John 15:1

John 15:1. I am the true vine, and my Father is the husbandman. In the Old Testament the vine is the type of Israel, planted by the Almighty as the husbandman to adorn, refresh, and quicken the earth (Psalms 80; Isaiah 5:1; Jeremiah 2:21; Ezekiel 19:10; Hosea 10:1). But Israel proved itself ‘the degenerate plant of a strange vine.' Jesus, therefore, is here the ‘true vine,' because He is the true Israel of God, in whom is fulfilled all that is demanded of the true vine, whether for beauty and blessing to the world, or for glory to the husbandman. In Him all His people are summed up. He is not merely the stem: He is ‘the vine,' including in Himself all its parts. He is thus also the ‘true' (comp. on chap. John 1:9) vine, in contrast not so much with a degenerate Israel within Israel as with Israel after the flesh as a whole, with the ancient Theocracy even in its best and palmiest days. That Theocracy had been no more than a shadow of the true; now the ‘true' was come, and God Himself had planted it.