Though the Fig Tree Does Not Bud

In the New Testament deeply religious spirits, though unable to explain human suffering, fell back nevertheless on God Himself. The saints of God have always understood God well enough to maintain faith in Him even when they could not understand His plans and purpose.

I think the real triumphs of the spirit are won by those of us who trust God even when His ways seem inexplicable. Indeed, one of the critical functions of the Christian faith in the experience of biblical exemplars has not been so much the explanation of life, as life’s conquests; the winning of spiritual triumph in the midst of mysterious adversity. Jesus is never represented in the Bible as having said, “I have explained the world,” but He did say, “In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.” That is good enough for me.

To be given the inner power to rise above trouble and carry off a victory in spite of it seemed to the early Christians a valuable and vital gift of the Christian faith, and this power they found through their faith in, and experience with, the presence of the Holy Spirit. Far from being driven away from God by unexplained suffering, they were driven closer to Him. As Paul implies, troubles has a tendency to separate us from the love of God, but, in it, by God’s grace we can be more than conquerors. In the New Testament, what began in the Book of Job was consummated; “Though he slay me, yet will I hope in him.”

Embedded in this truth is revealed one of the most important of all developments in the conception of Christian meaning. Immature, primitive Christianity uses gods for ulterior purposes, seeks to gain control over them and thus win material favors from them. Mature Christianity rests in God Himself as greater than any of His gifts. Immature, primitive Christianity uses the gods as means to an end; in mature Christianity God is an end in Himself. Such devotion to the eternal God for His own sake, rather than for the sake of anything externally to be procured from Him, is therefore one of the clearest manifestations of serious faith and in the Old Testament the prophet Habakkuk gave it vivid expression:

Though the fig tree does not bud
And there are no grapes on the vines,
Though the olive crop fails
And the fields produce no food,
Though there are no sheep in the pen
And no cattle in the stalls,
Yet I will rejoice in the Lord,
I will be joyful in God my Savior.
(3:17-18)

Habakkuk’s attitude was characteristic of New Testament Christians. Unlike so many today, they did not make fortunate circumstance a pre-condition of faith in God. The early Christians were not fair weather saints, finding in man’s inhumanity to man reason for disbelief or disillusionment. They did not expect to fully understand life but they did expect triumphantly to manage it, surmount its difficulties, and prove themselves superior to its hardships. The suffering that their ideas of God did not enable them to explain, their inward experience of God enabled them to overcome. Are we so obsessed in trying to discover why humans suffer that we fail to experience God’s triumphant power to overcome? Are we not, in Him, greater that the troubles that come into our lives? Is our faith smaller than even the mustard seed? Though the fig tree does not bud, can we not rejoice in the Lord?

The New Testament is filled with problems and troubles and hardships of every kind. If you recall it begins with a massacre of innocent children; it is centered in the crucifixion; it ends with a vision in which the souls of the martyred saints under the altar cry, “How long, Sovereign Lord, holy and true, until you judge the inhabitants of the earth and avenge our blood?” Revelation 6:10.

The Book was written by men whose familiar experiences were excommunications, persecutions, and martyrdom's. Their faith was not like a candle flame, easily blown out by a moderate wind, but like a great fire fanned into a more powerful conflagration. In consequence, while the New Testament is absolutely and positively a book of hardship and tragedy, it is by far the most exultant and triumphantly joyful book in Christian literature.

Far from being simply punitive, educative, or inexplicably mysterious, suffering in the New Testament is understood in terms of the cross of our Lord’s suffering and sacrifice in which the early Christians gloried and made it their ambition to share in the fellowship of His sufferings.

I cannot possibly exaggerate the difference in this regard between the Old and New Testaments taken as wholes. The Old Testament inveterate Jews’ association of goodness with prosperity and of badness with adversity, in the New Testament broke down completely. The supreme Sufferer became the highest revelation of God and the noblest act of man.

At the center of the first church’s experience was a momentous tragedy; innocence outraged, wisdom dismissed by ignorance and bigotry, a perfect soul bludgeoned to death by hatred of little men with little minds and the ruthlessness of an inhuman government. Here were the factors which for ages had made men wish, as Job’s wife advised, to curse God and die. Here was the kind of inequity that had made the Book of Ecclesiastes plausible and that seemed to justify the doubts of skeptics and the despair of pessimists.

But, all glory to God, though the fig tree does not bud, yet I will rejoice in the Lord!

Instead of a rejection of God, there issued from this tragedy a radiant and confident faith. Far from being cradled in pleasant circumstances, Christianity began in the kind of disastrous experience commonly supposed to make faith in God impossible; the worst triumphing over the best; the needed good people dying young, goodwill trampled underfoot of malevolence, and no equity. But, instead of faith meeting defeat, it achieved victory; the tragic cross proved to be so saving a force that it redeemed tragedy itself.

At the beginning of the Old Testament all suffering was regarded as punishment for previous sin, but in the New Testament we read;

But how is it to your credit if you receive a beating for doing wrong and endure it? But if you suffer for doing good and you endure it, this is commendable before God. To this you were called, because Christ suffered for you, leaving you an example, that you should follow in his steps. 1 Peter 2:20.

Indeed, the possible uses of suffering were so far exalted and suffering itself was so clearly seen to be an integral part of the universe, not an alien intruder in it, that God Himself was portrayed as the eternal Sufferer. Through the many differences that distinguish conflicting views of the divine nature in the Bible; one common strand of idea is that God loves and He cares for His disobedient children. He is not a metaphysical abstraction but a living Being with purposes, devotions, and affections.

Hosea heard Him say,

“How can I give you up, Ephraim? How can I hand you over, Israel? How can I treat you like Admah? How can I make you like Zeboiim? My heart is changed within me; all my compassion is aroused.” (11:8)

And Isaiah says of Him,

In all their distress he too was distressed, and the angel of his presence saved them. In his love and mercy he redeemed them; he lifted them up and carried them all the days of old. (63:9)

In the New Testament this insight is fulfilled in a God “rich in mercy” who so loved this sinning world that He gave His one and only Son, that all who believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life.

In the New Testament suffering is carried up into the very heart of God Himself. It is seen not as an intruder in the universe, as though by some fortuity it had slipped in, or as an afterthought had been introduced as retribution. Suffering, sacrificially assumed for the sake of saving and serving others, has in the New Testament become an attribute of divine nature itself. So ennobled, it is both a requisite and evidence of the divine nature in man, no longer the mark of shame but a badge of honor. So Paul is proud to “bear on my body the marks of Jesus,” and behind this personal glorying in self-sacrifice he has a cosmic outlook upon suffering as belonging to the very warp and wood of the universe.

“We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time.” Romans 8:22.

The early Church upset the Roman Empire and shook the world because its members were willing to be the scum of the earth for the sake of Christ. They expected no honors and recognition from the world. They cared nothing for nice homes or luxury modes of transportation. They endured hardships as good soldiers of the cross and taught that we must experience severe affliction to enter the Kingdom of God. Peter wrote: if you suffer as a Christian, do not be ashamed, but praise God that you bear that name (4:6).

Or course, we need not mistake this treatment of suffering as representative of the whole attitude of early Christians toward suffering. Both Judaism and Christianity were, and if true to their heritage, still are, aggressive faiths not teaching resignations to life’s evil but vigorously attacking it. Nevertheless, it is clear in the New Testament that evil is not seen as a fact to be explained but as a force to be conquered by the “good soldiers of Christ Jesus.” The New Testament, while it saved us from lower orders of suffering, such as penalty for sin, calls us to a higher order of suffering; self-sacrifice.

Though the fig tree does not bud, yet I will rejoice in the Lord!