John 15:1 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

I am, &c. Our Lord having gone with his disciples to the mount of Olives, employed the remaining hours of his ministry in delivering to them a long and most excellent discourse, recorded in this and the following chapter. This discourse he began with the parable of the vine, taken probably from the vines that were growing around them on the mount of Olives. In this parable he shows them the excellence of his religion, and the nature of the relation in which they stood to him by the profession thereof. Moreover, he explains to them the advantages which would accrue to them from this relation. I am the true vine I am to my church, and the real members thereof, what the vine is to its branches. As the branches of the vine draw nourishment from, and are made fruitful by, their union with the stock, and by the care of the dresser, so my disciples are made fruitful in all holiness and righteousness by faith in me, and in the truths and promises of my gospel, and by the influence of my Spirit. And my Father is the husbandman Or, vine-dresser; he has planted this vine, his providence watches over it, and by him it is dressed and cultivated, and he views with peculiar delight the growth and fertility of its branches. In this passage our Lord seems to allude to Psalms 80:8, &c.; Isaiah 5:3-7; where the Jewish Church is represented under the figure of a vine: and God's peculiar care thereof is set forth by the care which a husbandman takes of his vineyard. Wherefore, by calling himself, on this occasion, the true vine, Jesus intimated, that whereas the Jewish Church and people had hitherto been the peculiar care of God, they were to be so no longer. From this time forth, all such as became real partakers of the Christian religion, and who, perhaps, in allusion to this parable, were called by the apostle the body of Christ, were to be the true church of God, and the objects of his care, whatever nation or country they were of. See Dr. Samuel Clarke, and Macknight.