The goal of the gospel of Jesus Christ has always been “many sons and daughters unto the glory of God.” As Jesus glorified His Father with His obedience and His life, so are we called to glorify Him with our obedience and the life of His Spirit in us. Jesus could say to Philip, “If you have seen me, you have seen the Father.” When His transforming work is complete in us and we have been fully graphed into the Vine (Jesus Christ – see John chapter 15) and pruned by the Father, we can also say, “If you have seen me, you have seen the Vine.”
How does this happen? First God had to send His Son to both live and die for us on this earth. In His life He demonstrated what a Life fully dedicated to the Father and His kingdom looks like. In His death He demonstrated the end cost of such obedience. The Father also did something else. He allowed Jesus to suffer thousands of wounds and made a place in Him as the True Vine of the Father for us to be graphed into the Son.
A master gardener or vine dresser knows how to graft a vine or a tree to make sure it brings forth the fruit he desires. First a root stock must be planted that will support the branches that are to be grafted in. Once it gets rooted and starts growing the vine dresser wounds the stock and then cuts off a bud from another vine and inserts it into that good root stock. The same is true of fruit trees and the work of an orchardist. It is there that the new bud takes hold and gets its life from the new source.
The same is true in Christ. God, the Vine Dresser, cuts us off from our old life source we once knew in Adam and grafts us into His Son. We are inserted and bound into that wound in the Son that we might get our whole life from Him and no longer from that old Adam nature we were born into. That is not all. As we grow in Him we are also pruned. God knows just how to shape us and cut off the dead wood that we might bring forth more fruit in the Vine. The Son of God becomes our whole identity. He is our whole life, light and supply for everything we need as we abide and grow up in Him. It is IN the Son that we now “live and move and have our being” and the desired fruit of the Father’s vineyard becomes automatic because we abide in the Son. if you have seen the in-grafted sons and daughters of the Father you have seen the Son. THIS IS the witness of the Father to the world! You might ask, “But isn’t all this cutting, severing and pruning painful? Yes, it is, but it is worth it to be one with the Father and the Son.
Just before He died Jesus prayed, “That they all may be one; as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be one in us: that the world may believe that you have sent me. And the glory which you gave me I have given them; that they may be one, even as we are one: I in them, and you in me, that they may be made perfect in one; and that the world may know that you have sent me, and have loved them, as you have loved me.” (John 17:21-23 KJ2000). Our prayer should be, “Father, make me one with your Son. Do whatever it takes to make this happen. Don’t listen to my screams and whining as you cut me off from this world and prune me and shapen me into what you desire. Don’t let me fall short of your glory. Amen!”
A Wilderness Voice 
What a beautiful picture; us being grafted in, bound up in Christ’s wounds. Thank you for painting this truth in a fresh way. I know it will stay with me. I remember a time when I was praying about an especially odious tendency I had recognized in my heart. While weeping tears of confession, I saw myself being swallowed up in Jesus’s wounds, as though He were hiding me in them; comforting and cleansing me. I am reminded of that time when I read this post. Our life comes from His death, our growth through a continued exposure to His precious blood.
“He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.” (John 6:54)
“but if we walk in the Light as He Himself is in the Light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin.” (1John 1:7)
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Maureen,
What a wonderful experience! I have sensed in a very real way, being enveloped IN Jesus on a couple of occasional over the years. All we need is found as we abide IN Him and let go of our old Adamic nature as our life source. Thanks for writing and sharing your life changing experience with us.
Michael
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recently, a friend was moaning about a fruit tree in his back yard that a friend had years ago grafted for him onto a dwarf apple root stock. The tree is full-size today, and not dwarf like its root source. In his grief, I reminded him how grafted branches retain the qualities of the tree or vine from which they were first cut.
what may be understood by this, within the analogy of Christ as the Vine and we as the branches (grafted in)?
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Marshall, good question. My eyes are still being opened as I grow in the vastness of our salvation and life IN Christ, so I will do my best to answer it with the light that I have at this time.
In the beginning when God created man, everything He did was good. Man was created in His image and in His likeness, but Satan changed all that when he got Adam and Eve to rebel. Where they only knew lives in harmony with God and perfection, free of sin, suffering, toil, sickness and death, now they were subject to all these things. They became “damaged goods.” BUT God had a master plan and it was to be fulfilled IN Christ.
First God would send His Son to take upon Himself our punishment for rebellion and then God nailed our sins to the cross with Him. But that was not all. He now was to remake man once again into what He meant him to be in the first place. Thus In Christ we now have a NEW heart, A New Spirit, an abiding Teacher and His commandments and will working within us instead of our own the very power and nature of the NEW Covenant (See Hebrews ch. Eight). THIS is what is grafted INTO the Vine, Jesus Christ. THESE are the qualities and nature of the branches who are His. Yes, we might blow it and need some pruning as we grow, but Father, as our master Vinedresser, takes care of that, too as we continue to abide IN Christ. It is here that HE brings for the fruit he desire us to produce and it is of His nature not Adams.
Michael
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