Luke 13:6, commentary and pictures

A certain man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard and came seeking fruit but found none, with the owner being the Father, the dresser Christ united with Him in love for the tree, the vineyard the place of special care and blessing, and the tree first Israel as a people planted to fulfill His purpose. The seeking exposes a barren condition despite every advantage Heaven could give, with no living connection to convey blessing to the world, only leaves of outward profession and pretentious flourishing without spiritual fruit. The fruit sought is a pure and holy character of penitence, faith, obedience and meekness, shown in unselfish good works, faithful use of talents, and self-denying labor to warn neighbors and win souls. God bears long and grants probation, pleading to spare the tree a little longer with increased care, warning and every means love could devise, yet opportunity is limited and if fruit still fails the tree will be cut down for uselessly taking up ground. The tree stands not for the Jews only but for careless professed Christians, churches and every individual in this generation, who are accountable for good neglected as well as wrong done, yet while probation lingers none is beyond hope if they return, repent and grow fruitful through connection with God.

Parable Setting and Symbols

The verse opens a parable that joins the warning of judgment with the invitation of mercy, setting forth a mission of mercy in its relation to justice and judgment. That mission is to save lives rather than destroy them, for the Son was sent not to condemn the world but that the world through Him might be saved. It belongs to a warning about the coming kingdom, in which the hearers were rebuked for ignorance and indifference because they could read signs foretelling the weather yet failed to discern the signs pointing to the work before them.

The fruitless tree is a familiar scene from nature taken to impress divine truth upon hearers. It was chosen to make that truth clear and memorable to people of every level of learning and to help them remember the lesson. The certain man who owns the vineyard is the Father, and the dresser is Christ, one with the Father in love for the people. Owner and dresser share one interest in the tree and find their greatest joy in its growth and fruitfulness.

The vineyard is the place of special care and blessing in which Israel as a people and the generation addressed were planted. It is also the work given to the people to do and the large territory to be worked for soul-saving, where the Christian worker is put to labor and expected to show souls won and visible results. To be planted there is to be given a place of great privilege under watchful care. It means receiving gifts, rain and sunshine, nourishment from the soil, and the tender gospel message, while the owner watches and waits for a return of love.

The fig tree first represents the Jewish nation, Israel as a people, and the generation addressed, planted and nurtured by God to fulfill His purpose. Planted in return for temporal and spiritual blessings, it was expected to bear the fruits of righteousness. Its lack of fruit shows that, despite increased opportunities, every means love could devise, most favorable surroundings, and every attention lavished upon it, the people were not fulfilling the purpose for which they had been planted and cared for.

Fruitless Condition Exposed

The coming to look for fruit and finding none lays bare a barren, fruitless, unpromising state in spite of increased care, blessings, and every advantage Heaven could give. Increased opportunities were being given, with every means that love could devise put into operation, with still greater care, most favorable surroundings, and every attention lavished to make trees of righteousness bringing forth fruit for the blessing of the world. Given every advantage, failure to profit from them leaves fate hanging on response, for to remain fruitless is to choose destruction.

To have no fruit is to have no living connection with the great heart of love, so that the tide of life does not flow through. Then the sweet graces of character, the fruits of the Spirit, are not seen in the life, and lavished gifts convey no blessing to the world. To be planted is to take the name of Christ and be outwardly a member of the church which is His body, placed under the watchful care of the gardener with great privileges, receiving gifts, rain and sunshine and nourishment from the soil, and the tender gospel message, while He watches and waits for a return of love.

The barren tree still draws care, yet its unproductive boughs only darken the ground so that fruit-bearing plants cannot flourish in its shadow. In this way it robs others of room, privileges, and blessing that might otherwise be theirs, takes up space and shades trees that could bear fruit, and deprives others of room and blessing. Its life contributes nothing useful and stands as a mournful blank in the record of usefulness, a mournful record against the name in the pages of history in the book of heaven. Such do-nothings ignore personal responsibility and work because it is inconvenient, cripple missionary enterprises, fail to draw nourishment that would enable good fruit, and are passed by in favor of those with fewer advantages who willingly do what they can in co-operation with Christ.

To present only leaves is to show outward profession, forms, and pretentious flourishing branches without spiritual fruit and with no evidence of the love of God. The Master comes seeking fruit and is disappointed by leaves, which is failure to develop and use the abilities God has given in mind and heart and character for purposeful, loving work to help save souls and lead others to investigate truth. In an institution also, outward activity with only leaves lacks the fruit God desires, which is virtue in the lives of workers that helps save souls for eternal life. Mere profession of Christ or of righteousness is not the sum of Christianity, for God looks for fruit-bearing branches and lives and work fulfilling His purpose. Profession without repentance, faith, and obedience is fruitless pretense, marked by self-interest rather than unselfish service, with the heart unsurrendered, truth not received as life, mercies taken as a matter of course without obeying His will, and the restoring influence of Christ missing. Those like the tree live hoping to grow better someday yet never advance a step, dishonor Bible religion by lowering its standard to meet their own attainments, do not prepare to meet the assaults of Satan, do not engage in constant warfare against selfishness and pride and the inclinations of the natural heart, do not crucify self, and show how much they need the Spirit of the Master. Such hypocritical, idle professors are denounced and called to duty, for an openly sinful person is less guilty than one who claims to serve God but bears no fruit to His glory, and the warning reaches churches and Christians in every age.

When the heart does not respond to divine influences and agencies it grows hard until it can no longer receive the Holy Spirit. Then the tree is left a useless burden on the ground, fit to be cut down.

Fruit God Requires

The fruit the owner comes seeking is a pure and holy character. It is godliness, penitence, faith and obedience, meekness and loveliness of heart, and self-denial for others' good. Christ came to leave a perfect model obedient to all the requirements of His Father, and to follow Him is to carry out in life the precepts of God's holy law.

That fruit also includes righteousness, peace, and joy. It is seen in growing reverence, love, humility, and confidence in God, in gratitude for His mercies, and in blessing others. A Christian bears fruit by being good and doing good, revealing a lovely character that shows belonging to God, showing Jesus' spirit at home, and teaching children God's word and works.

Fruit is the good that can be done through strengthening grace. It is unselfish good works and self-denying labor to save souls, the use of talents of time, influence, ability and money to voice truth and diffuse light by practical labor for others. It is sharing received light and truth with others through faithful service, with returns proportionate to the light received. A truly converted Christian bears fruit in efforts to warn and labor for neighbors going astray and to lead others from sin to truth and righteousness, and souls won stand as its visible results.

To be planted in the garden is not enough. People are accountable not only for wrong acts committed but also for good deeds neglected. Those who fail to do the good they could have done, who hold a do-nothing position and ignore personal responsibility while leaving ministers alone to search out truth, are counted as cumberers of the ground and will answer to God for the good they might have done.

God claims fruit corresponding to the gifts bestowed. He looks for fruit in proportion to blessings given, to light, care, mercy, patience, and sacred trusts received, especially from those serving in His work. He has made people able to bear fruit for His glory and provided grace through Christ, and He waits with deep interest for a return through faithful service, trust in Him, use of what He has entrusted, and a living connection with Him. Their conduct, dealings, self-denial and self-sacrifice affect how others judge Bible religion.

Probation Mercy and Judgment

The parable shows a period of probation in which God bears long with His people, while mercy pleads to spare the fruitless tree a little longer and to tend and try it again before it is cut down. Those who have received great advantages and hold high, sacred responsibilities are still required to bear fruit, and the added time is a further probation and opportunity to heed warnings, repent deeply, reform, and bear fruit. If that opportunity is rejected, judgment follows.

That added probation brings increased opportunities, with every means that love could devise put into operation, with still greater care, most favorable surroundings, and every attention lavished that they might become fruitful for the blessing of the world. It brings unwearied love and increased care and labor, with benefits renewed and the wrongdoer warned. Loss, misfortune and affliction are allowed to draw to repentance and to the Saviour, yet patience and mercy do not remove the consequence of continuing in wrongdoing nor excuse continued unfaithfulness.

That care was shown by the ministry, by the prayer Father forgive them, by preaching of the gospel first at Jerusalem, by the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, and by all heaven's gifts, so that nothing more could be done for the vineyard. It is shown now by the Lord keeping it and watering it every moment night and day, not looking coldly upon it nor leaving it to destruction. The words then after that show that opportunity is limited. People may be receiving a final trial, given divine light, a perfect example, fresh opportunities and new lessons, but careless neglect can end in judgment.

The unfruitful person is in a dangerous position, going backward spiritually instead of forward. His life continues only because God guards and protects him moment by moment from unseen dangers and perils, with His hand stretched out still to give renewed advantages, to make His goodness and mercy pass before him, and to renew His invitation to return. If after this added mercy he still bears no fruit, he will be cut down for uselessly occupying the ground, with judgment following rejected opportunity. The order to cut down may come suddenly at any moment by disease or accident or death or loss of reason, while unready and with no provision made, losing his own soul, especially for one who stands in rebellion against God by refusing to keep His commandments.

While probation remains the life is not beyond hope, for long-suffering love still pleads even with those who have slighted mercy and abused grace. Earnest effort can make the life useful and its former record can be effaced, for fruit means unselfish good works, self-denial for others, and responsibilities borne from principle for God's glory rather than a life spent in selfish pleasure bearing nothing but leaves. Today the call still stands to return, with healing of backsliding, free love, and growth as lily, olive, corn and vine, for fruit is found from God; but the heart that does not respond to divine agencies becomes hardened until no longer susceptible to the Holy Spirit, and then the word is spoken, Cut it down.

Judgment Upon Israel

The three years of seeking fruit are Christ's three years of ministry among the people, described as three and a half years of refreshment and care to shape hearts and character through healing, teaching, forgiving, and inviting them to receive mercy. Justice called for the fruitless tree to be cut down, but mercy granted another trial in which the Son would come in person, take humanity, and seek to lead the people to repentance by teaching and example. God came to Israel seeking the fruit of a faithful life after patiently caring for and nurturing His people, and Christ Himself came as owner to His tree, not merely sending servants but working unselfishly, scattering blessings, knocking with mercy and pleading love, and searching from highest to lowest bough.

They rejected His pleadings, counsel, warnings, and entreaties to repent and obey, with obdurate hearts closed in indifference, contempt, and refusal of light. The repeated return of mercy beaten back showed unwearied patience seeking to avert doom. The fruitless tree is Jerusalem's failure to heed heaven's appeals and receive the promised Messiah, and the end of the period marked the close of the city's probation. Willful refusal sealed its own doom, forged its own fetters, and hid the things belonging to its peace from its eyes.

Spoken before the last approach to Jerusalem, the parable pleaded as gardener to spare the nation yet one year more with new experiments of mercy and grace. After that time of mercy ended the irrevocable sentence followed that their house was left desolate, and the destruction of the Jewish nation was the fate of the fruitless tree. Christ's later cursing of the barren fig tree showed the outcome they had chosen for themselves if they remained fruitless. Jesus left the outcome unresolved so that generation would decide whether the tree was spared or cut down, and the warning was urgent because the day of wrath was near and calamities already falling were a merciful warning of destruction awaiting the unfruitful.

Warning to Churches Today

The tree is not the Jews only but all who neglect to improve Heaven's gifts, including the careless professed Christian in this generation, churches, and every age where profession without practice is barren. To be planted in the Lord's vineyard is to take Christ's name and be outwardly a member of the church which is His body, placed under the gardener's watchful care with great privileges, receiving gifts, rain and sunshine and nourishment from the soil, and the tender gospel message, while He watches and waits for a return of love. Greater blessings than were granted to the ancient people have been bestowed, and fruit corresponding to the gifts bestowed is claimed, which is a pure and holy character: godliness, penitence, faith and obedience, self-denial for others' good, and meekness and loveliness of heart after the perfect obedient model left by Christ for carrying out the precepts of the law. To have no fruit is to have no living connection with the great heart of love so that His life does not flow through, the sweet graces of character and fruits of the Spirit are not seen, God's lavished gifts convey no blessing to the world, and mere forms and profession without repentance, faith and obedience are fruitless pretense marked by self-interest rather than unselfish service, more guilty than open sin. The barren tree not only is unproductive but darkens the ground so fruit-bearing plants cannot flourish in its shadow, robbing others of privileges that might otherwise be theirs, while judgment is deserved yet in mercy God does not cut it down coldly but Christ the pitying gardener intercedes to spare, dig and dress again with unwearied love.

Churches that bear no fruit are accountable for failing to produce what God seeks despite great light given and abundant opportunity for bearing much fruit. Loss of the love of God means absence of love for one another, and cherished self with striving for supremacy brings much human working and little pure grace in hearts, so selfishness blocks fruit. Unless there is reconversion there will be such lack of godliness that the church answers to the fruitless tree, those bearing no good fruit are sure to bear evil fruit, and though having a name to live they are virtually dead and the Spirit will not always strive with them.

The owner's search for fruit applies to the spiritual growth and work of Conferences, from whom after more than two years God has a right to expect fruit, and to gospel teachers and ministers who must feed Christ's sheep with pure teaching and represent the gospel's saving power everywhere. A profession of righteousness is not enough, for God looks for fruit-bearing branches and expects lives and work to fulfill His purpose, with people who accept the truth bringing forth fruit to His glory through daily self-sacrifice and faithful duty. Ministers who stir interest but fail to complete their work are like unfruitful trees and may, after further testing, be laid aside as cumberers of the ground.

The vineyard is the large territory to be worked, the fig tree planted in it is the Christian worker put to labor in soul-saving, and the fruit is souls won to Christ with visible results of labor. The power of the gospel is expansive to enlarge its borders, so every worker must be a devoted soul-saver with something to show while the cost of working is kept as low as possible. If a worker produces no fruit something is wrong with the tree, and the result of each man's labor in different places must be looked after, so a tree bearing no fruit may need transplanting to another field. If after proper labor it still bears no fruit it is to be removed, with the laborer dismissed as an unprofitable servant in soul-saving and put to earning means in business to sustain those who can work successfully with tact and wisdom in the fear of God to win souls.

Christ seeking fruit and finding only leaves exposes an institution whose outward activity lacks the spiritual fruit God desires, which is virtue in the lives of its workers that helps save souls for eternal life.

Church members are fruitless when they take a do-nothing position, ignoring personal responsibility and leaving ministers alone to search out and open the jewels of truth, neglecting work for families and neighbors and doing nothing to bring souls to the truth, thus becoming unproductive trees taking up ground that fruit-bearing trees could occupy. The vineyard is the work God has given His people to do, and the fruit He comes seeking is the use of talents of time and ability to voice the truth given through His messengers and to diffuse light by practical labor for others. Such sinful neglect and slothfulness leaves the church years behind what God requires, and those found without fruit will in the great day stand self-convicted and self-condemned. Their need now is self-penitence, to see themselves as that fruitless fig tree, to confess Lord I am that fruitless fig tree, to seek forgiveness, and to turn to their appointed work.

Every church member is a tree planted in the Lord's vineyard expected to bear fruit by doing the personal spiritual work Christ has given to each one, not only ministers and those in official position. To bear no fruit is to be indolent, to ignore spiritual responsibility because it is inconvenient, to cripple missionary enterprises, and to be a do-nothing cumberer whose record in God's book is a mournful blank standing as judgment in the books of heaven. Such do-nothings darken with unproductive branches ground that should be occupied by fruit-bearing trees, and the Lord passes them by because they do not draw from Him the nourishment that would enable them to bear good fruit. God has given every man his work, so He passes by those with choice gifts and the advantage of education who fail to improve them and accepts instead those with fewer advantages who willingly do what they can in co-operation with Christ.

Call to Personal Service

The fruitless tree is the men and women met every day whose lives bear nothing, the life left unfruitful while Christ pleads for a little longer sparing, waits patiently for fruit, and labors to impress truth upon the heart and convict of sin. It is the life given great light and privileges and repeated warnings yet yielding no spiritual fruit, granted added time to be tended and tried again, which is further probation to heed warnings, repent deeply, reform and bear fruit, with judgment following if refused. The same figure reaches those entrusted with sacred work and all placed in the vineyard from whom fruit is looked for; failing to bear what is required makes them fruitless cumberers of the ground, called to consecrate themselves to God and center affections and hopes in Him.

The sparing of the tree for a little longer is one more opportunity for the covetous to repent and seek the kingdom, demanding a decisive turn from covetousness before judgment leaves him to his idols. A barren, self-important, self-deceived life, as seen in James, will not enter the kingdom without converting power, and must draw near to God in penitence and humility lest eternal life be lost. One turned into false paths and transgression of the holy law is spared under angelic protection for another chance to bear fruit to God's glory, called to repent because the kingdom of heaven is at hand by putting the hand confidently in God's hand, returning, consenting to wear His yoke and lift His burdens, and learning His meekness and lowliness to find rest.

Neglect of daily opportunities to serve leaves one fruitless and withered, while taking up the work found to do, even small work, develops ability for service. Neglect of soul nourishment leaves one weak and unable to do God's will, and neglect to feed hunger of soul by searching the Scriptures leaves the soul weak and strengthless; earnestly seeking the Lord while reading His rich promises and applying them turns fruitlessness to fruitfulness and mere consumers into providers. God's people are as trees in His garden from whom He expects fruit and whose lives He searches, with inspection reaching the heart and touching both duty and destiny, so religious privileges and sacred trusts require living connection with God; constant business without it dries up spiritual life and leaves one fruitless and Christless, and a life of seeking temporal gain while crowding out devotion and neglecting spiritual life risks eternal loss.

Profession of faith without works leaves one fruitless, and failure to warn and labor for astraying neighbors brings responsibility for neglect, while the truly converted bear fruit by leading others from sin to truth and righteousness, with fruitlessness bringing accountability and calling for divine judgment. The fruitless fig tree is the professed Christian who bears nothing and is a mere cumberer of the ground and doomed, for mere profession is not the sum of Christianity and fruit is required. Such live hoping to improve someday yet never advance, dishonor Bible religion by lowering its standard to their attainments, fail to prepare against Satan's assaults, fail to war constantly against selfishness and pride and the inclinations of the natural heart, and fail to crucify self, showing need of the Master's Spirit; misrepresenting Christ by worldly thoughts and conduct they bring no religious benefit, lower religious life, leave the world no better, and bear only bitter and profitless fruit under warning of being cut down.

Unless a thorough work is done in individuals and the church, the curse will fall as on the fruitless tree with its pretentious branches and no fruit when the Redeemer searches. Its blight is God's curse and coming judgment on pretenders whose lives are corrupt, who claim to serve God while practicing sin, so a soul repeatedly entreated and given opportunity yet degraded by sin faces ruin. The plea not to be cut down as a cumberer reaches the home, where a man harming his family by faultfinding must control speech and bring a kind, prayerful influence, showing fruit by changed conduct toward the family.

The Master's coming to seek fruit warns against disappointing Him by presenting only leaves instead of developing and using God-given abilities, calling for cultivation of mind and heart and character in purposeful, loving work to help save souls and win others to investigate truth. Human helpers and resources raised up from age to age out of inexhaustible wisdom and strength to provide for the people will not prove fraudulent unless they defraud the Lord as the barren tree did. The tree searched and found without fruit shows God looking for fruit from those receiving His light, care, mercy and patience, who must not remain fruitless but trust Him and use what He entrusted; great privileges and opportunities must be met with faith and persevering effort to grow in vital godliness, holiness of heart and good works.