Charles Ellicott Commentary John 15:2

"Every branch in me that beareth not fruit, he taketh it away: and every [branch] that beareth fruit, he cleanseth it, that it may bear more fruit." — John 15:2 (ASV)

Every branch in me that bears not fruit he takes away.—The two chief duties of the vinedresser, cutting off all fruitless tendrils and cleansing those that bear fruit, supply illustrations of the training of human souls by the Divine Husbandman. We are not to interpret these words, as they frequently have been interpreted, of the unbelieving world or of the Jews, but of Christians in name, who claim to be branches of the true vine. These the Husbandman watches day by day; He knows them and reads the inner realities of their lives, and every one that is fruitless He takes away.

And every branch that bears fruit, he purges it.—Better, he cleanses it . This means in the natural vine the cutting off of shoots that run to waste, and the removal of every excrescence that hinders the growth of the branch. It means in the spiritual training the checking of natural impulses and affections, and the removal of everything—even though it is by a pang as sharp as the edge of the pruner's knife—that can misdirect or weaken the energy of the spiritual life, and thus diminish its fruitfulness.

A vine that has been pruned—here a tendril cut off, and there one bent back; here a shoot that seemed of greatest promise to the unskilled eye, unsparingly severed by the vinedresser, who sees it is worthless; here a branch, in itself good, made to yield its place to one that is better, and itself trained to fill another place—such is the familiar picture of the natural vine.

Such, also, to a wisdom higher than ours, is the picture of human life.