Binding his foal to the vine and his donkey’s colt to the choice vine. —Genesis 49:11
Jesus sent two disciples ahead into a village near Jerusalem with an unusual errand. They would find a colt “tied at a door outside in the street” (Mark 11:4), one no one had ever ridden. They were to untie it, and if anyone asked why, they were to say, “The Lord has need of it and will send it back here immediately” (Mark 11:3). Matthew, Mark, and Luke all record the untying. Zechariah had said the king would come humble, riding on a colt (Zech. 9:9), and this was how it began.
Before the colt could carry anyone, someone had to loosen the rope.
Most of us know what it is to be tied at a door in a street. Some of us were tied to money. Some were tied to the approval of people we badly wanted to love us, and others to old family loyalties and the pull of the life we grew up in. A tied animal barely notices the rope until it tries to leave. We are the same.
Jesus’ answer to the owners was short: the Lord has need of it. Paul explains why that was enough. “You are Christ’s” (1 Cor. 3:23). The colt never really belonged to the street. Whatever had a hold on it was holding something that was already His, and that may be why those standing there simply “let them go” (Mark 11:6), allowing the disciples to lead the colt away.
If the story ended with the rope on the ground, we would have a colt that had been let loose and nothing more. Centuries earlier, Jacob, blessing his son Judah, had spoken of “Binding his foal to the vine” (Gen. 49:11). Christians have long read that blessing as pointing to the king who rode into Jerusalem on a colt.
The same blessing says the king “washed his garments in wine” (Gen. 49:11). Many Christians have heard the blood of Jesus in that line, and John uses a similar image of those who “washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb” (Rev. 7:14). Genesis does not say this itself, but the two passages share the picture of cloth washed in what the vine produces.
The colt was untied to carry the king, and not to wander. Jesus later used the vine to describe the life of His disciples: “I am the vine” (John 15:5). He called them to “Abide in me” (John 15:4) and to “abide in my love” (John 15:9). We are meant to be loosed from what once held us, and we are meant to remain in Christ, who gives us life.
It would be easy to hear this story as only a lesson about getting loose from what holds us. But the colt was untied because the Lord had need of it, and the story ends with the colt carrying the king into the city. The release has a destination. Perhaps that is why a rope on the ground rarely stays there. Something else picks it up.
We might ask what we would find if we followed our own rope back. Is something still holding us at a door in the street, or have we begun to abide in the vine?
Untied from what once held us, we are called to abide in the One who gives us life.
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