John 15:5

I am the vine, ye are the branches: He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye can do nothing.

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers

(5) I am the vine, ye are the branches.—The first clause is repeated to bring out the contrast with the second. It has been implied, but not directly stated, that they are the branches. It may be that there was a pause after the end of the fourth verse, accompanied by a look at the disciples, or at that which suggested the imagery of the vine. His words would then continue with the sense, “Yes, it is so. That is the true relation between us. I am the vine, ye are the branches. The fruitful branches represent men that abide in Me . . .”

For without me ye can do nothing.—Better, separate from Me, or, apart from Me. (Comp. margin.) The words bring out the fulness of the meaning of the fruitfulness of the man who abides in Christ. It is he, and he only, who brings forth fruit, for the man who is separate from Christ can bear no fruit. The words have often been unduly pressed, to exclude all moral power apart from Christ, whereas the whole context limits them to the fruit-bearing of the Christian life. The persons thought of all through this allegory are true and false Christians, and nothing is said of the influence on men of the wider teaching of God, the Light of the Logos ever in the world. A moral power outside the limits of Christianity is clearly recognised in the New Testament. (Comp., e.g., Romans 2:14-15, Notes.)

MacLaren's Expositions

John

THE TRUE BRANCHES OF THE TRUE VINE

John 15:5 - John 15:8.

No wise teacher is ever afraid of repeating himself. The average mind requires the reiteration of truth before it can make that truth its own. One coat of paint is not enough, it soon rubs off. Especially is this true in regard to lofty spiritual and religious truth, remote from men’s ordinary thinkings, and in some senses unwelcome to them. So our Lord, the great Teacher, never shrank from repeating His lessons when He saw that they were but partially apprehended. It was not grievous to Him to ‘say the same things,’ because for them it was safe. He broke the bread of life into small pieces, and fed them little and often.

So here, in the verses that we have to consider now, we have the repetition, and yet not the mere repetition, of the great parable of the vine, as teaching the union of Christians with Christ, and their consequent fruitfulness. He saw, no doubt, that the truth was but partially dawning upon His disciples’ minds. Therefore He said it all over again, with deepened meaning, following it out into new applications, presenting further consequences, and, above all, giving it a more sharp and definite personal application.

Are we any swifter scholars than these first ones were? Have we absorbed into our own thinking this truth so thoroughly and constantly, and wrought it out in our lives so completely, that we do not need to be reminded of it any more? Shall we not be wise if we faithfully listen to His repeated teachings?

The verses which I have read give us four aspects of this great truth of union with Jesus Christ; or of its converse, separation from Him. There is, first, the fruitfulness of union; second, the withering and destruction of separation; third, the satisfaction of desire which comes from abiding in Christ; and, lastly, the great, noble issue of fruitfulness, in God’s glory, and our own increasing discipleship. Now let me touch upon these briefly.

I. First, then, our Lord sets forth, with no mere repetition, the same broad idea which He has already been insisting upon-viz., that union with Him is sure to issue in fruitfulness.

He repeats the theme, ‘I am the Vine’; but He points its application by the next clause, ‘Ye are the branches.’ That had been implied before, but it needed to be said more definitely. For are we not all too apt to think of religious truth as swinging in vacuo as it were, with no personal application to ourselves, and is not the one thing needful in regard to the truths which are most familiar to us, to bring them into close connection with our own personal life and experience?

‘I am the Vine’ is a general truth, with no clear personal application. ‘Ye are the branches’ brings each individual listener into connection with it. How many of us there are, as there are in every so-called Christian communion, that listen pleasedly, and, in a fitful sort of languid way, interestedly, to the most glorious and most solemn words that come from a preacher’s lips, and never dream that what he has been saying has any bearing upon themselves! And the one thing that is most of all needed with people like some of you, who have been listening to the truth all your days, is that it should be sharpened to a point, and the conviction driven into you, that you have some personal concern in this great message. ‘Ye are the branches’ is the one side of that sharpening and making definite of the truth in its personal application, and the other side is, ‘Thou art the man.’ All preaching and religious teaching is toothless generality, utterly useless, unless we can manage somehow or other to force it through the wall of indifference and vague assent to a general proposition, with which ‘Gospel-hardened hearers’ surround themselves, and make them feel that the thing has got a point, and that the point is touching their own consciousness. ‘Ye are the branches.’

Note next the great promise of fruitfulness. ‘He that abideth in Me, and I in Him, the same bringeth forth much fruit.’

I need not repeat what I have said in former sermons as to the plain, practical duties which are included in that abiding in Christ, and Christ’s consequent abiding in us. It means, on the part of professedly Christian people, a temper and tone of mind very far remote from the noisy, bustling distractions too common in our present Christianity. We want quiet, patient waiting within the veil. We want stillness of heart, brought about by our own distinct effort to put away from ourselves the strife of tongues and the pride of life. We want activity, no doubt, but we want a wise passiveness as its foundation.

‘Think you, midst all this mighty sum

Of things for ever speaking,

That nothing of itself will come,

But we must still be seeking?’

Get away into the ‘secret place of the Most High,’ and rise into a higher altitude and atmosphere than the region of work and effort; and sitting still with Christ, let His love and His power pour themselves into your hearts. ‘Come, My people, enter thou into thy chambers and shut thy doors about thee.’ Get away from the jangling of politics, and empty controversies and busy distractions of daily duty. The harder our toil necessarily is, the more let us see to it that we keep a little cell within the central life where in silence we hold communion with the Master. ‘Abide in Me and I in you.’

That is the way to be fruitful, rather than by efforts after individual acts of conformity and obedience, howsoever needful and precious these are. There is a deeper thing wanted than these. The best way to secure Christian conduct is to cultivate communion with Christ. It is better to work at the increase of the central force than at the improvement of the circumferential manifestations of it. Get more of the sap into the branch, and there will be more fruit. Have more of the life of Christ in the soul, and the conduct and the speech will be more Christlike. We may cultivate individual graces at the expense of the harmony and beauty of the whole character. We may grow them artificially and they will be of little worth-by imitation of others, by special efforts after special excellence, rather than by general effort after the central improvement of our nature and therefore of our life. But the true way to influence conduct is to influence the springs of conduct; and to make a man’s life better, the true way is to make the man better. First of all be, and then do; first of all receive, and then give forth; first of all draw near to Christ, and then there will be fruit to His praise. That is the Christian way of mending men, not tinkering at this, that, and the other individual excellence, but grasping the secret of total excellence in communion with Him.

Our Lord is here not merely laying down a law, but giving a promise, and putting his veracity into pawn for the fulfilment of it. ‘If a man will keep near Me,’ He says, ‘he shall bear fruit.’

Notice that little word which now appears for the first time. ‘He shall bear much fruit.’ We are not to be content with a little fruit; a poor shrivelled bunch of grapes that are more like marbles than grapes, here and there, upon the half-nourished stem. The abiding in Him will produce a character rich in manifold graces. ‘A little fruit’ is not contemplated by Christ at all. God forbid that I should say that there is no possibility of union with Christ and a little fruit. Little union will have little fruit; but I would have you notice that the only two alternatives which come into Christ’s view here are, on the one hand, ‘no fruit,’ and on the other hand, ‘much fruit.’ And I would ask why it is that the average Christian man of this generation bears only a berry or two here and there, like such as are left upon the vines after the vintage, when the promise is that if he will abide in Christ, he will bear much fruit?

This verse, setting forth the fruitfulness of union with Jesus, ends with the brief, solemn statement of the converse-the barrenness of separation-’Apart from Me’ {not merely ‘without,’ as the Authorised Version has it} ‘ye can do nothing.’ There is the condemnation of all the busy life of men which is not lived in union with Jesus Christ. It is a long row of figures which, like some other long rows of algebraic symbols added up, amount just to zero. ‘Without me, nothing.’ All your busy life, when you come to sum it up, is made up of plus and minus quantities, which precisely balance each other, and the net result, unless you are in Christ, is just nothing; and on your gravestones the only right epitaph is a great round cypher. ‘He did not do anything. There is nothing left of his toil; the whole thing has evaporated and disappeared.’ That is life apart from Jesus Christ.

II. And so note, secondly, the withering and destruction following separation from Him.

Commentators tell us, I think a little prosaically, that when our Lord spoke, it was the time of pruning the vine in Palestine, and that, perhaps, as they went from the upper room to the garden, they might see in the valley, here and there, the fires that the labourers had kindled in the vineyards to burn the loppings of the vines. That does not matter. It is of more consequence to notice how the solemn thought of withering and destruction forces itself, so to speak, into these gracious words; and how, even at that moment, our Lord, in all His tenderness and pity, could not but let words of warning-grave, solemn, tragical-drop from His lips.

This generation does not like to hear them, for its conception of the Gospel is a thing with no minor notes in it, with no threatenings, a proclamation of a deliverance, and no proclamation of anything from which deliverance is needed-which is a strange kind of Gospel! But Jesus Christ could not speak about the blessedness of fruitfulness and the joy of life in Himself without speaking about its necessary converse, the awfulness of separation from Him, of barrenness, of withering, and of destruction.

Separation is withering. Did you ever see a hawthorn bough that children bring home from the woods, and stick in the grate; how in a day or two the little fresh green leaves all shrivel up and the white blossoms become brown and smell foul, and the only thing to be done with it is to fling it into the fire and get rid of it? ‘And so,’ says Jesus Christ, ‘as long as a man holds on to Me and the sap comes into him, he will flourish, and as soon as the connection is broken, all that was so fair will begin to shrivel, and all that was green will grow brown and turn to dust, and all that was blossom will droop, and there will be no more fruit any more for ever.’ Separate from Christ, the individual shrivels, and the possibilities of fair buds wither and set into no fruit, and no man is the man he might have been unless he holds by Jesus Christ and lets His life come into him.

And as for individuals, so for communities. The Church or the body of professing Christians that is separate from Jesus Christ dies to all noble life, to all high activity, to all Christlike conduct, and, being dead, rots.

Withering means destruction. The language of our text is a description of what befalls the actual branches of the literal vine; but it is made a representation of what befalls the individuals whom these branches represent, by that added clause, ‘like a branch.’ Look at the mysteriousness of the language. ‘They gather them.’ Who? ‘They cast them into the fire.’ Who have the tragic task of flinging the withered branches into some mysterious fire? All is left vague with unexplained awfulness. The solemn fact that the withering of manhood by separation from Jesus Christ requires, and ends in, the consuming of the withered, is all that we have here. We have to speak of it pityingly, with reticence, with terror, with tenderness, with awe lest it should be our fate.

But O, dear brethren! be on your guard against the tendency of the thinking of this generation, to paste a bit of blank paper over all the threatenings of the Bible, and to blot out from its consciousness the grave issues that it holds forth. One of two things must befall the branch, either it is in the Vine or it gets into the fire. If we would avoid the fire let us see to it that we are in the Vine.

III. Thirdly, we have here the union with Christ as the condition of satisfied desires.

‘If ye abide in Me, and My words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you.’ Notice how our Lord varies His phraseology here, and instead of saying ‘I in you,’ says ‘My words in you.’ He is speaking about prayers, consequently the variation is natural. In fact, His abiding in us is largely the abiding of His words in us; or, to speak more accurately, the abiding of His words in us is largely the means of His abiding in us.

What is meant by Christ’s words abiding in us? Something a great deal more than the mere intellectual acceptance of them. Something very different from reading a verse of the Gospels of a morning before we go to our work, and forgetting all about it all the day long; something very different from coming in contact with Christian truth on a Sunday, when somebody else preaches to us what he has found in the Bible, and we take in a little of it. It means the whole of the conscious nature of a man being, so to speak, saturated with Christ’s words; his desires, his understanding, his affections, his will, all being steeped in these great truths which the Master spoke. Put a little bit of colouring matter into the fountain at its source, and you will have the stream dyed down its course for ever so far. See that Christ’s words be lodged in your inmost selves, by patient meditation upon them, by continual recurrence to them, and all your life will be glorified and flash into richness of colouring and beauty by their presence.

The main effect of such abiding of the Lord’s words in us which our Lord touches upon here is, that in such a case, if our whole inward nature is influenced by the continual operation upon it of the words of the Lord, then our desires will be granted. Do not so vulgarise and lower the nobleness and the loftiness of this great promise as to suppose that it only means-If you remember His words you will get anything you like. It means something a great deal better than that. It means that if Christ’s words are the substratum, so to speak, of your wishes, then your wishes will harmonise with His will, and so ‘ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you.’

Christ loves us a great deal too well to give to our own foolish and selfish wills the keys of His treasure-house. The condition of our getting what we will is our willing what He desires; and unless our prayers are a great deal more the utterance of the submission of our wills to His than they are the attempt to impose ours upon Him, they will not be answered. We get our wishes when our wishes are moulded by His word.

IV. The last thought that is here is that this union and fruitfulness lead to the noble ends of glorifying God and increasing discipleship.

‘Herein is My Father glorified, that ye bear much fruit.’ Christ’s life was all for the glorifying of God. The lives which are ours in name-but being drawn from Him, in their depths are much rather the life of Christ in us than our lives-will have the same end and the same issue.

Ah, dear brethren, we come here to a very sharp test for us all. I wonder how many of us there are, on whom men looking think more loftily of God and love Him better, and are drawn to Him by strange longings. How many of us are there about whom people will say, ‘There must be something in the religion that makes a man like that’? How many of us are there, to look upon whom suggests to men that God, who can make such a man, must be infinitely sweet and lovely? And yet that is what we should all be-mirrors of the divine radiance, on which some eyes, that are too dim and sore to bear the light as it streams from the Sun, may look, and, beholding the reflection, may learn to love. Does God so shine in me that I lead men to magnify His name? If I am dwelling with Christ it will be so.

I shall not know it. ‘Moses wist not that the skin of his face shone’; but, in meek unconsciousness of the glory that rays from us, we may walk the earth, reflecting the light and making God known to our fellows.

And if thus we abide in Him and bear fruit we shall ‘be’ or {as the word might more accurately be rendered}, we shall ‘become His disciples.’ The end of our discipleship is never reached on earth: we never so much are as we are in the process of becoming, His true followers and servants.

If we bear fruit because we are knit to Him, the fruit itself will help us to get nearer Him, and so to be more His disciples and more fruitful. Character produces conduct, but conduct rests on character, and strengthens the impulses from which it springs. And thus our action as Christian men and women will tell upon our inward lives as Christians, and the more our outward conduct is conformed to the pattern of Jesus Christ, the more shall we love Him in our inmost hearts. We ourselves shall eat of the fruit which we ourselves have borne to Him.

The alternatives are before us-in Christ, living and fruitful; out of Christ, barren, and destined to be burned. As the prophet says, ‘Will men take of the wood of the vine for any work?’ Vine-wood is worthless, its only use is to bear fruit; and if it does not do that, there is only one thing to be done with it, and that is, ‘They cast it into the fire, and it is burned.’

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

15:1-8 Jesus Christ is the Vine, the true Vine. The union of the human and Divine natures, and the fulness of the Spirit that is in him, resemble the root of the vine made fruitful by the moisture from a rich soil. Believers are branches of this Vine. The root is unseen, and our life is hid with Christ; the root bears the tree, diffuses sap to it, and in Christ are all supports and supplies. The branches of the vine are many, yet, meeting in the root, are all but one vine; thus all true Christians, though in place and opinion distant from each other, meet in Christ. Believers, like the branches of the vine, are weak, and unable to stand but as they are borne up. The Father is the Husbandman. Never was any husbandman so wise, so watchful, about his vineyard, as God is about his church, which therefore must prosper. We must be fruitful. From a vine we look for grapes, and from a Christian we look for a Christian temper, disposition, and life. We must honour God, and do good; this is bearing fruit. The unfruitful are taken away. And even fruitful branches need pruning; for the best have notions, passions, and humours, that require to be taken away, which Christ has promised to forward the sanctification of believers, they will be thankful, for them. The word of Christ is spoken to all believers; and there is a cleansing virtue in that word, as it works grace, and works out corruption. And the more fruit we bring forth, the more we abound in what is good, the more our Lord is glorified. In order to fruitfulness, we must abide in Christ, must have union with him by faith. It is the great concern of all Christ's disciples, constantly to keep up dependence upon Christ, and communion with him. True Christians find by experience, that any interruption in the exercise of their faith, causes holy affections to decline, their corruptions to revive, and their comforts to droop. Those who abide not in Christ, though they may flourish for awhile in outward profession, yet come to nothing. The fire is the fittest place for withered branches; they are good for nothing else. Let us seek to live more simply on the fulness of Christ, and to grow more fruitful in every good word and work, so may our joy in Him and in his salvation be full.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

I am the vine - John 15:1.

Without me ye can do nothing - The expression "without me" denotes the same as separate from me. As the branches, if separated from the parent stock, could produce no fruit, but would immediately wither and die, so Christians, if separate from Christ, could do nothing. The expression is one, therefore, strongly implying dependence. The Son of God was the original source of life, John 1:4. He also, by his work as Mediator, gives life to the world John 6:33, and it is by the same grace and agency that it is continued in the Christian. We see hence:

1. that to him is due all the praise for all the good works the Christian performs.

2. that they will perform good works just in proportion as they feel their dependence on him and look to him. And,

3. that the reason why others fail of being holy is because they are unwilling to look to him, and seek grace and strength from him who alone is able to give it.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

5. without me—apart, or vitally disconnected from Me.

ye can do nothing—spiritually, acceptably.

Matthew Poole's Commentary

I am the vine, ye are the branches; that is, I am as the vine, you are as the branches: without the continual influence of the vine upon the branches, they bring forth no fruit; but that influence continuing, no plant is more fruitful than a vine is: so without the continual influence of my Spirit of grace upon you, you will be altogether barren and unfruitful; but if you have that influence, you will not be fruitful only, but very fruitful: for without my continuing such influence, you will not only be able to do little, but you will be able to do nothing that is truly and spiritually good and acceptable in the sight of God.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

I am the vine, ye are the branches,.... Christ here repeats what he said of himself, "the vine", for the sake of the application of "the branches" to his disciples: which expresses their sameness of nature with Christ; their strict and close union to him; and the communication of life and grace, holiness and fruitfulness, of support and strength, and of perseverance in grace and holiness to the end from him:

he that abideth in me, and I in him; which is the case of all that are once in Christ, and he in them:

the same bringeth forth much fruit; in the exercise of grace, and performance of good works; and continues to do so as long as he lives, not by virtue of his own free will, power, and strength, but by grace continually received from Christ:

for without me ye can do nothing; nothing that is spiritually good; no, not anything at all, be it little or great, easy or difficult to be performed; cannot think a good thought, speak a good word, or do a good action; can neither begin one, nor, when it is begun, perfect it. Nothing is to be done "without Christ"; without his Spirit, grace, strength, and presence; or as "separate from" him. Were it possible for the branches that are truly in him, to be removed from him, they could bring forth no fruits of good works, any more than a branch separated from the vine can bring forth grapes; so that all the fruitfulness of a believer is to be ascribed to Christ, and his grace, and not to the free will and power of man.

Geneva Study Bible

I am the vine, ye are the branches: He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye can do nothing.

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Meyer's NT Commentary

John 15:5. Abide on me, I say, for I am the vine, ye the branches; thus then only from me (not ἀφʼ ἑαυτὼν, John 15:4) can you derive the living power for bearing fruit. And you must abide on me, as I on you: so (οὗτος: he, no other than he) will you bring forth much fruit. In this way, by means of ἐγὼ … κλήματα the preceding ἐν ἐμοί, and by means of ὁ μένων, κ.τ.λ., the preceding μείνητε is confirmed and brought into relief. Hence also the emphatic position of ἐγώ and μένων.

κἀγὼ ἐν αὐτῷ] Instead of καὶ ἐν ᾧ ἐγὼ μένω, this clause—not relative, but appending itself in an easy and lively manner—is introduced. See on this classic idiom, Bernhardy, p. 304; Nägelsbach, z. Ilias, p. 6, ed. 3; Buttmann, N. T. Gr. p. 327 f. [E. T. p. 382].

χωρὶς ἐμοῦ] χωρισθέντες ἀπʼ ἐμοῦ, out of living fellowship with me. Comp. Ephesians 2:12; Tittmann, Synon. p. 94. Antithetic to ἐν ἐμοὶ μένειν.

ποιεῖν οὐδέν] effect nothing, bring about nothing, passing from the figure into the proper mode of presentation. The activity of the Christian life in general is meant, not merely that of the apostles, since the disciples are addressed, not especially in respect of their narrower vocation, but generally as κλήματα of Christ, which standing they have in common with all believers. The utter incapacity for Christian efficiency without the maintenance of the living connection with Christ is here decidedly and emphatically expressed; on this subject, however, Augustine, and with him ecclesiastical orthodoxy, has frequently drawn inferences too wide in favour of the doctrine of moral inability generally (see especially Calovius); since it is only the ability for the specifically Christian ποιεῖν τι (the καρπὸν φέρειν) which is denied to him who is χωρὶς Χριστοῦ. For this higher moral activity, which, indeed, is the only true one, he is unable (John 3:6), and in this sense it may be said with Augustine, that Christ thus spoke, “ut responderet futuro Pelagio;” where, however, a natural moral volition and ability of a lower grade in and of itself (comp. Romans 2:14-15; Romans 7:14 ff.) is not denied, nor its measure and power more exactly defined than to this effect, that it cannot attain to Christian morality, to which rather the ethical power of the living fellowship with Christ here depicted, consequently the new birth, is indispensable. Luther well says: “that He speaks not here of the natural or worldly being and life, but of fruits of the gospel.” And in so far “nos penitus privat omni virtute, nisi quam suppeditat ipse nobis,” Calvin.

Expositor's Greek Testament

John 15:5. ἐγὼ … κλήματα—“I am the Vine, ye are the branches,” together forming one tree and possessed by one common life. The stock does not bear fruit, but only the branches; the branches cannot live without the stock. Therefore it follows ὁ μένων … οὐδέν. The one thing needful for fruit-bearing is that we abide in Christ, and He in us; that the branch adhere to the vine, and the life of the vine flow into the branch. χωρὶς ἐμοῦ, “in separation from me”. See Ephesians 2:12. Grotius gives the equivalents “seorsim,” “separatim,” κατὰ μονάς, κατʼ αὐτό. οὐ δύνασθε ποιεῖν οὐδέν, “ye cannot do anything,” absolutely nothing according to John 1:3-4; but here the meaning is, “ye cannot do anything which is glorifying to God, anything which can be called fruit-bearing,” John 15:8.

Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

5. ye are the branches] This has been implied, but not stated yet.

for without me] Better, because apart from Me, or (as the margin) severed from Me. Comp. John 1:3; Ephesians 2:12.

ye can do nothing] Christians cannot live as Christians apart from Christ. Nothing is said here about those who are not Christians, although there is a sense in which the words are true of them also.

Bengel's Gnomen

John 15:5. Οὗτος) he, and he only [“the same”].—ποιεῖν, do) This verb is taken in the strict sense. Elsewhere we have the expression καρπὸν ποιεῖν, to make or produce fruit: but here καρπὸν φέρειν, to bear fruit.

Pulpit Commentary

Verse 5. - Christ returns to the main theme of the previous verse, but here discriminates more forcibly the vine from the branches, and yet holds and binds them into a unity. I am the vine, ye are the branches; which shows that he treated the disciples themselves as the organs of his earthly fruit-bearing; and then draws a larger circle and makes a complete and comprehensive statement on which the very existence of the "true vine," the "body of Christ, including the Head," depends, viz. He that abideth in me, and I in him - i.e. whenever the conditions of which I have spoken to you are fulfilled; wherever there are human souls deriving from their connection with me the full advantage of the life ever streaming forth from me - the same beareth much fruit; the entire end of their new life is secured. He beareth "much fruit." In other words, many of those blessed fruits of the supernatural life appear, which the great Husbandman desires to receive. And this strengthens the position of the previous verse, which threatened excision from the vine to such as bear no fruit. Such, though in one sense "in the Vine," do not abide in him. Because apart from - severed from - me ye can do nothing. The ὅτι suggests the question - Can the negative result justify the positive assertion? It does in this way. There are two premises: the first is," I am the Vine, and ye are the branches," and the second is, "Severed front me a branch can effect nothing," having no independent fruitfulness or stability. All its powers are derived from this supernatural source, and depend on Christ's faithfulness to his own nature and functions; therefore, "He that abideth in me, and I in him, bringeth forth much fruit." The language here does not repress the endeavor of the human will after righteousness, nor pronounce a judgment on the great controversy between Augustinians and Pelagians. These words are not addressed to unconverted men, but to disciples, who have to learn their constant need of spiritual contact with their invisible Lord. Let a believer, let an apostle, sever himself from Christ, and live on his own past reputation or his supposed strength, on the clearness of his intellect, the vigor of his body, the eminence of his position, he can and will do nothing. John 15:5

Vincent's Word Studies

Without me (χωρὶς ἐμοῦ)

Properly, apart from me. So Rev. Compare John 1:3; Ephesians 2:12.