Luke 13: Bearing good fruit

Jesus' parable of the barren fig tree presents us with an image that is at once frightening, comforting, and challenging:

"A man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard, and he came seeking fruit on it and found none. And he said to the vinedresser, 'Look, for three years now I have come seeking fruit on this fig tree, and I find none. Cut it down. Why should it use up the ground?' And he answered him, 'Sir, let it alone this year also, until I dig around it and put on manure. Then if it should bear fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down.'" (13:6-9)

Jesus has just warned that we must repent or perish (13:2-5), and here he drives home the point, made earlier by John the Baptist, that we must "Bear fruits in keeping with repentance" (3:8), for each one of us is that fig tree.

The parable is frightening because it means we will be cut down and cast away if we do not bear fruit; comforting because it reminds us that God gives us every possible help and opportunity to do so; and challenging because it's our responsibility to put that grace to good use and actually bear good fruit, works of love that give life to others. Mere vocal repentance, or claimed conversion to Christ, is not enough.

It reminds me of that oft-quoted (and apparently unattributable) question, "If you were arrested for being a Christian, would there be enough evidence to convict you?"

(Image: Ficus carica, in Otto Wilhelm Thome, Flora von Deutschland, 1885)