There is a peculiar suitability in the use of the fig tree to symbolize Israel's religious history. Unlike all other trees, the fig has this unique feature about it, that its fruit appears before its leaves. It is as though the clothing of the tree, the outward show of religious observance, the ceremony and the regalia of formal worship, is really the aftermath only of the bearing of a real fruit. Earlier in this paper we proposed that all religion is descended from an earlier true spiritual understanding. Many people reverse this, enamored as they are with evolutionary philosophy, holding the view that religion gives rise to spiritual life.
Religion is a vestige of the real thing.
Under the fig tree one might now and then discover an olive. Remembering what was said about the first occurrence of some subject or object to receive particular attention later on in Scripture, we may remind ourselves that Adam and Eve sought to cover their nakedness in the presence of God and one another with fig leaves. So long ago the spiritual light which covered them was replaced by the poor substitute of the outward form of religion. But in fact when seen at close quarters, as the Lord could see only too clearly, the tree which ought certainly to have fruit upon it had none. In a peculiar sense, the Temple signified the fig tree.