t do so just because they’re your friends and you have a good time together but because the Holy Spirit works through our relationships to bring us into the Lord’s presence. “Above all, keep loving one another earnestly…Show hospitality to one another without grumbling. As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another, as good stewards of God’s varied grace” (1 Peter 4:8-10)
I never know what to expect when I speak to students, especially at retreats. They tend to get distracted and rowdy and keeping their attention may be a challenge. But I believe they’re looking for the same thing everyone else is looking for, the truth that the Grapevine Principle captures so well. Our souls long for Jesus, and nothing less than him will ever satisfy us.
Excellent.