Introduction
      The story of the withered fig tree is woven into the incident of the cleansing of the Temple. It stands as part of the story of Jesus' entry into Jerusalem and his confrontation with the religion of Israel.
      The structure of the passage consists of the cursing of the fig tree, v12-14, the cleansing of the Temple, v15-19, the discovery, on the following day, of the withered fig tree, v20-21, and three independent sayings concerning prayer - two on faith in prayer, and one on forgiveness in prayer, v22-26.
      This passage has caused some difficulty. The question centers on Jesus use of his powers to destroy. As this miracle stands by itself in the Gospels, many have taken it as a myth developed by the early Church. There is little need to accept such a liberal view. In the first known commentary on Mark's Gospel, Victor of Antioch said that it was an acted parable in which Jesus "used the fig tree to set forth the judgment that was about to fall on Jerusalem." That view is still the most favored interpretation of the passage.
      The sayings of Jesus linked to this miracle, have also caused some problems. They seem to concern faith. Liberal theologians have therefore taken the view that the early Church has made the incident more an example of Jesus' power to move mountains than as an acted out parable. Mark then brings, from his oral tradition, the added sayings with the incident and links the total package with the fruitlessness of Israel. The sayings, therefore, have no real place with the story. Again, this type of approach causes more problems than it solves. Even a straight reading of the passage exposes the link of prayer. Israel has failed to be the House of prayer, for which it stands condemned. Jesus then speaks to the new Israel, his disciples, and teaches them about the real nature of prayer. Although this is not the line of interpretation taken in these notes, it is the most obvious, and certainly exposes the weakness of the liberal approach.

The passage
      v12-14. Mark notes that Jesus was hungry and that the fig tree had no fruit because it was out of season. Clearly he wants to emphasize that the incident is a parable in action. If Jesus really wanted fruit from the tree he could have used his power to have it fruit out of season rather than wither and die. Is Jesus anti tree - non green? Or does he see a higher purpose in the creation?
      v15-17. It is difficult to identify exactly what Jesus was angry about. It was not inappropriate for traders, in the Court of the Gentiles, to exchange foreign money into Temple money, or sell wine, oil, salt and animals for sacrifice. There would have been cheating and this was certainly not condoned by the authorities. Certainly v16 identifies a rule from the Mishnah maintaining the Holiness of the temple. This would support the idea that the trading was "unclean", but would Jesus take issue on matters of "minutia", ie. cleansing laws, cf. Mk.7:1-23?
      The substance of the offense has to concern the quotation from Isaiah 56:7. The context of this passage concerns the salvation of "others". "My salvation is close at hand" and it will be for the "foreigner" who thinks "The Lord will surely exclude me from his people." As well as gathering the "exiles of Israel" he will also "gather still others to them". "My house (in the sense of the house of Israel, the family of God, the chosen people of God, the children of God) will be called a house of prayer for all Nations." The actual Temple building is but a physical representation of the substance of the people of God - the gathering of God's people indwelt by his presence. So, I understand the issue to concern, not faithless prayer or unholy prayer or unholy worship which desecrates the Temple, but rather the failure of Israel to be "a light unto the Gentiles". Israel has failed to fulfill the prophecy of Isaiah 56:1-8 and so Christ will fulfill that role in his person. Israel now stands abandoned - "a den of robbers". This quotation comes from a description of faithless Israel in Jeremiah 7:1-29. All is lost, for "the Lord has rejected and abandoned this generation that is under his wrath", v29.
      v18. Jesus, having offended the "holier than thou" religious crew of his day, found himself the focus of their hate. You can't help but suspect that they were offended by his popularity more than anything else. The more he shone the more dark they seemed, therefore they must extinguish his light.
      v20-21. The fig tree image, representing Israel, is a common one in the Old Testament. cf. Jer.8:13, Ezek.17:24, Mic.7:1-6. The message of the parable is plain enough. Faithless, fruitless Israel, like the fruitless fig tree, will wither and die.
      v22 -23. The first saying by Jesus. The crucial questions are, what is meant by "faith" and what is the "mountain"?
      The debate over faith concerns whether it is a quantitative or qualitative trust in the living God. Matthew adds in 17:20 "like a grain of mustard seed" making clear that even minute faith moves mountains, for the mountain is not moved by the degree of our faith but by the will and power of God. Mark's, "and does not doubt in his heart", makes much the same point, although it can be used in a quantitative sense (and often is). It is best understood as - the person who holds firmly to God's intentions will see those intentions fulfilled.
      As for the mountains, these must be seen as God's intentions. The intention revealed in the passage is the gathering of a people to himself from all nations through the free offer of salvation by the forgiveness of sins. Forgiveness is the mountain.
      v24. A similar saying to v22-23. Expecting God to do what he says he will do is the way to appropriate what he intends to do. The issue here is the possible wide meaning of "whatever". Whatever can mean anything, or it can mean whatever God intends to do. The context restricts us to "ask anything according to his will". It is then "he hears us", 1John.5:14. The "whatever" is best understood as forgiveness.
      v25. The third saying by Jesus on Prayer. At face value it seems to give a reason for unanswered prayer. That is, if there is something between us and a brother then our prayers to God will fall on deaf ears. We can narrow this down further to concern the prayer for "forgiveness". We may then use the Lord's prayer to support the view that forgiveness from God is dependent upon our forgiveness of others. We may support that view with the parable of the Unmerciful Servant, Matt.18:21-35.
      My concern with such a view is that it establishes a condition for salvation other than by grace through faith. That is, as well as faith in Christ, my salvation depends on my ability to forgive my brother, which ability I only imperfectly possess. Such a view undermines the Gospel of God's free grace in Christ and is totally unacceptable.
      Some critics argue that this verse has been brought over from Matthew 6:14-15 some time after the completion of the Gospel. That is, it is an addition. There are certainly manuscript problems, as Matt.6:15 has been added to some early manuscripts. Yet it is unwise to solve the problem by this means.
      It is also true that many of Jesus' sayings were just grouped together by means of simple key phrases. In this case Prayer is the link. So the subject matter of the saying may not really suit the context. But to argue that way is to undermine the theological expertise of the Gospel writer, as well as to undermine a right view of inspiration.

      Forgiveness is the central issue in this passage. Forgiveness freely offered by God through his "House". Israel has failed to offer forgiveness to the Nations and so Christ, the new Israel of God, freely offers it in his corporate self - the new Israel, the new house of God. This offer of forgiveness is appropriated by asking in faith. But what of the qualifying "if ...... so that" of v25?

      i] In the parable of the Unmerciful Servant, Matthew 18:21-35, Jesus uses the ideal of forgiving our brother "seventy-seven times" to remind us that our righteousness will never gain us the Kingdom. If God's forgiveness is dependent on us forgiving our brothers from the heart, v35, then we, like the unmerciful servant, are lost. We have to find another way into the Kingdom. The only way is to recognize we are but "little ones .... lost", v14. "I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the Kingdom of Heaven. Therefore, whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven", 18:3-4.
      So then, Jesus in Mark 11:25 may be exposing sinfulness to reinforce our total dependence on God's grace of FORGIVENESS freely given in Christ. Yet this interpretation does not hang well with the passage.

      ii] In the Lord's Prayer, Matthew 6:9-15, Jesus says "forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us". The idea seems to be that we need to have understood the nature of forgiveness before asking for it. We need to have experienced the giving of the grace of forgiveness, before we can ask for the grace ourselves. So, we may expand the prayer this way. "Lord, in the same way I forgave x, please forgive me. For what I can do imperfectly, I know you can do perfectly."
      So the qualification in Mark 11:25 may be similar. It cannot be saying that we must have forgiven all those who have hurt us before we can be forgiven by God. Such would end up a good work for salvation. Our forgiveness of others is always going to be imperfect. So, in simple terms, our request for forgiveness is based on our own imperfect experience of that grace, which we from time to time have offered to others. We have to understand what we are actually asking for, before we can ask for it.

      iii] This verse is not to be found in the parallel passage in Matthew 21:18-22. Matthew places a more complete version of this saying after the Lord's prayer in the Sermon on the Mount, while Mark places a shorter version here. Mark also ties the withering of the Fig Tree into the story of the cleansing of the Temple while Matthew keeps it a separate unit. Mark's main point is that the old Israel had failed to serve as a channel of the grace of God's free forgiveness to the Nations. They had failed to be a light to the Gentiles and to gather them into the "house" of the Lord where they could ask for forgiveness. For this they stood condemned to wither and die. Mark 11:25 may serve as a warning to the new Israel. Not so much against the limited and imperfect forgiveness we but offer a brother who has hurt us, rather against a restricted offer of God's grace of forgiveness to a broken world. The words and actions of the Church can easily follow the exclusive religion of Israel. To do so is to wither and die. The house of the Lord (Church, assembly of God, congregation, etc) must radiate the forgiveness of God in word and sign, or else be bypassed by God's mercy.

Forgive and forget
      "I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more", Jer.31:34.
      Have you ever heard someone say, I can forgive what you have done, but I can never forget? I can actually hear myself saying those words. I was taught that if I claimed to be a follower of Jesus I must be willing to forgive my brother when he sins against me. If I fail to forgive my brother then God will not forgive me. So, when crossed by a brother I was immediately forced into one of two tacks. On the one hand I played the..... "I still love you, I forgive you [but I will never forget]" routine. That is, we never trust them again. We never let them get at us again, rather we keep well clear of them. Of course, this is a long way from what God means by forgiveness.
      On the other hand I played the..... "Obviously you're not a Christian, so I don't have to love you, I don't have to forgive you", routine. Again, not quite what God means by forgiveness. If it was, He would forgive none of us.
      The first thing we need to understand about forgiving others is that it is not a requirement for salvation. It is not a necessary component for our receiving God's grace of forgiveness, nor is it a necessary component toward His continued forgiveness of us. If it was, then my imperfection would deny my salvation. It was that very imperfection that Christ came to deal with. "For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith - and this is a gift of God - not by works, so that no one can boast", Eph.2:7-9. My salvation always rests on what Christ has done for me, not on what I can or can't do.
      The second thing we need to understand about forgiving others is that there can be no forgiveness without repentance. Forgiveness is something given to the one who asks. God only forgives those who ask. Do we claim to be greater than God? 1John.1:9. Under any circumstances, forgiving someone who has done us in is no easy effort of the will. Yet the crucial first component in the act of forgiveness is the sorrow, repentance, confession of the person who has taken us down. Without that action, there can be no proper reaction on our part. We need to be very careful in applying Biblical passages which seem to demand a total love, and therefore the necessary forgiveness of any and all acts against us. Take for example, Matthew 6:38-42, "Do not resist an evil person" etc. Or 6:43-48, "love your enemies" etc. The point of such exhortations is "Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect", 6:48. Can't be perfect? How right you are. And that's the point that Jesus is making. We all need a saviour.
      The third thing we need to understand about forgiving others is that we can only ever hope to do it imperfectly. The ideal of "seventy-seven times" should remove any idea that it is possible to forgive perfectly. Matt.18:21-35. Ideals are to be aimed at not done. In aiming at them we will always fall short. Again, Jesus often uses ideals to expose our state of loss in the sight of God. It is only then we recognize that we stand, but by the grace of God. So, as far as doing righteousness is concerned, we do the best we can. And our best will always be less than perfect, although always perfect in God's eyes.
      The fourth thing we need to understand about forgiving others is that, our imperfect forgiving serves as the vehicle for our understanding of God's perfect forgiveness, Matt.6:12. We can observe in our own lives that we are able to forgive. Yes, imperfectly, yet we see within us the capacity to forgive. Given that we can do it - only from time to time and then only to a limited degree (unless we have experienced a miracle of God's grace in our lives) - then it is easy for us to accept that God can outshine our meager efforts. What we can do imperfectly, he can do perfectly.
      The fourth thing we need to understand about forgiving others is that it has a wider community face to it. Jesus said of the religion of Israel "You travel over land and sea to win a single convert, and when he becomes one, you make him twice as much a son of hell as you are." Matt.23:15. We are fooled if we think we display the light of God's grace of forgiveness by being zealous for the Gospel. The people of Israel were into the business of evangelism. They worked hard for conversions, and yet they were condemned. They had become a "holy huddle" - self righteous hypocrites. We often adopt the same type of "them and us" mentality. Someone wants to use the Church building for a wedding and we put restrictions on them. "They are using us", we say. Forgetting all along, that Jesus worked mainly with the "them" - the outcasts, publicans, prostitutes and sinners. We, on the other hand, see the ministry of the Church as primarily for the "holy ones". When it comes to some person whose marriage has broken down, we will not remarry them unless they are a Church member. The "holy huddle" is allowed to break Jesus' command, but not the "unrighteous, unwashed". If we really want to make a law here (and I don't), surely it's the other way around? It's dangerous not to remember that the only difference between them and us is God's grace of forgiveness freely forgiven.

      Our forgiveness of others will always only ever be an imperfect reflection of the forgiveness offered us in Christ. No matter how high the mountain of our sin, in Christ, God will not even remember it. The offer of God's forgiveness was once to radiate from the chosen family of Israel. Now, in these last days, it is to radiate from us. The house of Israel has withered and died. Let the light of Christ shine from us into a world of darkness. Let it shine in our individual lives, in the forgiveness we have found in Christ, and in the forgiveness we can imperfectly offer to others. Let it shine in the life of our Christian community, in the acceptance we have for all.