Posted on 05/01/2024 12:42:30 PM PDT by MurphsLaw
John 15:1-8
Friends, in our Gospel passage today,
Jesus declares that he is the vine and we are the branches,
adding that
“anyone who does not remain in me
will be thrown out like a branch and wither.”
It’s odd that we accept this sort of language very easily when it comes to our bodily health,
while we balk at it when it comes to spiritual or supernatural health.
Doctors and health specialists can say, with a clarity and matter-of-factness,
that certain practices and behaviors are absolutely essential
if one wants to maintain physical well-being.
Unless you eat a balanced, nutritious diet, you will get sick and unfit.
If you smoke, drink to excess, and never exercise,
your body will become unhealthy,
and if these practices (or negligences) become exaggerated, you will die.
It just isn’t that complicated.
Jesus is not engaging in charming poetic imagery.
He is laying out the spiritual facts.
The spirit is a living thing, and it derives its life from the vine.
If, therefore, you are separated from the vine,
you will die spiritually;
you will stop living a supernatural life.
And it’s just not that complicated.
1 I am the true vine, and it is my Father who tends it.
2 The branch that yields no fruit in me, he cuts away; the branch that does yield fruit, he trims clean, so that it may yield more fruit.
3 You, through the message I have preached to you, are clean already;
4 you have only to live on in me, and I will live on in you. The branch that does not live on in the vine can yield no fruit of itself; no more can you, if you do not live on in me.
5 I am the vine, you are its branches; if a man lives on in me, and I in him, then he will yield abundant fruit; separated from me, you have no power to do anything.
6 If a man does not live on in me, he can only be like the branch that is cast off and withers away; such a branch is picked up and thrown into the fire, to burn there.
7 As long as you live on in me, and my words live on in you, you will be able to make what request you will, and have it granted.
8 My Father’s name has been glorified, if you yield abundant fruit, and prove yourselves my disciples.
Thanks !!
I’m very fond of the Knox translation - he was a polymath genius and translated the entire Bible on his own - fluent in Hebrew, Greek & Latin. He also wrote mystery stories. :-)
But there's nothing like holding a book in your hands and turning actual pages!
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