John 15:6Meaning & Commentary from the Church Fathers

By contrast, those who have been torn away and, as it were, cut off from communion with Him by turning to an improper life displeasing to God will have no ability to accomplish virtue. Nor will they be able to adorn themselves with the fruits of good works. Rather, as by unavoidable necessity, they will be condemned to destruction by the all-consuming fire.

For what is useless for piety proves fit only to suffer punishment. So too, beyond doubt, everything dried up on the branches can be useful only for fire. You may receive an indisputable and true proof of this without searching the chapters of the ancient saints. Direct your mind to the holy Apostles themselves.

They showed no negligence in their love for Christ, but abode in Him and preferred nothing to piety toward Him. Therefore they became all-glorious. As the fruit of their virtue they displayed the whole world. They presented themselves as an example of a life beloved by God, like a radiant image for the inhabitants of the earth. Thus they obtained for themselves from God the unfading crown of glory (1 Pet 5:4).

But the one caught unto perdition, I mean the frivolous and venal Judas, was cut off from the spiritual vine, that is, from Christ. In a certain manner he “withered,” being deprived, together with the dignity of discipleship, of the life-giving power of the Spirit. For he “is cast out,” according to the word of the Savior. That is, he is separated and delivered over to punishment by fire, like straw.

Therefore our Lord Jesus Christ judged it most beneficial to show His hearers the blessedness that comes to them from striving to be in union with Him. He also set against this the harm of separation from Christ. Thus He offered a twofold way of salvation. Either from longing directed toward glory and life, or from the desire to escape punishment by fire, we must strive with all the power of our soul to have communion with Him.

He calls the Father the husbandman, assigning to the divine nature care over us, as we have explained at length in the preceding discourse. He Himself should be understood as the hand of the Husbandman, not different from Him in consubstantiality. He is conceived as existing from Him and in Him, as may also be seen in ourselves.

That all things are through the Son, as through the hand of the Father, hear His own words concerning creatures: “My hand has made all these things” (Isa 66:2; Acts 7:50). Yet all things came to be through the Son, according to the Holy Scriptures (Jn 1:3; Col 1:16 and elsewhere).

It should be noted that the divine Paul also points to the cutting off meant here, though he does not speak directly of a vine. He says, “Behold then the goodness and severity of God: severity toward those who fell, but toward you goodness, if you continue in His goodness. Otherwise you also will be cut off” (Rom 11:22).

The Father is the vine-dresser, Jesus is the vine, and the disciples are the branches. As fruitful sap spreads from the vine through all the branches, and the branches can bear fruit only by sharing in the productive power flowing into them, so His disciples can receive divine life only from inseparable communion with Him. This life will make them capable of everything that must be done for the Kingdom of God.

As a branch broken from the vine, deprived of its fruitful power, withers, so His disciples can flourish only in uninterrupted communion with Him. But as the branches’ share in the fruitful sap flowing to them from the vine must appear in an abundance of fruit, so the disciples must express their share in divine life by activity for the Kingdom of God.

As the vine-dresser cuts away those branches which bear no fruit and only uselessly exhaust the life-force of the vine, so those must be excluded from the Kingdom of God who do not manifest the power of divine life in action. In them the lack of it already testifies that they are not truly penetrated by divine life. Therefore their communion with Christ is only visible.

Yet even fruitful branches continually need the care of the vine-dresser. They must be pruned and cleansed from harmful growths and from everything that hinders the development of life-force in them. So also the disciples, who abide in direct communion with Christ and have received His divine life into themselves, still need cleansing from everything foreign. These are the remnants of their former notions, which hinder the unfolding of divine life in them and do not allow it to manifest itself in activity corresponding to it.

And so the Lord begins an allegorical discourse in which He portrays God as the vine-dresser, Himself as the vine, and believers, first of all the Apostles, as branches on this vine.

Verses 1-6. This figurative discourse is not a parable, because it lacks the distinctive feature of a parable: the depiction of acting persons in the form of a historical narrative. The thought expressed in this comparison is this. The innermost union between Christ and His faithful is as close as the union of the vine with its branches. This union with Christ is the necessary condition for a man to bear the fruits of truly good works.

One may outwardly belong to Christianity and yet not be in the innermost spiritual union with Christ. In the absence of this inward communion with Christ, a man gradually loses the life communicated to him by Christ. In that case, the judgment of the vine-dresser, God the Father, will in due time outwardly separate such a man from the society of Christ. It will condemn him to the sufferings of eternal fire.

But the more the faithful man manifests in his life the power of life communicated to him by Christ, the more God will assist him in virtue by His grace. God cleanses him from errors of the mind and vices of the heart.

Through His grace-filled word, the disciples of Christ had been cleansed to such a degree that they already belonged to His branches. Therefore what is now required of them is to abide in Christ. They must do so through constant and unwavering fulfillment of His commandments. They must remain in union with Him through devotion of their whole being to His teaching. Without Him no one can do anything good.

“They gather them and cast them into the fire”: the time when the Lord spoke this was, in Palestine, the season for pruning vineyards. Perhaps the Lord and His disciples had before their eyes fires on which dry vine branches were burning. This was an expressive image of people spiritually withered outside communion with Christ. For them the fire of Gehenna is prepared on the Day of Judgment.

The Lord presents as though already present what will happen in the future to such withered branches, at the last judgment or after the last judgment of Christ. “They gather”: that is, the servants appointed by the master over the vineyard. Applied to people who cannot be in blessed communion with God in the Kingdom of Heaven, these mean the Angels. According to Jesus Christ, they are to gather and cast the tares into eternal fire (Mt 13:41 and note).

“The fire”: Gehenna is meant (Mt 13:42; Mt 25:41; Mt 3:10; Mt 7:19; Mt 5:22 and elsewhere). “And they burn”: this is vivid and expressive in its brevity. It is not “they will burn up,” but “they burn,” that is, eternally. The present tense is used in the sense of eternity (Jn 8:58).

What a fearful lot! And what should especially be remembered is this: the further it goes, the more fearful it appears. First the spiritual branch is cast out. Then it withers. After that its lot becomes worse and worse.

“He is cast out as a branch.” The heavenly Vine-dresser no longer cleanses from faults the one who does not keep faithfulness to Jesus. Such a man is handed over to the will of his passions, and to the pull of his habits and sins.

The slave of passions withdraws from the church and from pious people. He turns away from divine services, from prayer, and from the mysteries. None of this is to his liking. Thus, even if for some reason the fearful voice of ecclesiastical excommunication does not thunder over him, he excludes himself from ecclesiastical communion. By his dispositions he separates himself from union with the Church, and the invisible judgment of God confirms this excommunication.

“And he withers.” A branch thrown out of the garden preserves its greenness for a short time, and only afterward becomes dead. In precisely the same way, one who has separated himself from communion with the body of Christ retains something good in himself for a time. Afterward he loses everything and becomes soulless toward faith.

Piety, eternal salvation, and Christian virtues attract neither his concern nor his gaze. The Spirit of grace departs from him. Thus Judas descended by stages of evil until he became a betrayer. For a betrayer, despair is possible, but not conversion to God (Heb 6:4-6; 2 Pet 2:20; Rom 2:5). He is a son of perdition (Jn 17:12).

“And they gather them.” Until now the judgment was particular and temporal. The Savior transfers the disciples’ gaze from one Judas to his many friends, from judgment over one man to the universal judgment.

“They gather them.” This is the same action of which He spoke in the parable of the tares: “As the tares are gathered and burned with fire, so it will be at the close of the age” (Mt 13:40). “They gather them” means that people with the same dispositions are joined into one company. Those similar in other evil passions are separated into other crowds. All this is not for joy, but for greater grief.

The friends of pride will be tormented both by seeing one another and still more by enduring the punishment corresponding to their sin. “They gather them.” In the parable of the tares it is said that the Son of Man will send His angels, and they will gather those who do iniquity (Mt 13:41).

“And they cast them into the fire.” In the parable of the tares it is also said: “and they will cast them into the furnace of fire.” We are not told what this fire is into which sinners will be cast. Certainly this is because we are unable to understand the realities of that world.

From the Lord’s clear words, only this is evident: the angels, the executors of God’s will, will subject sinners to positive punishments, and to punishments as severe as fire is fearful.

“And he burns,” more precisely, “and they burn.” If they could burn up, this would still be a happiness for condemned sinners. But the fearful calamity is that they burn, burn, and keep burning, never being consumed. Or, as the Savior says, “their worm does not die, and the fire is not quenched” (Mk 9:43).

Only as a branch grafted onto the vine and holding firmly to it does he feel strength within himself and support from above. Then alone everything in his life becomes clear: its general direction, his goal, and especially the manner of acting at every time and in every circumstance.

Thus, on the basis of the Lord’s words, the ethics of the whole Christian society arose, with its honesty, nobility, and fear of defilement by passion or crime. This ethics arose because before it stood the ideal granted by the Lord to man according to the heavenly pattern. So too the tabernacle was raised according to “the pattern shown to Moses on the mountain” (Ex 25:40).

There is nothing surprising in the fact that Comte, Spencer, Renan, and others create a moral code while openly denying that eternal Vine to which the members of the Christian family were and are grafted. This is only the fulfillment of the Lord’s words about branches that do not remain on the vine. They fall away, and their theories will burn, having no ground beneath them.

But whoever abides in the Lord, even if he falls through human weakness, has not denied the Lord. Therefore “God is able to make him stand” (Rom 14:4). And the Church of the Lord is eternal, like a rock against which the waves of atheistic theories break: “the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it” (Mt 16:18).

The faithful sons of the Lord, with all their sins and weaknesses, are nevertheless the only ones who have a clear consciousness of the ways and providences of God. They alone understand the hand of God in the destinies of nations and individuals. They know that the Lord said, “I am with you always, even to the end of the age. Amen” (Mt 28:20).