<p>15:2- see on 2 Cor. 4:4.</p><p><em>Every branch in me that carries no fruit, he prunes away; and every branch that carries fruit, he cleanses it, that it may bear more fruit</em>- The removed branch which was not cleansed refers initially to Judas, who had now left them, as he was the one of them who was not clean / cleansed (13:10). Bearing the fruit of the Spirit is absolutely essential; Paul puts it another way when he writes that if we have not the Spirit of Christ, we are &quot;none of His&quot;. The Lord Jesus here speaks of how we as shoots on the vine tree are either &lsquo;cut off&rsquo; in rejection, or &lsquo;trimmed / purged&rsquo; to be more fruitful. There is a paronomasia here in the Greek text i.e. a play on similar sounding verbs- <em>airein</em> and <em>kathairein</em>. The point being that the purging process works through condemning oneself now; by going through the realization of our condemnation now, we are thereby purged so that we avoid condemnation at the day of judgment.</p><p>The fruit to be produced is the fruit of the Spirit- which is all internal attributes, elicited by the sap / Spirit: &quot;The fruit of the Spirit (that which the Spirit produces) is love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faithfulness, meekness, self-control&quot; (Gal. 5:22,23). Nine qualities gathered as one cluster, just as on a grapevine.</p><p>As also to be noted on the parable of the vineyard in Isaiah 5, God does all He can to ensure that we have an optimal environment for bearing spiritual fruit. So often we complain that if only we were in this or that situation, then we would bear more fruit. But He knows best. The cleansing, spoken of in this Upper Room context, must be understood in the context of the Lord's washing of the disciples' feet, whereby they were cleansed, but not all (13:10); for Judas was not cleansed internally. His comment that feet needed regularly washing may refer to some regular cleansing by the Lord, of which He again speaks here. 'Cleansing' may refer to internal cleansing of the heart; the pure / cleansed in heart (Mt. 5:8), those cleansed &quot;within&quot; (Mt. 23:6), and the internal work of cleansing the heart and conscience is that of the Spirit, operating within the heart of believers.</p>