“I am the true vine”.
In Psalms 80:8 Israel is likened to a vine which God planted, but although its beginnings were promising and it seemed to flourish, the Psalmist goes on to say, ‘the stock which your right hand has planted, and the branch which you made strong for yourself, is burned with fire and is cut down. They perish at the rebuke of your face. Let your hand be upon the man of your right hand, on the son of man whom you made strong for yourself'.
The parallels with this passage are clear. Israel was the failing vine, the false vine, Jesus, the Son of Man at God's right hand, was the true vine Who would arise out of the ruins of the old. Israel is to be burned and cut down. The Son of Man, the man of God's right hand, is to be fruitful. This Psalm would appear to provide the basis for Jesus' words here.
Jeremiah also emphasises Israel's failure in these terms. “I planted you a noble vine, wholly a right seed. How then are you turned into the degenerate plant of a strange vine to me?' (Jeremiah 2:21). In a similar picture Isaiah depicted Israel as God's vineyard, but as a vineyard which produced only wild grapes, unfit for their purpose (Isaiah 5:1-7). Compare also Mark 12:1-10 and parallels where the leaders of Israel are said, as tenants of the vineyard, to have persecuted the prophets, and finally killed the only Son. But now all that is in the past. The old degenerated Israel is rejected, for here, growing from within the vineyard of Israel, is the True Vine, the One Whose fruit will satisfy to the utmost; the One Who is a true Witness to the world; the One Who will fulfil what God purposed for Israel; and the One Whose branches will constitute the new Israel. The very fact that Jesus is the true vine, with believers as the branches, in itself signals the end of the old vine of Israel.
So when Jesus speaks of Himself as the true vine He claims to be fulfilling the purpose God had for Israel, and to be completing the task in which Israel had failed. He, and His disciples who are the branches are, He says, the true Israel, who will produce fruit and flourish. The new church (congregation) which was to spring up throughout Judea and Galilee WAS to be the new Israel, the saved remnant.
We can compare this with how, in Isaiah, the Servant of God is first all Israel (Isaiah 41:8; Isaiah 42:19-21; Isaiah 43:10; Isaiah 44:1-2; Isaiah 44:21), then the faithful in Israel (Isaiah 49:1-6), and then finally a unique figure who will bear in Himself the sins of Israel and be a successful proclaimer of God's righteousness to the world (Isaiah 52:13 to Isaiah 53:12). In that case it was because the Israel which God had chosen would prove unworthy, so that their responsibility would be left in the hands of a remnant, and finally in the hands of one man, through Whom the many would be saved. Here now was that one Man Who, along with the faithful in Israel (Acts 13:47), would establish the new Israel.
The early church firmly believed that they were the Israel of God (Galatians 6:16). They saw themselves, not as replacing Israel, but as actually BEING the true Israel, as becoming true sons of Abraham (Galatians 3:29) and as united with the covenant promises and the commonwealth of Israel (Ephesians 2:11-13; Ephesians 2:19). They saw themselves as having been implanted in the olive tree (the name specifically given to Israel by God - Jeremiah 11:16) while those of Israel who had continued in unbelief had been cut off (Romans 11:17-24). Thus all of the true Israel will be saved, including within them the fullness of the Gentiles (Romans 11:26). They are the chosen race, the royal priesthood, the holy nation, the people for God's own possession (1 Peter 2:9). That is why 1 Peter 1:1 and James 1:1 could write to all Christians as ‘sojourners of the Dispersion', ‘the twelve tribes of the Dispersion'.
This follows the pattern of the Old Testament where believing Gentiles were absorbed into Israel continually (e.g. Abraham's numerous foreign servants, the mixed multitude (Exodus 12:38), many Israelites like Uriah the Hittite), while unbelievers in Israel were to be cut off leaving only a remnant (Isaiah 6:13). This was simply now to happen on a larger scale.
So Jesus here represents Himself as the stock of the new Israel, connected with Whom will be all those who form that new Israel, the remnant who have sprung up out of the old. He has come to establish the new ‘congregation' of Israel (Matthew 16:18). The new church (congregation) IS the true Israel, springing from and in union with the True Vine.
“-and my Father is the vinedresser.”
And just as God tended, and then dealt severely, with the false vine of old, now He will tend the true vine. He will watch over it and do all that is necessary for it to flourish, and because it is the true vine it will be fruitful (see Isaiah 27:2-6). The picture is of the tenderness of God on behalf of the vine, but also of His severe activity in rejecting what is false. For even here the unfruitful branches are cut off and cast into the fire. The new Israel is to come out of the old which will have been refined by fire (Zechariah 13:7-9; Malachi 4:1-3; Isaiah 6:13).