In this message we shall cover Christ’s person in the Father’s husbandry, in the new covenant, and in the apostles’ preaching.
In the Father’s husbandry Christ is the vine. John 15:1 says, “I am the true vine, and My Father is the husbandman.” This true vine, which is Christ the Son, with its branches, which are the believers in the Son, is the organism of the Triune God in God’s economy, the divine dispensing, to grow with His riches and express His divine life. As the organism of the Triune God, this vine is corporate and universal.
In John 15 God the Father is revealed as the Husbandman who is related to a husbandry, a plantation. A husbandman is the source, the originator, the founder, and the planter of a husbandry. As such, he engages in an enterprise. The universe is the enterprise of the Father. The Father has a divine plan, an eternal purpose, and He wants to fulfill the intention behind His purpose. This is what is meant by the Father’s being the Husbandman. He is the Husbandman of the vineyard who plans to carry out a certain purpose. He is the source, the founder, the first one to accomplish certain things according to His mind and purpose.
It is the Father’s pleasure that all that He is and has become the riches of Christ as the vine. All that the Father is, all that the Father has, all the riches of the Father’s life, and all the fullness of the Godhead are in the vine, which is the embodiment of them all. The Father as the Husbandman is the source, the author, the planner, the planter, the life, the substance, the soil, the water, the air, the sunshine, and everything to the vine. Therefore, the Son as the vine is the center of God’s economy and the embodiment of all the riches of the Father. The Father, by cultivating the Son, works Himself with all of His riches into this vine, and eventually the vine expresses the Father through its branches in a corporate way. This is the Father’s economy in the universe.
In the Old Testament the children of Israel were a vine in the sight of God (Psa. 80:8; cf. Isa. 5:2; Jer. 2:21; Ezek. 19:10; 15:2). But Israel failed God as the vine because they did not give Him the opportunity to express Himself through them. Eventually, the Lord Jesus came as the true vine that can fully express God. This true vine is the very embodiment of God and the full manifestation of God. What God is and what God has are embodied in this true vine and are fully expressed through this vine.
Christ as the true vine is the center of God’s economy, the center of God’s husbandry, of God’s universal enterprise. In the Bible the universe is pictured as a vineyard, and centered in this universe is the vine, Christ. Everything that God the Father is and has is for the vine as the center, is embodied in the center, and is expressed through the center. God the Father is expressed, manifested, and glorified through the vine.
The vine in John 15 is the focus of the Bible. We may think of John 15 merely as a parable used by the Lord. But this chapter is not merely a parable; it is a reality that reveals the focus of God’s intention. God is life, and life needs an organism in which to grow and express itself. God desires to grow within an organism and to have Himself expressed by means of this organism. This organism is the vine with the branches, Christ with the believers. This organism glorifies the Father by releasing and expressing His intent, content, life, and riches. In particular, the vine expresses the riches of the divine life. When the vine bears clusters of grapes, the riches of life are expressed. This expression is the glorification of the Father because the Father is the divine life. The Father is the source and substance of the vine. But without the fruit, the essence, substance, and life of the vine would be hidden and confined. The riches of the inner life of the vine are expressed in the clusters of fruit. To express the inner life of the vine in this way is to release the divine substance from within the vine. This is the glorification of the Father through Christ as the vine in the Father’s husbandry.