The Fig Tree Incident

Then he said to [the fig tree], “May you never bear fruit again!”

Immediately the tree withered.

Matthew 21:19

If Jesus was so hungry, why didn't He just turn a fig leaf into a fig and be done with it?  Jesus does and says everything with a purpose.  In this case He was making a point, pronouncing judgment and extending mercy in one fell swoop.

The point: Faith is fruit.  "If you believe and don't doubt, then whatever you ask in prayer will be done." (verse 22)  While this may sound like a genie-in-a-bottle statement, there are some significant differences.  First is knowing the one in Whom we put our faith - he is not our slave; He is our God, and believing Him (not just believing in Him) is the lynchpin that puts supernatural things into motion.  Secondly, this faith is expected of us before anything else is to occur.  To put our belief in the Creator of All is a fruit that only human trees can bear and angels long to look into.

Pronouncing judgment: The days of religiosity and its influence over men had been pronounced as over.  Finished.  The power that the religious establishment had was prophetically announced as dead in this key moment.  Withered.  Weak.  Fruitless and completely powerless.  This was on the heels of clearing the temple - evidence that Judaism was not producing the fruit that was expected of it (verses 12,13).  (As if it could every provide answers in the first place, but it had devolved into something tragic and even wicked.)  This was also on the heels of a short, curt answer to the chief priests.  And He did not pause to listening to their answer.  Rather, from there He went to Bethany, the  House of Answer.  This was as if to say to them, you have no answers for these people anymore; I'm proceeding to a place (or time, if you will) where we will get on to providing answers for them.

Extending mercy: Jesus was also provided a stern warning to all that fruitlessness was a very grave condition, yet there is still time to make a change.  He is not a God of sugar and spice and everything nice.  There are boundaries to the love that He extends.  (Indeed, to have no boundaries to love is to cheapen the love itself.)  To respond to this love in faith is the fruit that He craves.  To refuse beyond this boundary is a tragedy that ends only in death.  Yet until the boundary is crossed His mercy remains to extend the opportunity, that all may enter into this life-giving relationship.

John Reichardt sums the passage well:

The Fig Tree Incident wasn't a capricious act by Jesus, but rather a deliberate teaching moment and the result of his motivation to make a level path for God to come. The shock value of the miraculous object lesson was a history lesson in microcosm on the relationship between God and Israel from the Old Testament.

Jesus, fresh from his frustrating second cleansing of the temple immediately realizes the spiritual parallel of this disappointment with the disappointment of his encounter with the beautiful yet barren fig tree. His response is apocalyptic in nature and consistent with Old Testament Biblical themes of God's repeated disappointment with Israel and repeated near destruction.

May we all bear fruit in adoration of this King!