Christ’s cursing of the barren fig tree was a symbol of the judgment to come on the people of the old covenant. The tree soon withered.
Christ wanted to save his disciples though they were all of the same refusing nation. He asked them to believe in God in the midst of the judgment poured on their people.
To believe means to learn love from the Son of God and to trust him. The prayer originated from this trust is a mutual work between the believer and God in the power of the Holy Spirit. He who is connected with God the Father in the spirit of faith does not pray according to his own wishes, but longs to complete the will of the heavenly Father, and brings down blessings, through his prayers, on his town and nation. God answers the believers’ prayers because they seek the remission of sins of all men, and their freedom from the chains of covetousness and impurity that they may be transformed and present their bodies a living sacrifice acceptable to God.
Christ himself did not remove a certain mountain and cast it into the sea through his mighty faith, but he drowned series of mountains of sins in the ocean of his love. None of the apostles exploded a fiery volcano to prove to his hearers the flowing of the power of God in him, but they spread the gospel of peace on the nations, and filled the Mediterranean basin with the love of God in the midst of despair and tears at that time.
No man can pray and believe properly of himself, if he did not unite himself with the purposes of the love of God, for the Holy One is the loving, forgiving, purifying Savior. He does not destroy us, because he is patient. He who lives with God in his new covenant, sees that his love and forgiveness infiltrate to our hearts, renew us, and give us a new thought and a clean mind. In this Spirit, we give up our rights, forgive our opponents, and love our enemies, for God’s forgiveness has become our principle of life.
Christ did not see any preparedness to accept this loving, forgiving spirit in his people, who separated themselves voluntarily from the love of God, and were unwilling to repent or to submit to the coming Savior. They neither received the good King with multitudes and chiefs, nor prepared his way in their hearts, but spied on him to detect guilt in his acts or words that they might condemn and destroy him.
He, who separates himself intently and stubbornly from the endless love and forgiveness of God, becomes hardhearted. He hates Jesus, refuses him who was crucified for him, and does not accept his peace. Woe to the poor who did not experience God’s grace or knew Christ’s essence! For to him the Holy God remains an angry Judge, a fearful destroyer, and a mighty avenger, for the hardhearted, stubborn man has trodden on the grace in his haughtiness. We know our merciful Father, and we love him, because he forgave us our sins in him who was crucified and admitted us into his new people.