In John 15:1 the Lord Jesus said, “I am the true vine.” It is the Father’s pleasure that all He is, all the riches of His nature, and all the fullness of the Godhead be the riches of this vine. The vine is thus the embodiment of the fullness of the riches of divinity and of the Godhead. As the vine, Christ is the center of God’s operation in the universe. The entire universe is a vineyard, and centered in this vineyard is the vine, who is Christ the Son. Everything is centered in Him. God the Father is the source and the founder, and God the Son is the center. Everything that God the Father is and has is for the center, is embodied in the center, and is expressed through the center. God the Father is expressed, manifested, and glorified through the vine.
As the vine Christ is the embodiment and manifestation of the Godhead. “In Him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily” (Col. 2:9). Not only is Christ the embodiment of the Godhead, but, according to John 1:18, He is the declaration, the manifestation, of God. Therefore, the Son of God, God’s universal vine, is His embodiment and manifestation.
As the vine Christ is an organism full of life, like the tree of life. Furthermore, this vine is for the propagation and multiplication of life. To propagate life is to spread life widely, and to multiply life is to reproduce life. A vine is not noted for its blossoms or its materials; rather, it is noted for its manifestation of the riches of life. When a vine is full of ripened fruit, we see the riches of life. Christ, the true vine, is not life for people to appreciate as blossoms; neither is He life to be used as material. Rather, Christ is life to bring forth life and to reproduce life. This propagation and multiplication of life is to express life for the glorification of the Father. When the life of the vine is expressed through the branches in its propagation and multiplication, the Father is glorified, because what the Father is in the riches of His life is expressed in the propagation and multiplication of the vine.
Christ is the child in the parable of the travailing woman. In John 16:21 the Lord Jesus says, “When a woman gives birth she has sorrow, because her hour has come; but when she brings forth the child, she no longer remembers the affliction because of the joy that a man has been born into the world.” This woman is the whole group of the disciples, the child is Christ, and the birth is resurrection. According to Acts 13:33, the Lord Jesus was born, begotten, in resurrection to be the Son of God with respect to His humanity. The Lord’s resurrection, therefore, was a birth.
Although Christ was already the only begotten Son of God, it was still necessary for Him to be born in resurrection as the firstborn Son of God. In eternity Christ was the only begotten Son of God. Then in the incarnation He was born of Mary to be the Son of Man, and in resurrection He had another birth to be the firstborn Son of God. When Christ was born of Mary, He was born as a man, and His humanity had nothing to do with His being the only begotten Son of God. In other words, the human part of Jesus was not the Son of God. Therefore, it was necessary for this human part of Him to be born into the divine sonship through resurrection. Hence, Christ’s resurrection was a new birth for Him, and the disciples were the woman travailing in this birth. After the Lord’s resurrection, this “woman” had a newborn child—the resurrected Christ as the firstborn Son of God—and she rejoiced (John 20:20). In this sense Christ was a child born in resurrection. After His resurrection He was the “child” with the divine life and the human nature with both divinity glorified and humanity “sonized.” The disciples as the mother must have been very happy at the birth of this wonderful child.
We have covered thirty-four aspects of Christ’s person portrayed in the parables of the New Testament. He is the Winnower, the Physician, and the Bridegroom; the unshrunk cloth, the new garment, the best robe, the new wine, and the fattened calf; the Sower and the Lord of the harvest; the door and the pasture; the three measures of meal and the children’s bread; the vine, the stone, and the lightning; the Householder, the Merchant, the Thief, the Teacher, the Master, the Lord, the Moneylender, the compassionate Samaritan, the Vinedresser, the Shepherd, the man of noble birth, and so much more. Here we see, once again, the riches of Christ and His all-inclusiveness. Actually, all the positive things in the universe may be used to portray what Christ is to us.
God’s intention in His creation is to use the things of creation to illustrate the all-inclusive Christ. The entire universe came into existence for the purpose of describing Him. For example, if vines had not been created, the Lord Jesus could not have used a vine to describe Himself. If there were no foxes or birds, Christ could not have compared His situation in His ministry to that of foxes with their holes and birds with their roosts. Even the pasture was created so that the Lord could use it as an illustration of Himself. Furthermore, many different kinds of persons, even a moneylender and a thief, are used to describe Christ. Because the universe with the billions of things and persons in it was created for the purpose of describing Christ, He, in revealing Himself to His disciples, could easily find in any environment something or someone to serve as an illustration of Himself. The whole universe is a picture of Christ. If we see this, we shall realize how rich, profound, unlimited, and unsearchable Christ is. Truly He is everything to us!