Jesus to my knowledge was first to speak of this intimate relationship between Him and His elect. Paul later elaborates fully on it: Me in Him and Him in me.
It is interesting that in the above diagram the “Husbandman,” His and our Father, is left out of the picture, when all the time He is the main theme of the story! It is He who does the planting, nourishing, and pruning.
Is it any wonder then that we are told after a long wait He is to have the first taste of the fruit in our lives and ministries? “…Behold, the husbandman waiteth for the precious fruit of the earth, and hath long patience for it…The husbandman that laboureth must be first partaker of the fruits.”~ Ja. 5:7 cp. 2 Tim. 2:6
I wonder, when He tastes of the fruit our lives’ produce if it is bitter fruit or sweet to His palate? The scriptures speak of both sweet and sour grapes — but not both together. Ja. 3:12 tells us that, “…no fountain both yields salt water and fresh.”
I noticed in my studies of this portion of scripture that the Eternal Godhead is involved in the fruit we bear. The Father is the Husbandman; the Son, the Vine; (we are the Branches), and the fruit is of the Spirit.
My prayer is that I might bear Eshcol fruit in my life and ministry. “ And they came unto the brook of Eshcol, and cut down from thence a branch with one cluster of grapes, and they bare it between two upon a staff…”
“After the Husbandman has stripped the branch of everything it is left only with the Husbandman. Ask Job about everything doubling thereafter”~ rds
by an Aged Saint