“What About the Branches?”
Recently, my friend Jim and I were on Rick Fry’s podcast, Inside the Man Box . The topic was the diversity within the Christian family that stretches from annihilation on one end and universalism on the other. Jim and I are on the end of Universal Redemption (universalism). During the conversation, Rick asked, “What about the branches?” While we addressed that briefly, I don’t feel we did it any justice. So I’d like to flesh out my thoughts here. There are a couple of places in the New Testament that refer to branches — John 15 and Romans 11 . We’ll address John first, which is the passage I believe Rick was meaning. In John 15, Jesus said — “I’m the true vine, and my Abba is the vine grower 2 who cuts off every branch in me that doesn’t bear fruit, but prunes the fruitful ones to increase their yield. 3 You’ve been pruned already, thanks to the word that I’ve spoken to you. 4 Live on in me, as I do in you. Just as a branch cannot bear fruit of itself apart from the vine, neither can