When it comes to the idea of bearing fruit and the effortlessness required from humanity, Jesus uses the analogy of a vine.
John 15:1 “I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. 2 He cuts off every branch in Me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit He prunes so that it will be even more fruitful. 3 You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you. 4 Remain in me, as I also remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in Me. 5 “I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in Me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from Me you can do nothing.”
Having a horticultural background myself, I love it when Jesus references agriculture. Here He’s talking about eliminating suckers so that the vine will be able to do the best work of fruit-bearing.
In a world of work that exists for us now (outside of the perfect yielding-of-fruit Garden of Eden), suckers are branches that bear no fruit. They’re showy and bold, shooting up with fat stalks, and they have immature flourishes of foliage which rob the plant’s productive elements by using resources the vine could use for production of fruit. Fruiting is God’s means of reproduction, generation to generation. Robbing the vine of that is why they’re called suckers–all show and no go.
In verse 3 Jesus introduces the concept of being clean. With the vine, it’s removing suckers to focus on productivity. For us, it’s a purity of having had distractions and impurities pruned out of one’s life. Jesus introduced purity to their lives by His Word, and by remaining in Christ, they are able to produce fruit abundantly.
What types of things are “suckers” in our lives?
Is there a distinction between sin (which has no place in the Christian’s life) versus lesser priorities (which suck our energies into unproductive efforts and need to be brought to their proper place)?
In today’s passage, God does the pruning. Does He make mistakes? What tools and techniques will God use to prune our lives?