The Lord said:
1 I Am the true vine, and my Father is the husbandman.
2 Every branch in me that beareth not fruit he taketh away: and every branch that beareth fruit, he purgeth it, that it may bring forth more fruit.
3 Now ye are clean through the word which I have spoken unto you.
4 Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine; no more can ye, except ye abide in me.
5 I am the vine, ye are the branches: He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye can do nothing.
6 If a man abide not in me, he is cast forth as a branch, and is withered; and men gather them, and cast them into the fire, and they are burned. (John 15)
Branches are living. They are connected, through other people or directly, to the true vine, Jesus Christ. His light and truth flows through them.
To be clean is to be reconciled to the truth you have received already, or to be living up to everything your conscience tells you.
He will teach you more, improving the capacity of your conscience by increasing what you understand and changing the way you see things. The more branches you grow, the more knowledge you have, the more fruits you have the capacity to bear.
There is a difference between branches and fruit. There are things in your life right now that you see as branches that are actually fruits, and there are things in your life that you see as fruits that are actually branches.
Fruits are terminal. They appear at the end of branches. They are not connected to anything else. They grow from blossoms to buds to fruit, ripen, then are enjoyed and perish or rot and perish, but either way they perish.
Fruits only grow on young branches. Choosing to stop growing means choosing to end your fruiting. You can stop with one little stub of a branch, or you can grow into a massive cluster of fruiting branches.
Fruit can be very enjoyable when it is ripe, but it will always, in the end, be "purged," or taken away. It is in the sustaining of the branch, and not the preservation of the fruit, that fruit will continue to be available. It won’t be the same fruit, but it will be more fruit. It is taken away by increased awareness that shows it isn't what you thought, that it changed, or that there is something much better.