Fruitful Faith

Read Mark 11:12-26
¹² On the following day, when they came from Bethany, he was hungry. ¹³ And seeing in the distance a fig tree in leaf, he went to see if he could find anything on it. When he came to it, he found nothing but leaves, for it was not the season for figs. ¹⁴ And he said to it, "May no one ever eat fruit from you again." And his disciples heard it. ¹⁵ And they came to Jerusalem. And he entered the temple and began to drive out those who sold and those who bought in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money-changers and the seats of those who sold pigeons. ¹⁶ And he would not allow anyone to carry anything through the temple. ¹⁷ And he was teaching them and saying to them, "Is it not written, 'My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations'? But you have made it a den of robbers." ¹⁸ And the chief priests and the scribes heard it and were seeking a way to destroy him, for they feared him, because all the crowd was astonished at his teaching. ¹⁹ And when evening came they went out of the city. ²⁰ As they passed by in the morning, they saw the fig tree withered away to its roots. ²¹ And Peter remembered and said to him, "Rabbi, look! The fig tree that you cursed has withered." ²² And Jesus answered them, "Have faith in God. ²³ Truly, I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, 'Be taken up and thrown into the sea,' and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that what he says will come to pass, it will be done for him. ²⁴ Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours. ²⁵ And whenever you stand praying, forgive, if you have anything against anyone, so that your Father also who is in heaven may forgive you your trespasses."

Mark places the cleansing of the Temple in the middle of the account of the fig tree in order to have one shape our understanding of the other. Jesus expects that faith and works will go hand in hand, not as a rule or mandate, but simply as a given. It is what happens by God working faith in our life. Both the Temple and the fig tree were barren, one barren of figs, and the other barren of the fruit of faith. Not only had people turned the Temple into a giant market of extortion, but it also did not allow non-Jews to worship God. The marketplace had been set up in the court of the Gentiles, the one section of the Temple that Old Testament law allowed Gentiles to worship. None of these actions demonstrated a fruitfulness of faith.

The text is not meant to cause us to wonder if faith is present when we look at the struggle of sin in our life. Instead we are to understand and expect that, in our own lives, both faith and fruit of faith will be present by the work of the Holy Spirit because they cannot be separated. We are also to understand that apart from faith there can be no fruit. As difficult as it may be to hear, just as there was judgment spoken in the Temple and to the fig tree, this means real judgment for many people throughout the world.