The Pruning

The Lord shows us the vine, and himself the true vine, and the Father the husbandman who tends it, and ourselves the branches. And he tells us of two dealings the husbandman has with the branches, according to whether they bear. Every branch in me that beareth not fruit he taketh away, and every branch that beareth fruit, he purgeth it, that it may bring forth more fruit. The fruitless branch is taken away; but the fruitful branch is purged, which is to say pruned, cut back by the husbandman’s knife. And this is a hard and needful lesson, that fruitfulness does not spare us the knife but invites it.

We would expect it to be otherwise. We would think that the branch which bears should be left alone, rewarded with rest from the knife, and only the barren branch cut. But the vinedresser’s wisdom is the opposite. He cuts the fruitful branch precisely because it bears, pruning it back that it may bear yet more. The knife that falls on the fruitful branch is not the axe of judgment that falls on the barren, but the pruning hook of a careful gardener, and it falls on the branch he most values, to make it more fruitful still.

THE KNIFE ON THE FRUITFUL

So we must not read every cutting as a sign of God’s displeasure, for the pruning of the fruitful branch is a sign of his care. The more fruitful a branch, the more it is pruned, for the husbandman gives his closest attention to his best branches. When God cuts you back just when you felt most fruitful, when he removes and reduces and takes away in a season of your greatest usefulness, do not conclude that he is against you. The pruned branch is the tended branch, the loved and valued one, receiving the husbandman’s particular care. The knife on the fruitful is not punishment but cultivation.

This turns our understanding of many trials upside down. We assume that if we are bearing fruit, serving God, growing, we have earned some exemption from loss and cutting, and we are bewildered when the losses come in our most fruitful seasons. But the vine teaches us that this is exactly when the pruning comes, that the very fruitfulness which we thought should spare us is the reason for the knife. God prunes the branch that bears, that it may bear more, and the cutting we cannot understand is often the mark of a fruitfulness he means to increase.

WHAT THE KNIFE CUTS

And we should understand what the pruning knife cuts. It is not the cutting away of sin only, for that belongs to the taking away of what is dead and fruitless. Pruning cuts back living wood, legitimate growth, the shoots that are not evil in themselves but that draw the sap away from fruit. The vine left unpruned grows lush with leaves and wood and bears little, for its strength goes into growth rather than fruit. So the husbandman cuts back even the good growth, the healthy shoots, that the strength may be gathered into fruit instead of scattered into wood. And this is why the pruning often takes from us things that were not wrong, good things, lawful comforts and growths, because they were drawing the sap of our lives away from the fruit God wants.

This is the pruning that puzzles us most, when God removes not our sins, which we could understand, but our good things, our comforts, our successes, our very fruitfulness in one place, that our strength might be gathered for fruit in another. The losses that make no sense, the removals of good things in good seasons, are often just this, the husbandman cutting back the good wood that the branch may bear better fruit. He is not destroying the branch. He is concentrating it, gathering its scattered strength into the fruit he means it to bear.

ABIDE, AND BEAR

And the whole secret of the fruit, and of surviving the pruning, is in the one word the Lord repeats through the passage, abide. Abide in me, and I in you, he says. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine, no more can ye, except ye abide in me. The fruit is not the branch’s own doing, not something we produce by our effort, but the sap of the vine flowing through the abiding branch and bearing its fruit in us. Without me, the Lord says plainly, ye can do nothing. The branch bears only by abiding, only by staying joined to the vine and letting its life flow through, and all our fruitfulness is finally his life in us, not our work for him.

And the pruning serves the abiding, for the cutting back drives the branch deeper into dependence on the vine. When our own growth is cut away, when the props and comforts we leaned on are pruned off, we are thrown back on the vine alone, made to draw more deeply on the life that is not our own. The pruning strips away what we were resting in besides Christ, and so it deepens our abiding, teaches us afresh that without him we can do nothing, and gathers our strength back to the one source of all our fruit. The knife that cuts us back is driving us in.

THE PEACEABLE FRUIT

We must be honest that the pruning hurts, for the knife is real and the cutting is felt. No chastening for the present, the apostle says, seemeth to be joyous, but grievous. The pruning is grievous now; that is the plain truth of it, and we need not pretend the cutting does not wound. But the same apostle finishes the sentence, nevertheless afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them which are exercised thereby. Afterward. The pain is now; the peaceable fruit comes after. The pruning that grieves us in the present is working a harvest of righteousness and peace that we will see only later, when the fruit has come.

So we are asked to trust the husbandman’s knife, to believe that the hand which cuts is skillful and kind, and cuts for fruit and not for harm. He is no careless butcher hacking at the vine, but a wise vinedresser who knows exactly what to cut and why, who prunes each branch for its own greater fruitfulness, and who keeps the vine he tends. I the LORD do keep it, he says of his vineyard, I will water it every moment, lest any hurt it I will keep it night and day. The God who prunes is the God who keeps, and the knife in his hand is guided by a love that means only fruit.

THE FRUIT IS FOR HIS GLORY

And we must remember, in all this bearing and pruning, whose the fruit is and for whom it grows. Herein is my Father glorified, the Lord says, that ye bear much fruit. The fruit is for the Father’s glory, not for ours. The branch does not bear that it may be admired, does not grow its grapes for its own credit, but that the vine and the husbandman may be glorified in the harvest. So when we bear fruit, we take no credit for it, for the fruit is the vine’s life flowing through us, and the glory of it belongs to the Father who tends the vine, and not to the branch through which the fruit appeared.

This frees us from a subtle danger in fruitfulness, the danger of glorying in our own fruit, of taking to ourselves the credit for what is really the vine’s life in us. The branch heavy with grapes might be tempted to think itself the source of them, forgetting that every grape was grown by sap it did not make, drawn from a vine it did not plant, and that without the vine it could bear nothing at all. So the fruitful soul must guard against pride in its fruit, remembering always that the fruit is the vine’s and the glory the Father’s, and that the branch is only the place where the vine’s life came to fruit.

And this too is served by the pruning, for the cutting back keeps the branch humble, reminds it that it is not the source of its own fruit, throws it back on the vine. The branch that was never pruned might grow proud and lush and self-sufficient; the pruned branch is kept low, kept dependent, kept mindful that its fruit is not its own achievement but the husbandman’s gift. So the pruning guards the humility without which the fruit would only feed our pride, and keeps the glory of the harvest where it belongs, with the Father who tends the vine.

So bear fruit for his glory and not your own, and let the pruning keep you humble in the bearing. The much fruit the Father seeks is fruit that glorifies him, borne by a branch that knows it is only a branch, drawing all its life from the vine. This is the whole aim of the husbandman’s care, that the vine should be laden with fruit to the Father’s glory, and the pruning and the bearing alike serve that end.

So do not resent the pruning, nor read every cutting as God’s displeasure. When he takes away in your fruitful seasons, when the losses come and the good things are removed and you are cut back just as you felt you were bearing, know that the fruitful branch is the pruned branch, and the pruning is for more fruit. Let the cutting drive you deeper into abiding, back to the vine whose life alone bears fruit in you. And trust the husbandman’s knife, grievous as it is now, for afterward it yields the peaceable fruit of righteousness. Every branch that beareth fruit, he purgeth it, that it may bring forth more fruit.