Pruning – John 15: 2

He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful.

In verse one, Jesus tells us that he is the vine, and then he says that his Father is the gardener. In this verse, Jesus explains what the gardener does.

The vine has branches that bear fruit and some that don’t bear fruit. There are various ways of looking at this verse. Some might say Jesus is talking about Israel as a branch and believers, both Jew and Gentile as another branch. Yet Jesus speaks about “branches” in the plural, and vines tend to have many branches rather than just a few.

If we look at this verse from the perspective of a branch representing an individual person, then we can see a personal challenge here. Are we fruitful?

It is interesting to pay attention to the standard that the gardener uses. Jesus doesn’t qualify the quality of the fruit or the amount of fruit that is produced. All the gardener looks for is that there is some fruit.

The next thing the gardener does to the branch with some fruit is to prune it so that it becomes more fruitful. What does this mean?

Unlike cutting off a branch that bears no fruit, pruning is cutting a branch back so that it will bear more fruit. Somehow the cutting back stimulates more growth, more fruit.

Let’s Discuss: What does God’s pruning look like in real life?