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The Desire of Ages
the trellis, and thus climbs heavenward. So Christ in His humanity was
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dependent upon divine power. “I can of Mine own self do nothing,”
He declared.
John 5:30
.
“I am the true Vine.” The Jews had always regarded the vine as the
most noble of plants, and a type of all that was powerful, excellent,
and fruitful. Israel had been represented as a vine which God had
planted in the Promised Land. The Jews based their hope of salvation
on the fact of their connection with Israel. But Jesus says, I am the
real Vine. Think not that through a connection with Israel you may
become partakers of the life of God, and inheritors of His promise.
Through Me alone is spiritual life received.
“I am the true Vine, and My Father is the husbandman.” On the
hills of Palestine our heavenly Father had planted this goodly Vine,
and He Himself was the husbandman. Many were attracted by the
beauty of this Vine, and declared its heavenly origin. But to the leaders
in Israel it appeared as a root out of a dry ground. They took the plant,
and bruised it, and trampled it under their unholy feet. Their thought
was to destroy it forever. But the heavenly Husbandman never lost
sight of His plant. After men thought they had killed it, He took it,
and replanted it on the other side of the wall. The vine stock was to be
no longer visible. It was hidden from the rude assaults of men. But
the branches of the Vine hung over the wall. They were to represent
the Vine. Through them grafts might still be united to the Vine. From
them fruit has been obtained. There has been a harvest which the
passers-by have plucked.
“I am the Vine, ye are the branches,” Christ said to His disciples.
Though He was about to be removed from them, their spiritual union
with Him was to be unchanged. The connection of the branch with the
vine, He said, represents the relation you are to sustain to Me. The
scion is engrafted into the living vine, and fiber by fiber, vein by vein,
it grows into the vine stock. The life of the vine becomes the life of the
branch. So the soul dead in trespasses and sins receives life through
connection with Christ. By faith in Him as a personal Saviour the
union is formed. The sinner unites his weakness to Christ’s strength,
his emptiness to Christ’s fullness, his frailty to Christ’s enduring might.
Then he has the mind of Christ. The humanity of Christ has touched
our humanity, and our humanity has touched divinity. Thus through