It’s kind of evident, isn’t? A person who isn’t spiritually fruitful, and hence is not prepared when the Lord comes, and thus rejects Him; he will wither, be hewn down and cast into the fire. It can be compared with the notion in Thessalonians that Jesus comes as a thief in the night, and we better be prepared. Revelation 16:15 says: “Behold, I come like a thief! Blessed is he who stays awake and keeps his clothes with him, so that he may not go naked and be shamefully exposed.”
The underestimated Gospel of Thomas says:
57. Jesus said, “The Father’s kingdom is like a person who has good seed. His enemy came during the night and sowed weeds among the good seed. The person did not let the workers pull up the weeds, but said to them, ‘No, otherwise you might go to pull up the weeds and pull up the wheat along with them.’ For on the day of the harvest the weeds will be conspicuous, and will be pulled up and burned.”
So that fig tree would symbolize the weeds, that will be pulled up and burned when Jesus comes. The message seems to be that we must always be prepared. It is designed to keep us on our toes, as it were. I can’t say I understand it wholly. The greatest blessing would be to stand face to face with Christ. But it could equally well be a curse, depending on your fruitfulness in the spirit. So it seems it is the individual who decides if Christ is to be a curse or a blessing. This destructive aspect of the Christ pops up here and there in the Scriptures, especially in Revelations, of course.
Gospel of Thomas says:
70. Jesus said, “If you bring forth what is within you, what you have will save you. If you do not have that within you, what you do not have within you [will] kill you.”
I suggest this reformulation: If you bring forth the sap from inside to grow fruit in the name of Christ, you are blessed with life eternal. If you do not have it within you, this lack will cause you to wither and die.
So this message puts a demand on us. Of course, the fig tree could not bear fruit because it was out of season, that is, it seems it had done nothing wrong, only lived its natural life. Many people would say that Jesus is unfair, then, and the fig tree didn’t deserve this treatment. But I think it teaches us a moral lesson, i.e., that it not good enough to be an upstanding citizen, and to lead a “natural life”, as it were. You should be prepared to bear fruit always, because He will come like a thief in the night. It is not good enough to be a good citizen with Christian values who takes responsibility for his family, his work, and attends services. That is leading life merely naturally and unconsciously. It does not suffice, because such a person is like a tree who lives according to the seasons and thus regulates the sap on the inside according to the natural order.
But the sap must always be present to produce fruit, so he has to consciously and deliberately lead life in an extraordinary way in order to produce fruit, always. But, most importantly, what is demanded is not a rich yield. I am convinced that if the fig tree had had only one single little fruit to offer the Saviour, the tree would have been saved.
Mats Winther
:console:
