Everything that grows requires a source beyond itself. A seed does not generate life from within but draws from soil, water, and sun. A muscle does not build strength in isolation. It tears down under resistance and rebuilds through rest and nutrition. Even our minds do not expand by willpower alone. They require input, challenge, and correction from outside themselves. Growth, in every dimension of creation, is always a response to something given, not something self-generated.
We are wired to develop, to mature, to move forward and when that forward motion stops, we feel it. We sense that something is wrong, that we are not merely standing still but quietly losing ground. Our strength weakens when untested. Our focus narrows when undisciplined. Our emotional health weakens when it is ignored rather than addressed. Our character does not remain fixed when convictions are neglected. The absence of growth is not neutral, it is the slow drift toward decay.
No believer begins the Christian life with the intention of remaining spiritually immature. Yet when growth feels slow or uneven, we instinctively turn toward solutions that promise progress. A new book is picked up, or a different Bible reading plan is started. Or a fresh routine is adopted, hoping this time things will finally change. For a while, these efforts feel promising, as energy rises and a sense of momentum begins to build. Over time, however, the excitement fades. The insights start to repeat, and the breakthrough does not last. Then attention shifts to the next solution, hoping it will finally work. And this pattern can reveal a deeper problem.
Growth that depends primarily on your effort or some technique cannot sustain itself over time. It may produce short-term results, but it eventually collapses. It resembles physical training driven solely by motivation alone. The issue is not a lack of sincerity or effort. It is the absence of a power source sufficient to sustain what is being demanded.
Many Christians know this frustration intimately. They pray, read Scripture, attend worship, and genuinely seek to obey. Yet despite their diligence, something feels hollow. The habits remain, but the vitality does not. Over time, the quiet despair sets in. Either lasting growth is impossible, or it belongs to a different kind of Christian entirely.
Our frustration often gets misdiagnosed as a lack of effort when in reality, it might be a problem of expectation. Spiritual growth is not something you manufacture through technique, but the natural outgrowth of staying intimately connected to Christ. That is why Jesus does not offer a program in John 15. He offers Himself. Without clarity about the source of life, growth will always be misdirected.
Spiritual growth begins by being connected to Christ.
John 15:1 NASB "I am the true vine, and My Father is the vinedresser.
Our Lord speaks these words in the shadow of the cross. He is preparing His disciples for loss, confusion, and what will temporarily appear as defeat. They are about to face a future in which the visible presence of Jesus will be removed. His physical absence will expose their weaknesses. It is precisely at this moment that Jesus chooses to speak most fully about how growth occurs in the Christian life. That growth begins by recognizing who He is in relationship to ourselves.
The vine was a familiar metaphor in Jesus’ day representing Israel as God’s special people. God formed and called Israel to be a people for Himself. So His character, His rule, and His saving purpose would be seen in the world. Israel was not chosen merely for privilege, but for purpose. Israel understood herself to be the vine planted by God. The prophets repeatedly returned to this image, not to congratulate Israel, but to expose her failure. The vine was carefully planted, protected, and cultivated, yet it yielded sour fruit. The problem was never the care of the Vinedresser, but the nature of the vine itself.
Grapes only form on a vine when the branch has received enough water and nutrients to mature. That nourishment moves through the branch from the vine. It is the vine that supplies what the branch cannot produce on its own. The roots convert water and minerals from the soil into life-sustaining sap. It flows through the vine to the branches. If that flow is healthy and uninterrupted, fruit forms naturally over time. The branch’s role is not effort, but connection. When a branch remains attached, life flows into it continuously. When that connection is broken, the branch does not slowly improve or adapt but dries out and dies. No amount of sunlight, positioning, or outward care can replace what the vine supplies from within.
When Jesus declares Himself to be “the true vine,” He gathers Israel’s whole story into Himself. And He decisively redirects that story around Himself. He does not say that He will repair the vine, or reform it, or restore it. He says that He Himself is the true vine. Living a productive life before God is not connected to one’s religious identity or moral effort. It can only occur through a personal union with Christ. God’s are no longer defined primarily by what they do, but by where they live. They live in Christ.
This changes how spiritual life must be understood. Your connection to God does not come through your religious tradition, moral effort, or closeness to sacred places. It comes through a living connection to Christ Himself. And any attempt at spiritual growth that bypasses this reality is trying to produce fruit without first receiving life.
It is striking that the apostle Paul never once uses the word “Christian” in any of his letters. Instead, he keeps returning to a different way of speaking. Over and over again, Paul describes believers not by a label they carry, but by a location they now inhabit. They are “in Christ.” For Paul, spiritual life does not begin with adopting a religious identity. It begins with being joined to a living Savior.
Paul says in Galatians 2:20 that the Christian life begins when a person can say, “I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me.” Growth does not start with self-improvement, but with shared life. In Romans 6:4, Paul explains that believers have been “buried with Him through baptism into death,” with this purpose, “so we too might walk in newness of life.” That new life is not something they generate. It is something they participate in. In Colossians 3:1, Paul presses the same truth forward, saying, “you have been raised up with Christ,” and therefore now belong to a different realm altogether. And in Ephesians 2:6, he goes even further, saying that God “raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.” Before a believer ever acts, strives, or grows, Paul insists that something decisive has already happened. They have been united to Christ. That union is where spiritual growth begins.
But the believer’s connection alone does not explain how that life is shaped, protected, and directed over time. That is where Jesus introduces the role of the Father.
John 15:1 NASB "I am the true vine, and My Father is the vinedresser.
Growth is not left to instinct, nor is it left to the branch to manage. It unfolds under the active, intentional care of the Father Himself.
Spiritual growth unfolds under the wise and loving hand of the Father.
Immediately after this Christ brings His Father into view, identifying Him as “the vinedresser.” Growth is neither accidental nor self-directed, but the result of intentional divine action. The vinedresser owns the vineyard and determines its purpose. His goal is fruitfulness, not mere survival or outward appearance. The Father never works around the Son but always works through Him. The care, correction, and cultivation the Father provides never bypass Christ, but always come to the branch through its union with the Vine.
The Father is not merely a caretaker tending whatever happens to grow. Unlike every earthly vinedresser, He determines which branches belong to the vine at all. He personally joins them to Christ and appoints their place in Him. Union with Christ is not assumed, discovered, or achieved, but sovereignly given. All nourishment originates with the Father, is communicated through the Son, and reaches the believer only by union. Growth, therefore, is not the activation of dormant human potential but the reception of divine life. That is why Peter can say in 2 Peter 1:4 that believers become ‘partakers of the divine nature.’ Spiritual growth begins when God shares His life with us, not when we try to improve our own.
This image challenges a common assumption that God’s primary concern is the immediate comfort or stability of His people. Scripture affirms God’s care and compassion, but the Father’s governing aim is clear. He means to produce fruit that reflects His life and character. That aim determines how He tends the vineyard, even when His methods are misunderstood or resisted. The Father appoints not only that His people will bear fruit, but the measure, pace, and form of that fruit according to His wisdom. Growth is therefore neither uniform nor competitive. Differences in maturity are not evidence of neglect, but of deliberate design.
God does not shape your life apart from Christ. He shapes it only as you live in Him. The Father’s pruning, timing, and discipline are not generic acts of providence applied from a distance. They are personal acts of care, administered through the living Christ. And this care is not occasional. Vineyards require constant, attentive labor, and so does the vineyard of God. The Father continually watches, tends, trims, and preserves His people. Because He knows every branch, no true fruit is overlooked and no fruitlessness escapes His notice. Nothing in the life of a believer is invisible to Him.
By identifying the Father as the vinedresser, Jesus also guards us from honoring Christ while forgetting the Father. Salvation and growth are not the work of one divine Person acting in isolation, but the coordinated work of the Triune God. The Father plans, joins, governs, prunes, and gives the increase. The Son supplies life as the true Vine. The Spirit communicates that life inwardly, sustaining faith and producing fruit. Every act of the Father’s care comes to you through the life of the Son and by the work of the Spirit. This reality should humble us and teach us to trust God’s purpose more than our personal ambition.
At the same time, this truth presses upon how believers live. If the Father so carefully tends His vineyard, spiritual indifference is not harmless. It is ingratitude. If He continually walks among His branches, carelessness with our thoughts, words, affections, and duties is no small matter. And when seasons of distress come, when the vine appears damaged or exposed, the remedy is not despair or self-reliance, but appeal to the Vinedresser Himself. The vine has not been abandoned. It is being tended.
But Jesus does not stop there. If growth begins in Christ and unfolds under the Father’s care, then one further clarification is necessary. Not every branch that appears to be connected to Him is actually receiving His life. That brings us to a sobering boundary that protects the truth of where growth really begins.
John 15:2 NASB "Every branch in Me that does not bear fruit, He takes away; and every branch that bears fruit, He prunes it so that it may bear more fruit.
Spiritual growth will only occur where Christ’s life is truly shared.
John 15:2 clarifies something we need to clearly understand. Not everything that looks connected to Jesus is actually living from Him. Growth does not begin with attachment that merely looks close. It begins with union that shares His life. And the reason fruit matters is not because fruit saves us, but because fruit tells the truth about where life has really begun.
When Jesus says, “Every branch in Me that does not bear fruit, He takes away,” He is distinguishing between two kinds of branches associated with the vine. This statement is unsettling precisely because it acknowledges the possibility of visible association without vital union. A branch may appear connected to the vine, participate in its structure, and benefit from proximity to it. Yet it may remain internally lifeless and therefore incapable of producing fruit.
This raises a difficult question that Thomas Goodwin asks in his book, “The Trial of a Christian’s Growth”: how can an unfruitful branch be said to be “in Christ”? His answer is not that true believers can lose life. It is that people can publicly attach themselves to Him through their profession & participation in the church. In that sense, there can be branches truly “in” the vine externally. Yet they never share the sap of Christ’s life internally. Goodwin says the vine image shows Christ spreading Himself into a visible company on earth. And within that company, true and false professors can be found together. Judas is the immediate proof of the category. He was near enough to Christ to preach & serve alongside the apostles, yet he did not have Christ’s life.
This does not imply that genuine life can be lost, but rather that external attachment does not guarantee internal vitality. The language of being “in Me” must be understood in terms of visible association rather than saving union. Scripture consistently teaches that those who truly belong to Christ are kept by Christ. Jesus is addressing the reality of false attachment, not the loss of genuine life.
John 10:27-29 NASB "My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me; 28 and I give eternal life to them, and they will never perish; and no one will snatch them out of My hand. 29 "My Father, who has given them to Me, is greater than all; and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father's hand.
Notice what Jesus says is secure: not religious involvement, not emotional experiences, not seasons of motivation, but the gift of eternal life to His sheep. If a person can truly be united to Christ and then later be finally removed, then Christ’s promise fails. John 15:2 is not contradicting John 10. John 15:2 is exposing a kind of connection that never had this life in the first place. Another passage makes the same distinction with painful clarity.
1 John 2:19 NASB They went out from us, but they were not really of us; for if they had been of us, they would have remained with us; but they went out, so that it would be shown that they all are not of us.
John does not say they lost salvation. He says their departure revealed what was already true. Their connection was real in the visible community, but it was not real in life-sharing union. That is precisely the kind of clarification Jesus gives in John 15:2.
Are we saying that anyone who struggles is not a believer? Jesus is not talking about weak fruit, small fruit, or slow fruit. He goes on to say that “every branch that bears fruit, He prunes it so that it may bear more fruit.” In other words, even real believers can be messy, uneven, and painfully slow in their growth. The issue in verse 2 is not that some branch bear little fruit. It is that it that some bears no fruit, because they have no life.
But is also dangerous to relate to Jesus as a support beam for a life you are still managing on your own. These people treat Christ as moral reinforcement, emotional stability, or religious structure. They may even show a kind of greenness, what Goodwin calls an outward freshness. It can come from being near Christ’s people and Christ’s words. But over time, that kind of attachment collapses because it is still running on its own internal resources. Effort can imitate fruit for a season, especially when supported by discipline, accountability, or fear. But it cannot produce life. Jesus warned about this long before earlier in His ministry.
Matthew 7:21-23 NASB "Not everyone who says to Me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father who is in heaven will enter. 22 "Many will say to Me on that day, 'Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name, and in Your name cast out demons, and in Your name perform many miracles?' 23 "And then I will declare to them, 'I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness.'
The most sobering part of that warning is not that these people lacked religious activity. They had plenty yet Jesus says, “I never knew you.” They were close enough to speak His name and do works associated with His name, but they never shared His life. That is exactly the category John 15:2 is exposing. There can be a connection that looks real, that even functions publicly in religious settings, while never being a life-giving union with Christ. Here is another way Scripture makes that same distinction.
Hebrews 3:14 NASB For we have become partakers of Christ, if we hold fast the beginning of our assurance firm until the end,
Notice that the writer does not say we become partakers of Christ because we managed to endure. He is saying that endurance is one of the ways genuine participation proves itself over time. That fits perfectly with the vine and branches imagery. Real union is not proved by a moment of enthusiasm. It is proved by a life that remains connected to Christ and, however slowly, begins to bear fruit.
If fruit is the evidence, what if I look at my life and I see so little? What if I feel dry? Jesus is not calling you to stare at yourself until you either despair or congratulate yourself. The purpose of this warning is not to crush weak believers, but to expose false confidence in external attachment. There is a difference between a struggling branch and a lifeless branch. A struggling branch is still attached to the Vine and therefore still under the Father’s care. A lifeless branch may be attached in appearance, but it is not receiving life.
That difference shows up in lived experience. A person who is merely attached often relates to Christ as an accessory. Christ becomes a support for the life they are still determined to run. They come to Him mainly for relief, help, or reassurance, but not for Him. They may do Christian things, but those things feel like weight rather than life. They keep looking for the next spark, the next burst of motivation, the next outside push, because nothing is flowing from within. Over time, they grow tired, cynical, or secretly numb, and they often conclude that Christianity does not work.
A person who is truly united to Christ can also feel dry at times, but the dryness does not lead them away from Him as the Vine. It drives them to Him. The difference is not that they are always strong, but that they cannot finally settle anywhere else. Even their repentance, their prayers, and their return is evidence of life. Lifeless attachment hardens into self-justification or quiet departure. Living union, even when weak, bends back toward Christ.
Conclusion
The Lord is not telling us that we need to adopt some new spiritual technique. He is not telling us to make a vow to be more disciplined. He is not calling us to make a promise that we will finally become the kind of Christian He can admire. He is simply telling us where growth begins. It begins with Him. If you are not receiving His life, nothing you spiritually produce will last. And if you are receiving His life, the Father will tend to you with a wisdom that is not random and a love that is not sentimental.
If your connection to Jesus has been mostly external, church attendance, moral effort, then do not defend it. Do not polish it. Bring it into the light and ask Him for what you cannot create. He does not say, “Produce fruit and I will accept you.” He says, “Abide in Me.”
If you are weary and discouraged, do not mistake dryness for death. Do not stare at yourself until you despair. Turn your attention back to the Vine. Ask Him to make His words living in you again. Ask Him to restore desire, not just duty.
Lastly, if the Father is pruning you, trust His hand. He is not cutting you off. He is cutting away what chokes fruit. Where growth begins is where your soul learns to rest in Christ, receive from Christ, and remain in Christ.
