I am the true vine, and my Father is the vine dresser.
Read Chapter 15
Augustine of Hippo
AD 430
1. This passage of the Gospel, brethren, where the Lord calls Himself the vine, and His disciples the branches, declares in so many words that the Mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, 1 Timothy 2:5 is the head of the Church, and that we are His members. For as the vine and its branches are of one nature, therefore, His own nature as God being different from ours, He became man, that in Him human nature might be the vine, and we who also are men might become branches thereof. What mean, then, the words, I am the true vine? Was it to the literal vine, from which that metaphor was drawn, that He intended to point them by the addition of true? For it is by similitude, and not by any personal propriety, that He is thus called a vine; just as He is also termed a sheep, a lamb, a lion, a rock, a corner-stone, and other names of a like kind, which are themselves rather the true ones, from which these are drawn as similitudes, not as realities. But when He says, I am the true vin...
He says this as being the Head of the Church, of which weare the members, the Man Christ Jesus; for the vine and the branches are of the same nature. When He says, I am the true vine, He does not mean really a vine; for He is only called so metaphorically, not literally, even as He is called the Lamb, the Sheep, and the like; but He distinguishes Himself from that vine to whom it is said, How you are turned into the degenerate plant of a strange vine to me (Jer 11:21). For how is that a true vine, which when grapes are expected from it, produces only thorns? .
For we cultivate God, and God cultivates us. But our culture of God does not make Him better: our culture is that of adoration, not of plowing: His culture of us makes us better. His culture consists in extirpating all the seeds of wickedness from our hearts, in opening our heart to the plow, as it were, of His word, in sowing in us the seeds of His commandments, in waiting forthe fruits of piety.
And who is there in this world s...
"Then He adds, "Every branch in me that beareth not fruit He taketh away; and every branch that beareth fruit He pruneth, that it may bring forth more fruit."
I am the true Vine. The Greek has a double art. ή άμπελος ή α̉ληθινὴ, the vine the true. The Syriac Isaiah , I am that vine of truth. Christ here sets forth the parable of the vine and the branches with this end and view, to teach the Apostles that they must abide in His faith and love, and not depart therefrom in consequence of His impending passion and death. That this is the great object of the parable is plain from the ninth verse more especially, Abide ye in My love.
Christ here compares Himself to a vine, not as He is God, as Arius maintained, trying to prove that the Son is inferior to the Father, as being the Husbandman, but as man. For so men are grafted into Him as branches. For they are of the same nature and kind as the Vine. Wherefore S. Hilary says (lib9 , de Trin.), "Christ to this end assumed flesh, that we fleshly men might as branches be grafted into Him as the Vine." But yet the flesh of Christ would not have had that power of producing vine-branc...
Must be observed, and that nothing must be done by us but what the Lord first did on our behalf, as that the cup which is offered in remembrance of Him should be offered mingled with wine. For when Christ says, "I am the true vine."
CHAPTER II. That the Son is Consubstantial with God the Father, and not of an alien or foreign nature, as some of the perverse assert.
He wishes to show us that it behoves us to love, to hold fast to our love towards Him, and how great a gain we shall have from our union with Him, when He says that He is the Vine, by way of illustration; and that those who are united and fixed and rooted in a manner in Him, and who are already partakers in His nature through their participation in the Holy Spirit are branches; for it is His Holy Spirit Which has united us with the Saviour Christ, since connexion with the Vine produces a choice of those things which belong to It, and our connexion with It holds us fast. From a firm resolve in goodness we proceed onward by faith, and we become His people, obtaining from Him the dignity of Sonship. For according to the holy Paul, He that is joined unto the Lord is one Spirit. As then in other places He has been called the foundation and coping-stone by...
He rises in haste to perform the sacrament of His final passion in the flesh (such is His desire to fulfill His Father’s commandment) and therefore takes occasion to unfold the mystery of His assumption of His flesh, whereby He supports us, as the vine does its branches: I am the true vine.
But He wholly separates this humiliation in the flesh from the form of the Paternal Majesty, by setting forth the Father as the diligent Husbandman of this vine: And My Father is the Husbandman.
The useless and deceitful branches He cuts down for burning.
And forasmuch as Christ was sufficient for Himself, but His disciples needed the help of the Husbandman, of the vine He says nothing, but adds concerning the branches, Every branch in Me that bears not fruit, He takes away. By fruit is meant life, i.e. that no one can be in Him without good works.
And inasmuch as even the best of men require the work of the husbandman, He adds, And every branch that bears fruit, He purges it, that it may bring forth more fruit. He alludes here to the tribulations and trials which were coming upon them, the effect of which would be to purge, and so to strengthen them. By pruning the branches we make the tree shoot out the more.
You are clean through the word which I have spoken to you, i.e., you have been enlightened by My doctrine, and been delivered from Jewish error.
The sober and joy-producing vine, from whose instructions, as from branches, there joyfully hang down clusters of graces, distilling love, is our Lord Jesus, who says expressly to the apostles.
The vine, and that not in a few places, refers to the Lord Himself,
, and you will find that He whom you believe to be the Father (described as acting for the Father, although you, for your part, forsooth, suppose that "the Father, being the husbandman"
