I have recently been meditating on and memorizing John 15, and heard a sermon preached on it last week. It was a great sermon, full of the oh-so-reformed perspective that I love dearly.

Other than loving pretty much the entire sermon, I was slightly disturbed by one comment the pastor made about the vine and it's significance. He pretty much straight out said that Israel used to be the vine and then Christ became the vine when He came and the church is not and never will be the vine. That made me think hard, because I wasn't quite sure what I thought about it. But through prayer and reading (and some down time at work) I realized that Christ answered this question clearly when He said in John 15:1 "I am the true vine..." Israel was never really the vine (regardless of the verse in Hosea 10:1 which I truly believe is figurative... keep reading, I'll explain, don't worry). I believe that Christ is and always has been the TRUE vine. THE true vine. There can only be one. The physical nation of Israel was at one point the physical representation of Christ, the true vine, the sons of Abraham, on earth. But the Bible is clear on the fact that the church of believers in Jesus Christ is included in the definition of Israel (sons of Abraham)... (Romans 4:16-17 and Romans 9:8). Christ was Head of Israel as He is Head of the church. (but now we have something literal and "in this world" to look at as an example of that, which is the difference between OT Israel and the NT "Israel").

So. My conclusion.

The church and OT Israel were never vines and never will be vines. We are branches, some of us grafted into the vine that is Everlasting and Eternal stretching both ways in time~ backward and forward. Just as a branch is a representative sample of a tree or vine, we are the representative of our Vine.

Just an observation that helped me understand even better how the relationship between Israel and the church go together in Christ. :)