The one tool that a vinedresser needs is a knife. The chief secret of
culture is merciless pruning. And so says my text, 'The Father is the
Husbandman.' Our Lord assumes that office in other of His parables. But
here the exigencies of the parabolic form require that the office of
Cultivator should be assigned only to the Father; although we are not
to forget that the Father, in that office, works through and in His Son.
But we should note that the one kind of husbandry spoken of here is
pruning--not manuring, not digging, but simply the hacking away of all
that is rank and all that is dead.
Were you ever in a greenhouse or in a vineyard at the season of cutting
back the vines? What flagitious waste it would seem to an ignorant
person to see scattered on the floor the bright green leaves and the
incipient clusters, and to look up at the bare stem, bleeding at a
hundred points from the sharp steel. Yes! But there was not a random
stroke in it all, and there was nothing cut away which it was not loss
to keep and gain to lose; and it was all done artistically,
scientifically, for a set purpose--that the plant might bring forth
more fruit.
Thus, says Christ, the main thing that is needed--not, indeed, to
improve the life in the branches, but to improve the branches in which
the life is--is excision. There are two forms of it given
here--absolutely dead wood has to be cut out; wood that has life in it,
but which has also rank shoots, that do not come from the all-pervading
and hallowed life, has to be pruned back and deprived of its shoots.
It seems to me that the very language of the metaphor before us
requires us to interpret the fruitless branches as meaning all those
who have a mere superficial, external adherence to the True Vine. For,
according to the whole teaching of the parable, if there be any real
union, there will be some life, and if there be any life, there will be
some fruit, and, therefore, the branch that has no fruit has no life,
because it has no real union. And so the application, as I take it, is
necessarily to those professing Christians, nominal adherents to
Christianity or to Christ's Church, people that come to church and
chapel, and if you ask them to put down in the census paper what they
are, will say that they are Christians--Churchmen or Dissenters, as the
case may be--but who have no real hold upon Jesus Christ, and no real
reception of anything from Him; and the 'taking away' is simply that,
somehow or other, God makes visible, what is a fact, that they do not
belong to Him with whom they have this nominal connection.
The longer Christianity continues in any country, the more does the
Church get weighted and lowered in its temperature by the aggregation
round about it of people of that sort. And one sometimes longs and
prays for a storm to come, of some sort or other, to blow the dead wood
out of the tree, and to get rid of all this oppressive and stifling
weight of sham Christians that has come round every one of our
churches. 'His fan is in His hand, and He will throughly purge His
floor,' and every man that has any reality of Christian life in him
should pray that this pruning and cutting out of the dead wood may be
done, and that He would 'come as a refiner's fire and purify' His
priesthood.
Then there is the other side, the pruning of the fruitful branches. We
all, in our Christian life, carry with us the two natures--our own poor
miserable selves, and the better life of Jesus Christ within us. The
one flourishes at the expense of the other; and it is the Husbandman's
merciful, though painful work, to cut back unsparingly the rank shoots
that come from self, in order that all the force of our lives may be
flung into the growing of the cluster which is acceptable to Him.
So, dear friends, let us understand the meaning of all that comes to
us. The knife is sharp and the tendrils bleed, and things that seem
very beautiful and very precious are unsparingly shorn away, and we are
left bare, and, as it seems to ourselves, impoverished. But Oh! it is
all sent that we may fling our force into the production of fruit unto
God. And no stroke will be a stroke too many or too deep if it helps us
to that. Only let us take care that we do not let regrets for the
vanished good harm us just as much as joy in the present good did, and
let us rather, in humble submission of will to His merciful knife, say
to Him, 'Cut to the quick, Lord, if only thereby my fruit unto Thee may
increase.'
III. Lastly, we have here the branches abiding in the Vine, and
therefore fruitful.
Our Lord deals with the little group of His disciples as incipiently
and imperfectly, but really, cleansed through 'the word which He has
spoken to them,' and gives them His exhortation towards that conduct
through which the cleansing and the union and the fruitfulness will all
be secured. 'Now ye are clean: 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.'
Union with Christ is the condition of all fruitfulness. There may be
plenty of activity and yet barrenness. Works are not fruit. We can
bring forth a great deal 'of ourselves,' and because it is of ourselves
it is nought. Fruit is possible only on condition of union with Him. He
is the productive source of it all.
There is the great glory and distinctive blessedness of the Gospel.
Other teachers come to us and tell us how we ought to live, and give us
laws, patterns and examples, reasons and motives for pure and noble
lives. The Gospel comes and gives us life, if we will take it, and
unfolds itself in us into all the virtues that we have to possess. What
is the use of giving a man a copy if he cannot copy it? Morality comes
and stands over the cripple, and says to him, 'Look here! This is how
you ought to walk,' and he lies there, paralysed and crippled, after as
before the exhibition of what graceful progression is. But Christianity
comes and bends over him, and lays hold of his hand, and says, 'In the
name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk,' and his feet and
ankle bones receive strength, and 'he leaps, and walks, and praises
God.' Christ gives more than commandments, patterns, motives; He gives
the power to live soberly, righteously, and godly, and in Him alone is
that power to be found.
Then note that our reception of that power depends upon our own
efforts. 'Abide in Me and I in you.' Is that last clause a commandment
as well as the first? How can His abiding in us be a duty incumbent
upon us? But it is. And we might paraphrase the intention of this
imperative in its two halves, by--Do you take care that you abide in
Christ, and that Christ abides in you. The two ideas are but two sides
of the one great sphere; they complement and do not contradict each
other. We dwell in Him as the part does in the whole, as the branch
does in the vine, recipient of its life and fruit-bearing energy. He
dwells in us as the whole does in the part, as the vine dwells in the
branch, communicating its energy to every part; or as the soul does in
the body, being alive equally in every part, though it be sight in the
eyeball, and hearing in the ear, and colour in the cheek, and strength
in the hand, and swiftness in the foot.
'Abide in Me and I in you.' So we come down to very plain, practical
exhortations. Dear brethren, suppress yourselves, and empty your lives
of self, that the life of Christ may come in. A lock upon a canal, if
it is empty, will have its gates pressed open by the water in the canal
and will be filled. Empty the heart and Christ will come in. 'Abide in
Him' by continual direction of thought, love, desire to Him; by
continual and reiterated submission of the will to Him, as commanding
and as appointing; by the honest reference to Him of daily life and all
petty duties which otherwise distract us and draw us away from Him.
Then, dwelling in Him we shall share in His life, and shall bring forth
fruit to His praise.
Here is encouragement for us all. To all of us, sometimes, our lives
seem barren and poor; and we feel as if we had brought forth no fruit
to perfection. Let us get nearer to Him and He will see to the fruit.
Some poor stranded sea-creature on the beach, vainly floundering in the
pools, is at the point of death; but the great tide comes, leaping and
rushing over the sands, and bears it away out into the middle deeps for
renewed activity and joyous life. Let the flood of Christ's life bear
you on its bosom, and you will rejoice and expatiate therein.
Here is a lesson of solemn warning to professing Christians. The lofty
mysticism and inward life in Jesus Christ all terminate at last in
simple, practical obedience; and the fruit is the test of the life.
'Depart from Me, I never knew you, ye that work iniquity.'
And here is a lesson of solemn appeal to us all. Our only opportunity
of bearing any fruit worthy of our natures and of God's purpose
concerning us is by vital union with Jesus Christ. If we have not that,
there may be plenty of activity and mountains of work in our lives, but
there will be no fruit. Only that is fruit which pleases God and is
conformed to His purpose concerning us, and all the rest of our busy
doings is no more the fruit a man should bear than cankers are roses,
or than oak-galls are acorns. They are but the work of a creeping grub,
and diseased excrescences that suck into themselves the juices that
should swell the fruit. Open your hearts to Christ and let His life and
His Spirit come into you, and then you will have 'your fruit unto
holiness, and the end everlasting life.'