In John 15:1-2 Jesus speaks of the vine and the branches. In Isaiah 5:1-4 the Lord used this same metaphor concerning Israel saying, “Now let me sing to my Well-beloved A song of my Beloved regarding His vineyard: My Well-beloved has a vineyard On a very fruitful hill. He dug it up and cleared out its stones, And planted it with the choicest vine. He built a tower in its midst, And also made a winepress in it; So He expected it to bring forth good grapes, But it brought forth wild grapes. Isaiah described Israel as a transplanted vine from Egypt where the Vinedresser took great care in transplanting it so that it would produce fruit and instead it only produced wild grapes. Jeremiah in 2:21records what the Lord said “I had planted you a noble vine, a seed of highest quality. How then have you turned before Me Into the degenerate plant of an alien vine?”
Friends it is so easy for you and me to over-evaluate our importance and undervalue the Lord. In contrast to this, Jesus describes Himself as the “True Vine” He is the original and everything else is at best are branches that get life from being connected to the true vine. Jesus calls Himself the “True Vine” in contrast to Judaism and tells them that you won’t find God in religion you will only find God in a relationship with the Son. Our union with our Lord is a living one that ought to have the characteristic of the vine and carry out the purpose of the vine to bear much fruit.
Then in 15:2 we read about A branch which by itself is weak and useless, it has no abilities to function apart from its connection to the vine. Most of the analogies that are given in scripture dealing with the relationship between the believer and Jesus carry the idea of union and communion. There is a necessity for you and me to realize that we are only branches and not the vine as we will see our security, identity, value and purpose all in our abiding union with Jesus and never apart from Him. Abiding means that we allow nothing in our lives that would crimp or cut our connection to Him. 10 times in the first 11 verses Jesus describes this connection as “abiding” the word describes a relationship that “keeps in fellowship with Christ so that His life can work in and through us to produce fruit.”