Believers in Messiah today are increasingly declining in their stand for biblical truth. Collectively, we are less likely to believe in and live by the absolute standard of Scripture, and more likely to compromise on, tolerate, and embrace unbiblical beliefs and sinful behaviors. We have lost ground and influence in the society outside us, while we have been slowly losing our future generations from within. According to nearly every metric, we are a Body that is atrophying, splintered, malnourished, and weak. That’s the bad news. But the good news is that God will succeed in providing for us, and He will make the Body of Messiah ready for what is ahead—prepared to one day live, and grow, and flourish again. Perhaps our present deterioration, then, is actually evidence that God is already at work to accomplish this. Perhaps even now He is readying Yeshua’s Body for new life through a deep and hard pruning.

The Master Yeshua teaches us in Yochanan 15:1-5,

“I am the true vine, and My Father is the farmer. Every branch in Me not bearing fruit, He takes it away; and every one bearing fruit, He cleans by pruning it, so that it may bear more fruit…. Remain in Me, and I in you. As the branch is not able to bear fruit of itself if it does not remain in the vine, so neither will you, if you do not remain in Me. I am the vine; you are the branches. He who is remaining in Me, and I in him—this one bears much fruit….”

In this important passage, Yeshua is using a metaphor about a farmer, with His vine and its branches, in order to warn us about and explain His expectations for us as His disciples. In the metaphor, the Father is the farmer, Yeshua is the true vine, and we who believe in Him are the branches whom the Father prunes.

Pruning is what a farmer or arborist or gardener does when he selectively trims or cuts off parts of a plant. The first level of pruning to which Yeshua refers concerns the removal of an entire branch. He says that the Father “takes it away.” But why would the Father completely cut off a believer—someone who is “in” Yeshua—from Yeshua’s vine? Because that branch—that believer—is not bearing fruit for Yeshua. When a branch is not bearing fruit, that fruitlessness has a negative impact on the entire plant. The fruitless branch—the fruitless believer—might be blocking sunlight, wasting resources, being a potential source of infection, or simply dead and taking up space.

The second level of pruning is for the fruitful branches—the fruitful believers—with whom the Father is surely pleased. Yet rather than merely allowing them to continue growing and bearing fruit, the Father does something seemingly harsh and unexpected. He still picks up his shears and begins to cut. But instead of lopping off an entire fruit-bearing branch, the Father strategically cuts and cleans it so that it will bear more fruit. A farmer will trim back even a fruitful branch in order to rejuvenate it, to help it utilize resources more efficiently, and even to train it—to indicate the best direction for it (for us) to grow. Even though a branch has produced fruit, the farmer will still do intentional, surgical damage to the branch—to the fruitful believer. He cuts back and reduces the size of the plant because he wants the plant to be healthy, more fruitful, and to grow larger, better, greater fruit in the future.

Could it be, then, that this is what the Father is doing with us today? Has He examined us and found us covered by sin and worldliness—unable to be nourished and enlightened by His word? Might our weakness have prompted His cleansing—removing dead and fruitless sticks, while trimming back the few fruitful branches that remain?

Though today’s Body of Messiah is shrinking—whether by God’s hand or our own failures—now is not the time to shrink back in fear or shame. Rather, in humility, we must turn to the Father, come near to the throne of unmerited favor, and receive the power of Messiah in our collective weakness. Let us trust and boldly invite the farmer’s cleaning and pruning shears. Because, one way or another, Messiah’s Body will thrive again. The only question is: will you have remained in the vine?

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