There are many farming metaphors in Scripture, which The Christ uses on purpose to explain heavenly & spiritual & eternal things — things that cannot otherwise be understand by contemporary minds. At the time of The Christ, most people, even though Jews, were not all literate. That does not mean they were not smart nor intelligent; it just meant that someone as highly intelligent as The Christ would need to use pictures & images through the spoken word — story-telling — in order to get His point across.
We, in our modern contemporary setting, sometimes trivialize these images & pictures by attempting to synthesize all these metaphors into some type of cohesive one-ness. In the end, what we come up with is a confused mass of misunderstanding & sometimes foolish harmony that does not do justice to what The Christ is in fact trying to say. Exhibit A, is this Lesson of the Fig Tree :
Matthew 17:20
He said to them, “Because of your little faith. For truly, I say to you, if you have faith like a grain of mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move, and nothing will be impossible for you.”
Matthew 21:21
And Jesus answered them, “Truly, I say to you, if you have faith and do not doubt, you will not only do what has been done to the fig tree, but even if you say to this mountain, Be taken up and thrown into the sea,’ it will happen.
In both metaphors, The Christ is speaking of Faith. But I highlighted the two differences in each passage. Notice, that one is a mustard seed and the other is the fig tree. Are both the same metaphor and is The Christ talking about the same thing? This is where the confusion lies — The Christ is speaking about the same thing but using two different types of imagery giving us two distinct perspectives about the same heavenly, spiritual, and eternal object — Faith. In Matthew 17:20, the mustard seed imagery is likened to Faith, in that, Faith is neither dependent on the size nor quantity but the maturity or the quality of Faith. Because the quality of Faith is a heavenly, spiritual, and eternal object connected to The Christ, this Faith is nevertheless powerful despite the appearance of weakness — namely, that The Christ, whom our Faith depends, will suffer and die on the cross in order to fulfill the powerful quality of essential Righteousness that the Believers require.
In Matthew 21:21, the imagery The Christ uses, is a fig tree. Why? This is why context matters especially when The Christ speaks and uses metaphors —
Matthew 21:18-19
In the morning, as The Christ was returning to the city, The Christ became hungry. And seeing a fig tree by the wayside, The Christ went to it and found nothing on it but only leaves. And The Christ said to it, “May no fruit ever come from you again!” And the fig tree withered at once.
Why does The Christ use a fig tree? Was He simply hungry and lashed out at the fig tree for not having any fruit to give? Or does this scene represent something far deeper? Why is a fig tree called a ‘fig tree’? Because the tree, by its very nature bears figs — not apples and not oranges. Also, it is supposed to bear figs — not nothing. A tree that does not produce what it is supposed to produce is not only an unproductive tree, it is a useless tree. And a useless tree must be destroyed. Thus, The Christ curses the fig tree for its distinct uselessness.
But there is a second much deeper meaning — that the fig tree is the very antithesis of The Christ. Because the fig tree did not bear the fruit that it was supposed to bear, whose fault is it? Is it the fault of the fruit or the fig tree? This is a rhetorical question, we all know that the fault lies squarely with the fig tree — something is deathly wrong with this tree that it cannot bear figs. Not one of us would blame the fruit — that would be both nonsense and illogical. Therefore, in the same way, whose fault would it be if the Faith that is supposed to inhabit the life-blood of Believers is based on the fallacy of Christ? In other words, if Faith is the fruit of Believers and The Christ is the fig tree, what happens to us if The Christ is not who He says He is? Or the promises and words of The Christ do not come to fulfillment? Then, The Christ is a liar and no more useful than that of the cursed fig tree.
John 15:4
Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me
To abide means to remain or specifically, to remain where we are. In other words, if we posses this Faith In Christ, if we believe in our hearts that Jesus is Lord — that He died, that He resurrected on the 3rd Day, that He remains in the hearts of the Faithful through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, then The Christ calls us to remain in the very place where we belong — in Him. There is no other place we would rather be; to remain in Him, all communion of the Heavenly places dwell with us; the Fellowship that Christ enjoys with the Triune Godhead, we too, commune in the Spirit. Thus we stand in accord with the Father in much the same way as Christ, for whom is it that the Holy Spirit desires to transform His Believers — The Christ, our True Fig Tree.
