Bible Commentaries
John 15

Verses 1-27

XV-XVI Exhortation and Encouragement —These two words characterize what is most characteristic in this piece. It builds up the unity of the body of Christ by insistence on vital adhesion to the Saviour and on the cohesive bond of mutual charity, 15:1-17. This fellowship conceived as a living vine and a fruitful fraternity shall have to face the perpetual hostility which the world showed towards Jesus himself, 15:18-25; it shall, however, stand and bear its witness to the Saviour in the strength of the Paraclete, 15-26-16:15. The rest is an epilogue of leave-taking which assures the Apostles that they shall have a perpetual source of joy in him and an invincible confidence that his victory over the world shall be theirs, 16:16-35.

XV 1-8 The Vine and the Branches —This is almost a pure allegory, the parabolic element in it being very small. The metaphor of the vine and the vineyard signifying the house of Israel is frequent in the OT. It is found in a beautiful canticle, Isaiah 5:1-7, in Jeremias’ divine pleas against Israel, Jeremiah 2:21, in a passage of Ezechiel most closely akin on the negative side to our present allegory, Ez 15:2-8, in the Philo-Ephraimite poet of Ps 79(80)—as also in Jacob’s prophetic image of Joseph, Genesis 49:22.1. ’I am the bread of life, I am the light of the world, I am the door, I am the good Shepherd, I am the resurrection and the life, I am the way, the truth and the life’—to these six great assertions this seventh and last ’I am’ is now added, as the Saviour’s own image of the Church which is the extension of himself, the total Christ, the mystic body of Pauline and Catholic theology. The allegory may have some relation to the Eucharistic wine which the Apostles had drunk, but in any case ’true vine’ is the man Christ hypostatically planted in the Godhead and realizing the fecundity and excellent fruitage of the vine-image. The cultivation of it is attributed to the Father.

2. A fruitless branch is lopped off like Judas; the fruit-bearing branch is pruned by the pruning-knife of trials, and thus relieved of noxious excrescence becomes more fruitful.

3. The pruning ’clean’ of the Apostles is the result of the word Jesus has spoken to them not only that night but during his whole ministry.

4. Vital immanence—the Eucharistic word of 6:57—is what the disciples must maintain by faith and charity—really by sanctifying grace which is inseparable from the virtues of faith and charity. The branches do not give but take the sap of life from the vine; therefore there is no fruit without immanent adhesion.

5. In indicating the meaning of the metaphor ’I am the vine, you the branches’, Jesus says that union secures abundant fructification, ’without me you can do nothing’— a sentence which according to patristic interpretation and the authoritative declaration of the 2nd Council of Orange shows the necessity not only of habitual but of actual grace. These six words exclude every sort of Pelagianism.

6. A separated vine-branch is proverbially useless, destined only to be cast out, to wither, to burn in fire. Nothing could be stronger than St Augustine’s comment: Aut vitis aud ignis— either the vine or the fire (of gehenna).

7. Mutual union of vine and branch means also efficacious prayer, which is the indispensable means of fruitful life.

8. Fruitfulness and discipleship, which is union of mind and heart with Christ, go together, and in them the Father has received glory, the moment they9-17 Union of Charity —9. The greatness of Christ’s love for his disciples is seen in the comparison: ’As the Father loved me’. They must make sure that his love for them continues.

10. The observance of his commandments, which is the real proof of that union of wills which is called love, will ensure the permanence of Christ’s good pleasure towards them, just as in Jesus’ own obedience the Father always acknowledged his beloved Son.

11. These words Jesus has spoken, in order that he may have the joy of the vine in its branches, and that the branches may have the full joy of abundant and precious fruit.

12. He reduces his commands to one which includes all: ’that you love one another, as I have loved you’.

13. The standard is Jesus’ own love, and the measure is that ’greater’ and greatest measure of generosity which will make one ready to sacrifice life itself on behalf of one’s ’friends’, who in this context also include one’s enemies, who do not return one’s love.

14. Again the proof of friendship with him who is Lord and Master, is conformity or will in obedience—idem velle, idem nolle, ea demum firma amicitia est, to will the same, to nill the same, is really firm friendship’.

15. Servants receive orders but are not given reasons, friends are treated as intimates and admitted to the master’s secrets. So Christ made known to his disciples all that he heard, as man and teacher, from his Father. 16. Most striking characteristic of all, his love was totally gratuitious. He chose them, not they him. This choice is brought back once more to the allegory of the vine: ’I have appointed you that you should go and bring forth fruit, and your fruit should remain’. In the wonderfully bold metaphors of Ps 79(80), the apostolic tendrils of the true vine were to propagate the growth of salvation to the sea and to the Euphrates and to the ends of the earth. Such fecundity is not the result of natural activity but of prayer drawing everything from the Father in the name of his Christ.

17. All these things that Jesus enjoins have one purpose, ’that you love one another’.

18-XVI 4 Hatred on the part of the World —The external response of the world to this apparition of divine charity in its midst will, strange to say, be hatred. Persecution is really a mark of the true Church. A Christian will never be surprised at it; rather will he expect it. Christ has forewarned us.

18. He tells us: ’It (fixedly) hated me before you’ (µeµ?+´Ð?e?).

19. The reason of the hostility is found in the fact that the aspirations of disciples of Christ are clearly and categorically opposed to the aspirations of the world. A dissimilarity which is a perpetual reproof must be disliked and hated. ’Not of the world’, rather ’chosen out of the world’, are the qualifications that make the disciples of Christ a sign of contradiction. 20. Servants cannot look for better treatment than their Master received. Persecution from many, submissive love from some will be their lot, as it was his. 21. The name of Christ is the real sign of contradiction, and hatred is heavily charged and intermixed with culpable ignorance: ’they know not him that sent me’. Jesus is speaking of the Jewish world.

22. The advent of Jesus, their Christ, and his message to them has deprived them of all excuse for their unbelief.

23. Hatred of Jesus is simply hatred of God the Father.

24. His works—unique works such as no one ever did—leave them without any plea to excuse them from sin. They have seen him and they have (fixedly) hated him and his Father, whose words the words of Jesus were, and whose works were his works.

25. So it was predicted in their law (i.e. their Scriptures), for a Psalmist said in a Messianic Psalm, 68(69):5: ’They hated me without cause’; cf.Ps 34(35):19. The connexion between 25 and 26 seems to be that the inexcusability of the unbelieving Jewish world will continue, for testimony to Jesus will also continue through the Holy Spirit and the Apostles who were with him from the beginning. Thus Jesus seems to refer chiefly, if not exclusively, to the years of active Jewish persecution and to the time which had its horizon in the fall of Jerusalem. 26. In a sentence, from which a little compendium of the theology of the Holy Spirit might be extracted, the Master now points to the Paraclete as a witness of himself. The Paraclete’s relation of origin or procession from the Son is implicit in the fact that the Son sends him. He shall equally come from the Father (in this temporal mission), but the eternal procession of the Holy Ghost from the Father is commonly held to be explicity stated by the use of the present tense, ’who proceeds from the Father’. That the Spirit is a person appears clearly, for although the ’Spirit of truth’ is neuter in Gk, this name is immediately followed by the masculine personal pronoun ’he’ (??e?+????). The Apostles are witnesses of Christ, as having been with him from the beginning (cf.Acts 1:21 f.: 10:37 ff.); their testimony is distinguished from, but also united to, the testimony of the Holy Ghost (cf.Acts 5:32; Acts 15:28).