The Church: Its Organization, Order and Discipline

06 THE VINE AND ITS BRANCHES

“I HAD planted thee a noble vine, wholly a right seed: how then art thou turned into the degenerate plant of a strange vine unto me?” Jeremiah 2:21. COOD 31.1

The Lord compares is church-his people-to a vine, in which each member draws its life and nourishment from the parent stock. In the beautiful comparison drawn by the prophet Isaiah we read: “Now will I sing to my well-beloved a song of my beloved touching his vineyard. My well beloved hath a vineyard in a very fruitful hill: and he fenced it, and gathered out the stones thereof, and planted it with the choicest vine, and built a tower in the midst of it, and also made a wine-press therein: and he looked that it should bring forth grapes, and it brought forth wild grapes. And now, O inhabitants of Jerusalem, and men of Judah, judge, I pray you, betwixt me and my vineyard. What could have been done more to my vineyard, that I have not done in it? Wherefore, when I looked that it should bring forth grapes, brought it forth wild grapes?” Isaiah 5:1-4. COOD 31.2

If we read still further, we learn why the fruit was evil instead of good: “For the vineyard of the Lord of hosts is the house of Israel, and the men of Judah his pleasant plant; and he looked for judgment, but behold oppression; for righteousness, but behold a cry.” Verse 7. COOD 31.3

Concerning the Lord’s vineyard and his care of it, the same prophet say: “In that day sing ye unto her, a vineyard of red wine [not a cellar of wine casks, but a vineyard, where it is ‘wine in the cluster,’ as in Isaiah 65:8]. I the Lord do keep it; I will water it every moment: lest any hurt it, I will keep it night and day.” Isaiah 27:2, 3. COOD 31.4

More fully still is this comparison of Christ and his church with the vineyard and its branches illustrated in our Saviour’s discourse: “I am the true vine, and my Father is the husbandman. Every branch in me that beareth not fruit he taketh away; and every branch that beareth fruit, he purgeth it [‘pruneth it’], that it may bring forth more fruit. Now ye are clean through the word which I have spoken unto you. Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch can not bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine; no more can ye, except ye abide in me. I am the vine, ye are branches: he that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye can do nothing. If a man abide not in me, he is cast forth as a branch, and is withered; and men gather them, and cast them into the fire, and they are burned. If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you. Herein is my Father glorified, that ye bear much fruit; so shall ye be my disciples.” John 15:1-8. COOD 31.5