1* If one thinks of the discourse that begins with this verse as being spoken while in transit, the result is not a realistic picture. Apparently the Evangelist is not concerned to depict it as such. With the concluding remark in 14:31*, the Evangelist has indicated a scanty and vague situation; this discourse is not really located in time and space. One can of course term it a farewell discourse and testament. But it is also something like a cathecism for disciples or a bill of polity. For chapters 15 and 16 indicate how Jesus wants his community to have what he will give them and what they are to expect from the world. The Father, who is greater than Jesus, is depicted here as someone over Jesus. Jesus is the true vine, and his Father is the vinedresser. What does the word “true” (ἀληθινός) imply? It is made clear in what follows that the relationship that exists between Jesus and his own is the one that obtains between vine and branch. Why is it not said: I am like a vine, etc., so that the figurative nature of what is being said is clear? In the first instance, it is not merely a matter of a figure of speech for the Evangelist, but rather of a description that corresponds exactly to the reality of discipleship. Yet Jesus does not dispense the power of earthly life, as a vine does for its branches. He is the true vine, because he imparts true life. He does not provide an animal or vegetable existence, but imparts a spiritual reality. This word is of course too weak. It invites misunderstanding as something intellectual, as something that somehow floats colorless over authentic reality. But that is precisely what the Evangelist does not mean. Spiritual existence is living reality in a concrete time and space, in the midst of history and nature. Yet man, who leads such an existence, is not the victim of his time, at any rate not internally. He lives in contact with his time, but his time does not govern him, because he is given to a different service. One can of course ask whether misunderstandings could not insinuate themselves at this point and whether such a person believes himself to be in the service of the most high within some sort of scheme, while he in fact is subject to the will of a kind of period idol. That is perpetually the case, and spiritual existence, consequently, is not something given once and for all, but something that includes, rather than excludes, the probing reflection on and critical discernment of the spirits.

2* This verse makes clear that spiritual existence is not given once and for all in a second sense: even religion is not perfect, but must be subject to the discipline of its God; whoever bears fruit must ask why he or she does not bear more fruit. John distinguishes between such imperfection, which is perpetually in progress, and the other kind of imperfection, which is sterile and dry and closed to efforts to make it productive. The Father’s judgment is proclaimed against this loveless disobedience vis-à-vis Jesus’ command. The way in which the Evangelist uses this name for God can be misleading. By “Father” he does not mean the “God of love,” but the inscrutable Lord, whose love can be very harsh and can even make use of the gibbet, the cross, in its service. In this sense the Fourth Gospel is not interested in the principal aim of Gnosticism, “rest” (ἀνάπαυσις), the final rest and impassivity.

3* Since that is not the way it is with God and his action toward Christians, it can be said of the disciples in verses 3* and 4a* that they are now pure on account of the word that Jesus has spoken to them. But they must “abide” in that word, it must put roots down in them and determine their entire life. Only then do they abide “in him.”

4* But verse 4* has still more to say: the branches cannot bear fruit of themselves, but receive their strength and sap from the vine. The believer is not a self-determined person, but one who is always receiving anew, who lays claim to nothing as his or her own accomplishment. And so neither does Jesus claim anything as his own achievement, as he is represented in the Fourth Gospel (and not only here), but places himself entirely in the service of the Father and renounces his own word. He gave himself over entirely to what the Father has effected in him. For that reason, his words were the works of the Father. To empty the person so that the whole fullness of God can flow in is not something, of course, that can be acquired or forced by some technique of self-alienation. It is the mystery of love being enacted. The love of which John speaks and which Jesus wants to see in the disciples is not a passion that is designed to possess, that is intended to take possession of a thing or person, but is that self-abnegation that Jesus illustrates in the footwashing.

5* When verse 5* says that we Christians can do nothing without him, that is not a declaration of bankruptcy, but an expression of the readiness for and confident hope in the fullness that the vine can furnish.

6* Verse 6* paints the opposite picture: in the vineyard, the dry shoots are cut off and piled up, to be burned finally as useless material. That is the fruitlessness of a life dried up by lovelessness and self-assertion; and such a life ends in despair, although, viewed from the outside, it appears to have achieved a great deal, and has even become a dreaded power.

7* Verse 7* once again sets the picture of the good life over against this threat of failure: the good life remains bound to Jesus, and prayers emanating from it will be heard because the ego does not dominate.

8* The faith that “bears fruit” is, as verse 8* instructs us, the glorification of God, in connection with which we must not forget for our part that a certain cross on Golgatha has become the most fruitful of all trees. God does not care for fruitlessness and frustration, and where life may appear futile among God’s own, from our point of view, we should reflect that God sees all things.

Ernst Haenchen, Robert Walter Funk, and Ulrich Busse, John: A Commentary on the Gospel of John, Hermeneia—a Critical and Historical Commentary on the Bible (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1984), 131–132.