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It is not known if airei is a viticultural term or not. If it was not a term common to viticulture, Jesus may have chosen airei due to its similarity in sound to kathairei in order to make a play-on-words (paregmenon, or derivation) and communicate a truth to the disciples. (22) It is more likely that He was in fact using a term used by the farmers of His day to describe their own practice. Regardless, the use of airei within the analogy must correspond to a common practice which the disciples would know and understand. Since both airei and kathairei are used in conjunction with each other, they are better understood as being done simultaneously. Jesus is not putting together two tasks from separate seasons since serious pruning is not done during the spring growth, flowering, and fruit production. (23) Further, on the basis of the relationship of the action to fruiting, Jesus is most likely referring to the stage of seasonal care the vineyards were entering at the time He spoke, namely spring training and trimming.

Jesus is indicating what actually occurred during the Spring, namely, certain non-fruiting branches were "lifted up": (to keep them from touching the ground and setting roots) and tied to trellises along with the fruiting branches while the side shoots of the fruiting branches were being "cleaned up." The non-fruiting branches were allowed to grow with full vigor and without the removal of any side growth or leaves since the more extensive their growth the greater diameter of their stem where it connected to the vine and thus the greater ability for the flow of nutrients from the roots to the branches which would produce more fruit the following season. By removing them from the ground and placing them on the trellis the rows of plants would benefit from unhindered aeration that was considered an essential element to proper fruit development. (24) To see airei as removal (judgment or discipline) is to contradict the actual practice of the time.

What Jesus has said in the first two verses of this beautiful analogy is nothing short of pure encouragement. He has introduced us to a very special "TLC" rule of our Father. He has told the eleven that God the Father cares for them like a vinedresser cares for his grapes. Further, they are each a part of Jesus and draw their spiritual life from Him like branches draw life from the vine. Jesus has affirmed that among those who are believers, those who believe in Him and so belong to Him, those who are "in Him," some are ready to bear fruit and some are not.

God the Father is caring for both groups of believers. The ones not ready to bear fruit are being "lifted up" by Him with a view to future fruitfulness. Thankfully, the Father does not cut off all non-fruiting branches or the vine would never produce fruit. Though they are not fruitful now, they are still important to Him and recipients of His loving concern. The Father is also caring for the ones who are now ready to bear fruit, like the eleven. He is taking those loving actions that will insure their greater fruitfulness. Jesus' point to the eleven in this verse is singular. God the Father cares for all who belong to Jesus regardless of their fruitfulness.

Dr. Earl Radmacher was born almost seventy years ago in Portland, Oregon just a couple of miles from Western Seminary where, in the providence of God, he would later serve on the theological faculty for thirty-three years (1962-1995) and in administrative positions as Dean of the Faculty (1964-1965), President (1965-1990), and Chancellor (1990-1995). In 1995 he was designated President Emeritus and Distinguished Professor of Systematic Theology Emeritus.

His parents, who were immigrants from Romania and Austria, settled in Portland in 1913 where they brought eight children into this world, Earl being the last. The whole family was very active in local churches so every Sunday found Earl spending all day in church-Sunday school, morning worship, potluck lunch at the church, recreation break, youth service, evening service, and after service. Even though he heard the gospel preached Sunday after Sunday, he did not personally receive Christ as his Savior until he was fourteen years of age. He has often stated that sitting in church Sunday after Sunday doesn't make one a Christian any more than sitting in a garage makes a car…

At that juncture in his life, Earl came in contact with another Earl-Earl Gile-a faithful Sunday school teacher who lived right across the street from the grade school he had attended, and he opened up his home as an outreach to boys from the school. Mr. Gile's church rented the school gymnasium on Thursday nights and made it available for boys to play basketball if they came to Sunday school on Sundays. That sounded like a good deal, so he went. Shortly after that, the teacher announced a forthcoming boys camps at Twin Rocks Beach, Oregon. He decided to go; and there, at fourteen years of age, he accepted Christ as his Savior.

Although the church preached the gospel faithfully, they didn't go beyond the gospel to build up believers in the faith. He has often said, "As a believer, I didn't need a birth message, but I did need a growth message. That being absent, I tended to flounder, and my growth in Christ was stunted. Thus, the high school years were a disaster as far as the things of Christ and spiritual growth were concerned."

As graduation time neared, he took the normal batch of tests to determine which line of work he should pursue. The tests indicated mathematics or mechanics, so he decided to go the route of mathematics and join it with money by starting a career in a savings and loan institution. He started as a file clerk and worked up to an investment statistician that year.

His plans in the investment business were dramatically interrupted, however, by a visit to Portland of a new evangelist on the scene, Billy Graham, in August of 1950. A friend invited him to go to the meeting and, although he had little spiritual appetite at that time, God seemed to press him toward the affirmative. As the poet Francis Thompson has written: "He tracked me down the corridors of time." As it turned out, Earl not only went that night but every night thereafter for six weeks. The only meeting he missed was the women's meeting (they wouldn't let him in!).

After listening to the powerful preaching of Billy Graham for six weeks, at the conclusion of the last service, he found himself standing on his feet, going forward, grabbing Cliff Barrow's hand, and telling him that God called him to preach. His next question was, "What do I do now?" Cliff said, "You go to college to prepare" and he recommended his alma mater in South Carolina.

Once again, god had a man prepared to help him take the next step. As the tabernacle cleared out, he saw a man he hadn't seen since grade school. In the beautiful providence of God, this man, Jerry Burleson, was going to the same college in South Carolina that Cliff Barrows had recommended, and he was looking for one more rider. Although it was just two weeks before Fall semester, Jerry assured him that they would accept him on probation through his recommendation. He worked nights for two weeks training another person for his job so that he could leave with the good graces of his employer.

Twelve years and four degrees later (together with broad opportunities of experience in preaching and teaching, overseas missions and military chaplainry, local church pastor and parachurch ministries, rural and urban outreaches), he ended up not in the pastorate, but in the training of evangelists, pastors, and teachers at Western Seminary. His years there involved traveling over ten million miles and preaching and teaching over twenty thousand hours in over a thousand Bible conferences and thousands of churches.

Among the numerous books and articles that Dr. Radmacher has authored or edited are the following books: You and your thoughts (1977), The Nature of the Church (1978, 1995), Can We Trust the Bible (1979), What to Expect from the Holy Spirit (1983), Hermeneutics, Inerrancy, and the Bible (1984), The NIV Reconsidered (1990), The Nelson Study Bible (1997), Nelson's New Illustrated Bible Commentary (1999), and Salvation (2000).

Dr. Radmacher has often stated, "In my wildest dreams fifty years ago, I could never have imagined the exciting plans that God, in His sovereign grace, had for me." His life mission is found in 2 Timothy 2:15, "Study to show yourself approved unto God, a workman who has no need to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth." His personal life verse is 2 Corinthians 3:18, "But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord."

This article was adapted from The Disciplemaker: What Matters Most to Jesus by Gary Derickson and Earl Radmacher (Salem: Charis Press, ©2001) and used by permission from its authors. Drs. Derickson and Radmacher give an important corrective to interpretive confusion relating to connecting justification with sanctification. This confusion has caused some to reject the clear teaching of Scripture that we are saved by God's unmerited favor, not through any deeds that we may do or not do. The contemporary idea that a believer cannot know if he or she is truly eternally redeemed until the end of life is a theological error perpetrated in part by a misunderstanding of the teaching of grace that is expounded by Derickson and Radmacher.

References

22. E. W. Bullinger, Figures of Speech Used in the Bible (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1968), 304. He describes this figure as a repetition of words "derived from the same root," and "are similar in origin and sound, but not similar in sense."

23. Once fruit gets on the vine, the greatest problem is bugs and disease. And a diseased branch may be pruned, but not because it is not producing fruit. It would be pruned in spite of its bearing fruit!

24. Pliny, Natural History, 17:35.

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