Church Fathers Commentary John 15

St. Hilary of Poitiers: He rises in haste to perform the sacrament of His final passion in the flesh (such is His desire to fulfill His Father’s commandment) and therefore takes the opportunity to unfold the mystery of the assumption of His flesh, through which He supports us, as the vine does its branches: I am the true vine.

St. Augustine of Hippo: He says this as the Head of the Church, of which we are the members—the Man Christ Jesus—for the vine and the branches are of the same nature. When He says, I am the true vine, He does not mean a literal vine, for He is called this metaphorically, not literally, just as He is called the Lamb, the Sheep, and so on. Instead, He distinguishes Himself from that vine to which it was said, How you are turned into the degenerate plant of a strange vine to me (Jeremiah 2:21). For how can that be a true vine which, when grapes are expected from it, produces only thorns?

St. Hilary of Poitiers: But He completely separates this humiliation in the flesh from the form of the paternal majesty by presenting the Father as the diligent Husbandman of this vine: And My Father is the Husbandman.

St. Augustine of Hippo: For we cultivate God, and God cultivates us. But our cultivation of God does not make Him better; our cultivation is one of adoration, not of plowing. His cultivation of us, however, makes us better. His cultivation consists in eradicating all the seeds of wickedness from our hearts, opening our hearts to the plow of His word, so to speak, sowing in us the seeds of His commandments, and waiting for the fruits of piety.

St. John Chrysostom: And since Christ was sufficient for Himself, while His disciples needed the Husbandman's help, He says nothing about the vine but adds this concerning the branches: Every branch in Me that bears not fruit, He takes away. By "fruit" is meant a righteous life; that is, no one can be in Him without good works.

St. Hilary of Poitiers: The useless and deceitful branches He cuts down for burning.

St. John Chrysostom: And since even the best of people require the work of the husbandman, He adds, And every branch that bears fruit, He prunes it, that it may bring forth more fruit. He alludes here to the tribulations and trials that were coming upon them, the effect of which would be to cleanse and thereby strengthen them. By pruning the branches, we make the tree become more fruitful.

St. Augustine of Hippo: And who in this world is so clean that they cannot be cleansed even more? Here, if we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves. He, then, cleanses the clean—that is, the fruitful—so that the cleaner they become, the more fruitful they may be.

Christ is the vine when He says, My Father is greater than I; but He is the husbandman when He says, I and My Father are one. He is not like those who only perform an external ministry, for He Himself gives the growth from within.

He immediately calls Himself the cleanser of the branches: Now you are clean through the word which I have spoken to you. He therefore performs the role of the husbandman as well as the vine. But why does He not say, "You are clean because of the baptism with which you were washed"? Because it is the word that cleanses in the water. Take away the word, and what is the water but water? Add the word to the element, and it becomes a sacrament.

From where does water get such power that by touching the body, it cleanses the heart? It is through the power of the word—not only spoken, but believed. For in the word itself, the passing sound is one thing, and its enduring power is another. This word of faith is so effective in the Church of God that through the one who believes, presents, blesses, and sprinkles an infant, that infant is cleansed, even though it is unable to believe on its own.

St. John Chrysostom: You are clean through the word which I have spoken to you; that is, you have been enlightened by My doctrine and have been delivered from Jewish error.

St. John Chrysostom: Having said that they were clean through the word which He had spoken to them, He now taught them that they must do their part.

St. Augustine of Hippo: Abide in Me, and I in you. This does not mean they are in Him in the same way He is in them, for both aspects are for their benefit, not His. The branches do not give any advantage to the vine but receive their support from it; the vine supplies nourishment to the branches and takes nothing from them. Therefore, both abiding in Christ and having Christ abide in them are for the benefit of the disciples, not of Christ, according to what follows: As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine, no more can you, except you abide in Me.

What a great display of grace! He strengthens the hearts of the humble and stops the mouths of the proud. Those who hold that God is not necessary for doing good works—the subverters, not the defenders, of free will—contradict this truth. For whoever thinks that he bears fruit of himself is not in the vine; whoever is not in the vine is not in Christ; and whoever is not in Christ is not a Christian.

Alcuin of York: All the fruit of good works proceeds from this root. He who has delivered us by His grace also carries us forward with His help, so that we bring forth more fruit. Therefore, He repeats and explains what He has said: I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, by believing, obeying, and persevering, and I in him, by enlightening, assisting, and giving perseverance, the same brings forth much fruit—and no one else.

St. Augustine of Hippo: So that no one would suppose that a branch could bear even a little fruit by itself, He adds, For without Me you can do nothing. He does not say, “you can do little.” Unless the branch abides in the vine and lives from the root, it can bear no fruit at all. Although Christ would not be the vine unless He were man, He could not give this grace to the branches unless He were also God.

St. John Chrysostom: The Son, then, contributes no less than the Father to helping the disciples. The Father prunes the branches, but the Son is the one who keeps them in Himself, which is what makes them fruitful. Again, the cleansing is attributed to the Son, while abiding in the root is attributed to the Father who begot the Root.

It is a great loss to be able to do nothing, but He goes on to say even more: If anyone does not abide in Me, he is cast out as a branch and withers. This means he will not benefit from the care of the vinedresser; he will lose everything he draws from the root—all that sustains his life—and will die.

Alcuin of York: And men gather them—that is, by the reapers, the Angels—and cast them into the fire, the everlasting fire, and they are burned.

St. Augustine of Hippo: For the branches of the vine are as worthless when they do not abide in the vine as they are glorious when they do. The branch must be in one of two places: either in the vine or in the fire. If it is not in the vine, it will be in the fire.

St. John Chrysostom: Then He shows what it means to abide in Him: If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, you shall ask what you will, and it shall be done for you. This abiding is shown by their works.

St. Augustine of Hippo: For His words can be said to abide in us only when we do what He has commanded and love what He has promised. When His words are in our memory but not in our life, the branch is not considered to be in the vine, because it draws no life from its root.

Insofar as we abide in the Savior, we cannot will anything that is contrary to our salvation. We have one will to the extent that we are in Christ, and another to the extent that we are still in this world. Because of our place in this world, it sometimes happens that we ignorantly ask for something that is not beneficial.

But if we abide in Christ, He will never grant it to us, for He grants only what is beneficial for us. Here we are directed to the prayer, Our Father. Let us hold to the words and meaning of this prayer in our petitions, and then whatever we ask will be done for us.

St. John Chrysostom: Our Lord showed above that those who plotted against them would be burned, since they did not abide in Christ. Now He shows that they themselves would be invincible and bring forth much fruit: Herein is My Father glorified, that you bear much fruit. It is as if He said, "If it is for My Father’s glory that you bring forth fruit, He will not neglect His own glory." And he that brings forth fruit is Christ’s disciple: So shall you be My disciples.

Theophylact of Ohrid: The fruit of the Apostles are the Gentiles, who through their teaching were converted to the faith and brought into subjection to the glory of God.

St. Augustine of Hippo: "Made bright" or "glorified"—the Greek word may be translated in either way. In Greek it signifies glory, but we must remember it is not our own glory, as if we had it from ourselves. It is from His grace that we have it, and therefore it is not our own glory but His.

For from where do we receive our fruitfulness, if not from His mercy that goes before us? Therefore, He adds, As My Father has loved Me, even so I have loved you. This, then, is the source of our good works. Our good works proceed from faith which works by love, but we could not love unless we were first loved: As My Father has loved Me, even so I have loved you. This does not prove that our nature is equal to His, as His is to the Father’s, but it points to the grace by which He is the Mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus. The Father loves us, but He loves us in Him.

St. John Chrysostom: If, then, I love you, be of good cheer. If it is the Father’s glory that you bring forth good fruit, bear no evil. Then, to rouse them to exertion, He adds, Continue in My love. He then shows how this is to be done: If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love.

St. Augustine of Hippo: Who doubts that love precedes keeping the commandments? For whoever does not love lacks the means to keep the commandments. These words, then, do not declare where love comes from, but how it is shown, so that no one might deceive himself into thinking that he loved our Lord when he did not keep His commandments. Although the words, Continue in My love, do not by themselves make it clear which love He means—our love for Him, or His love for us—the preceding words clarify it. He says, I have loved you, and then immediately after, Continue in My love.

Continue in My love, then, means "continue in My grace." And, If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love, means, "Your keeping of My commandments will be evidence to you that you abide in My love." It is not that we keep His commandments first and then He loves us, but that He loves us, and then we keep His commandments. This is the grace that is revealed to the humble but hidden from the proud.

But what do the next words mean: Even as I have kept My Father’s commandments, and abide in His love—that is, the Father’s love, with which He loves the Son? Must this grace, with which the Father loves the Son, be understood as being like the grace with which the Son loves us? No; for while we are sons not by nature but by grace, the Only Begotten is Son not by grace but by nature. We must, therefore, understand this to refer to the humanity in the Son, as the words themselves imply: As My Father has loved Me, even so I have loved you. The grace of a Mediator is expressed here, and Christ is Mediator between God and man, not as God, but as man. This, then, we may say: since human nature does not belong to the nature of God, but by grace belongs to the Person of the Son, grace also belongs to that Person—a grace that has nothing superior or equal to it. For no merits on man’s part preceded the assumption of that nature.

Alcuin of York: Even as I have kept My Father’s commandments. The Apostle explains what these commandments were: Christ became obedient to death, even the death of the cross (Philippians 2:8).

St. John Chrysostom: Then, because the Passion was now approaching to interrupt their joy, He adds, These things I have spoken to you, that My joy may remain in you. It is as if He said, "And if sorrow comes upon you, I will take it away, so that you will rejoice in the end."

St. Augustine of Hippo: And what is Christ’s joy in us, if not that He graciously rejoices on our behalf? And what is our joy, which He says shall be full, if not to have fellowship with Him? He had perfect joy on our behalf when He rejoiced in foreknowing and predestining us. But that joy was not yet in us, because we did not exist then; it began to be in us when He called us. And this joy we rightly call our own—this joy with which we will be blessed. It begins in the faith of those who are born again and will be fulfilled in the reward of those who rise again.

Theophylact of Ohrid: Having said, If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love, He shows what commandments they are to keep: This is My commandment, that you love one another.

St. Gregory the Great: But when all our Lord’s sacred discourses are full of His commandments, why does He give this special commandment regarding love? Is it not because every commandment teaches love, and all precepts are one? Love, and love only, is the fulfillment of everything that is commanded. Just as all the boughs of a tree proceed from one root, so all the virtues are produced from the one virtue of love. Nor does the branch—that is, the good work—have any life unless it abides in the root of love.

St. Augustine of Hippo: Where love is, what can be lacking? Where it is not, what can be of any profit? But this love is distinguished from the love people have for each other as mere human beings by the addition, As I have loved you. For what purpose did Christ love us, if not so that we might reign with Him? Therefore, let us love one another in such a way that our love is different from that of other people, who do not love each other for the purpose of loving God, because they do not really love at all. Those who love one another for the sake of having God within them—they are the ones who truly love one another.

St. Gregory the Great: The highest, and indeed the only, proof of love is to love our adversary. The Truth Himself did this when, while suffering on the cross, He showed His love for His persecutors, saying, Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do (Luke 23:34). The consummation of this love is given in the words that follow: Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. Our Lord came to die for His enemies, but He says that He is going to lay down His life for His friends to show us that, by loving, we are able to win over our enemies, so that those who persecute us are, by anticipation, our friends.

St. Augustine of Hippo: Having said, This is My commandment: that you love one another, even as I have loved you, it follows, as John said in his Epistle, that as Christ laid down His life for us, so we should lay down our lives for the brethren (1 John 3:16). The martyrs have done this with ardent love. Therefore, in commemorating them at Christ’s table, we do not pray for them as we do for others; rather, we pray that we may follow in their footsteps. For they have shown the same love for their brother that has been shown to them at the Lord’s table.

St. Gregory the Great: But whoever in a time of tranquility will not give his time to God, how will he give up his soul in a time of persecution? Therefore, let the virtue of love be nourished in tranquility by deeds of mercy, so that it may be victorious in tribulation.

St. Augustine of Hippo: From one and the same love, we love God and our neighbor—but we love God for His own sake, and our neighbor for God’s sake. So, while there are two precepts of love on which hang all the Law and the Prophets (to love God and to love our neighbor), Scripture often unites them into one. For if a person loves God, it follows that he does what God commands; and if so, he also loves his neighbor, since God has commanded this. This is why He continues, You are My friends, if you do whatsoever I command you.

St. Gregory the Great: A friend is, as it were, a keeper of the soul. He who keeps God’s commandments is rightly called His friend.

St. Augustine of Hippo: What great condescension! Though keeping his Lord’s commandments is only what a good servant is required to do, yet if they do so, He calls them His friends. The good servant is both a servant and a friend. But how can this be? He tells us: Henceforth I call you not servants, for the servant knows not what his Lord does.

Should we, therefore, cease to be servants as soon as we become good servants? Is not a good and trusted servant sometimes entrusted with his master’s secrets while still remaining a servant? We must understand, then, that there are two kinds of servitude, just as there are two kinds of fear. There is a fear that perfect love casts out, which includes a servitude that will be cast out along with the fear. And there is another, a pure fear, which remains forever.

It is the first kind of servitude our Lord refers to when He says, Henceforth I call you not servants, for the servant knows not what his Lord does. He is not referring to the state of the servant to whom it is said, Well done, you good servant, enter you into the joy of your Lord (Matthew 25:21), but of the one of whom it was said, The servant abides not in the house for ever, but the Son abides ever.

Since God has given us the power to become sons of God, we are, in a wonderful way, both servants and yet not servants, and we know that it is the Lord who accomplishes this. The other kind of servant is ignorant of this reality—the one who “knows not what his Lord does.” When this servant does anything good, he becomes exalted in his own conceit, as if he himself did it and not his Lord. He boasts in himself, not in his Lord.

Theophylact of Ohrid: It is as if He said: “The servant does not know the counsels of his lord, but since I consider you friends, I have communicated My secrets to you.”

St. Augustine of Hippo: But how did He make known to His disciples all things that He had heard from the Father, when He refrained from saying many things because He knew they could not yet bear them? He made all things known to His disciples in the sense that He knew He would make them known to them in that fullness of which the Apostle spoke: Then we shall know, even as we are known (1 Corinthians 13:12). For just as we look forward to the death of the flesh and the salvation of the soul, so we should look forward to that knowledge of all things which the Only-Begotten heard from the Father.

St. Gregory the Great: Alternatively, “all things” refers to everything He heard from the Father that He wished to be made known to His servants: the joys of spiritual love and the pleasures of our heavenly country, which He impresses daily on our minds by the inspiration of His love. For when we love the heavenly things we hear about, we come to know them by loving them, because love is itself a form of knowledge. He had, therefore, made all things known to them because, having been withdrawn from earthly desires, they burned with the fire of divine love.

St. John Chrysostom: “All things” means all things that they needed to hear. The phrase I have heard shows that what He taught was not a strange doctrine, but one He had received from the Father.

St. Gregory the Great: But let no one who has attained this dignity of being called the friend of God attribute this superhuman gift to his own merits. As the Lord says: You have not chosen Me, but I have chosen you.

St. Augustine of Hippo: What ineffable grace! For what were we before Christ chose us, but wicked and lost? We did not believe in Him in order to be chosen by Him, for if He had chosen us because we believed, He would have chosen us in the act of our choosing Him.

This passage refutes the vain opinion of those who say that we were chosen before the foundation of the world because God foreknew that we would be good, not that He Himself would make us good. For if He had chosen us because He foreknew we would be good, He would also have foreknown that we would first choose Him—for without choosing Him, we cannot be good. Can anyone be called good who has not chosen what is good?

What, then, has He chosen in those who are not good? You cannot say, “I am chosen because I believed,” for if you had believed in Him, you would have already chosen Him. Nor can you say, “Before I believed, I did good works, and therefore was chosen.” For what good work can exist before faith? What is there for us to say, then, but that we were wicked and were chosen, so that by the grace of the One who chose us, we might become good?

They are chosen, then, before the foundation of the world, according to that predestination by which God foreknew His own future acts. They are chosen out of the world by that call through which God fulfills what He has predestined: whom He did predestine, them He also called (Romans 8:30).

Observe, He does not choose those who are already good; rather, He makes good those whom He has chosen. As He says, And I have ordained you that you should go and bring forth fruit. This is the fruit He meant when He said, Without Me you can do nothing. He Himself is the way in which He has set us to go.

St. Gregory the Great: I have set you—that is, “I have planted you by grace”—that you should go—that is, “by an act of your will.” To will is to go forward in the mind, and to bring forth fruit is to do so by your works. He then shows what kind of fruit they should bring forth: And that your fruit may remain. Worldly labor hardly produces fruit that lasts for our lifetime; and even if it does, death comes at last and deprives us of it all. But the fruit of our spiritual labors endures even after death and begins to be seen at the very time that the results of our carnal labor begin to disappear. Let us, therefore, produce such fruit as will remain—fruit of which death, which destroys everything else, will be the beginning.

St. Augustine of Hippo: Love, then, is one fruit, existing now in desire only, not yet in fullness. Yet even with this desire, whatever we ask in the name of the Only-Begotten Son, the Father gives us, as Jesus said: That whatsoever you shall ask the Father in My name, He may give it you. We ask in the Savior’s name whenever we ask for something that will be profitable to our salvation.

St. Augustine of Hippo: Our Lord had said, I have ordained you that you should go and bring forth fruit. Love is this fruit. Therefore, He continues, These things I command you, that you love one another. This is why the Apostle said, The fruit of the Spirit is love (Galatians 5:22), and lists all other graces as springing from this source. Our Lord, then, rightly commends love as if it were the only thing commanded, since without it, nothing can be of benefit, and with it, nothing is lacking by which a person is made good.

St. John Chrysostom: Or, to put it another way: I have said that I lay down My life for you and that I chose you first. I have said this not as a reproach, but to persuade you to love one another. Then, as they were about to suffer persecution and reproach, He tells them not to grieve but to rejoice on that account: If the world hates you, you know that it hated Me before it hated you. It is as if He were saying: I know it is a hard trial, but you will endure it for My sake.

St. Augustine of Hippo: For why should the members exalt themselves above the head? You refuse to be in the body if you are not willing to endure the world’s hatred along with the head. For the sake of love, let us be patient. The world must hate us, since it sees that we hate whatever it loves. If you were of the world, the world would love his own.

St. John Chrysostom: As if Christ’s suffering were not enough consolation, He consoles them further by telling them that the world’s hatred would be a proof of their goodness. Therefore, they should grieve instead if they were loved by the world, as that would be a proof of their wickedness.

St. Augustine of Hippo: He said this to the whole Church, which is often called “the world,” as in the passage, God was in Christ, reconciling the world to Himself (2 Corinthians 5:19). The whole world, then, is the Church, and the whole world hates the Church. The world that is hostile hates the world that has been reconciled; the defiled world hates the cleansed world.

Here it may be asked: If the wicked can be said to persecute the wicked—for example, if impious kings and judges who persecute the righteous also punish murderers and adulterers—how are we to understand our Lord’s words, If you were of the world, the world would love his own? The answer is this: The “world” is in those who punish these offenses, and the “world” is also in those who love them. The world, then, hates its own insofar as it punishes the wicked, but loves its own insofar as it favors them.

Again, if it is asked how the world can love itself when it hates the means of its own redemption, the answer is that it loves itself with a false love, not a true one. It loves what harms it; it hates its own nature but loves its vice. Therefore, we are forbidden to love what the world loves in itself, and we are commanded to love what it hates in itself. We are forbidden to love the vice in it, but we are commanded to love the human nature in it.

And to separate us from this lost world, we are chosen out of it—not by our own merit, for we had no merits to begin with, nor by our nature, which was radically corrupt, but by grace: But because you are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hates you.

St. Gregory the Great: For the criticism of the wicked is a credit to us. There is nothing wrong with not pleasing those who do not please God. For no one can, by the very same act, please both God and the enemies of God. A person who pleases God’s enemy proves himself to be no friend of God, and whoever’s soul is subject to the Truth will have to contend with the enemies of that Truth.

St. Augustine of Hippo: In exhorting His servants to bear the world’s hatred patiently, our Lord offers them the highest and best possible example: Himself. Remember the word that I said to you, The servant is not greater than his lord. If they have persecuted Me, they will also persecute you; if they have kept My saying, they will keep yours also.

Glossa Ordinaria: They paid attention to His word only to slander it, as we read in the Psalms, The ungodly sees the righteous.

Theophylact of Ohrid: Or, to put it another way: He is saying that if they persecuted your Lord, they will much more certainly persecute you. If, on the other hand, they had persecuted Him but still kept His commandments, then they would keep yours also.

St. John Chrysostom: It is as if He said, “You must not be troubled at having to share My sufferings, for you are not better than I am.”

St. Augustine of Hippo: The servant is not greater than his lord. Here, the servant is the one who has the purified fear, which endures forever.

St. John Chrysostom: Then another consolation follows, namely, that the Father is despised and wronged along with them: But all these things will they do unto you for My name’s sake, because they know not Him that sent Me.

St. Augustine of Hippo: “All these things” refers to what He had just mentioned: that the world would hate them, persecute them, and despise their word. “For My Name’s sake” means that in hating you, they will hate Me; in persecuting you, they will persecute Me; and they will not keep your word because it is Mine. Those who do these things are as miserable as those who suffer them are blessed—except when these things are done to the wicked, for then both those who inflict and those who suffer are miserable.

But how can persecutors be said to do these things “for His name’s sake,” when they are not acting for Christ’s name—that is, for the sake of justice? We can resolve this difficulty if we understand the phrase as applying to the righteous who suffer, as if Christ had said, “All these things you will suffer from them for My name’s sake.” In this case, “for My name’s sake” means for the sake of My name which they hate in you, and for the sake of justice which they hate in you.

By this same logic, when the good persecute the wicked, it can be said that they do so both for the sake of the righteousness they love (which is their motive) and for the sake of the unrighteousness they hate (which is the object of their action). Finally, the reason the world does this is, Because they know not Him that sent Me. This means they do not know God according to that knowledge of which it is said, To know you is perfect righteousness (Wisdom 15:3).