How many times have you asked for a second chance?  More likely than not your request was not for a second chance but a third, a fourth, a tenth, a hundredth.

Wait for the rare "blue moon," hang around "a month of Sundays" or hold on forever if you like, but the day will never come when we finally fly right.  If you or I lived until kingdom come we would still be waiting for a day unblemished by sin.  If left to ourselves, would such a day ever come?  Not a chance.

We deceive ourselves if we imagine, like Scarlett O'Hara (the protagonist in Margaret Mitchell's 1936 novel Gone with the Wind), that tomorrow is another day and we can fix things then.  No.  Even if we had it to do all over again, we would fall into the same holes, break the same commandments, offend the same feelings, and ruin the same chances.  A second chance is not what we need.

The owner of the vineyard in Jesus' parable was a realist.  Acute disappointment and dissatisfaction with the fig tree he himself had planted was not due to inattention or any negligence of his own.  He hadn't forgotten the tree.  It was consistently visited by him.  It was in his own vineyard, and there is nothing here to suggest it lacked water, good soil, or proper feeding.  It had every advantage, yet it was unfruitful. 

The sad, no-nonsense truth is that it wasted the ground and was not even worth the space it was taking.  The vineyard owner was neither hasty in his judgment nor mistaken.  So he said, "Cut it down."  He cannot be faulted.  To remove a barren tree makes perfect sense and is entirely legitimate.  It is not in the owner's interest to maintain a vineyard of hopeless vines.  In fact, it would be to his advantage to eradicate this worthless tree as soon as possible.

Nor was it in the interest of the vinedresser to subsidize this worthless thing.

Isn't it more satisfying to work among those who respond?  What fun is there in taking on the circumstances of a proven failure.  The vinedresser is a realist also.  Next year, even after all he was willing to do, all his labor and love might be wasted by the very tree on which he exhausted himself.  It would not be to his advantage.  The only gain would go to the tree.

The fig tree had already been granted a second chance and a third.  Clearly a fourth chance, a fifth break, a sixth opportunity or a seventh year would yield as before - nothing.

It didn't need another chance.  It didn't need any wishful thinking or crossed fingers.  It didn't simply need time and opportunity (Mt. 18:23-26).  The singular need is for Christ.

Every Christian recognizes that the parable of the barren fig tree is about Jesus who well knows how bare and sterile a sinner is.  It was never to his benefit to undertake the liability and loss of sinners.  His willingness to intercede for us, get himself involved in our empty, useless condition, and exhaust heaven's treasure on us is nothing short of incredible.

Here is a vinedresser who commits himself to doing everything that is needed.  He doesn't make a case to the owner of the vineyard that this tree is better than it looks or has potential.  He doesn't argue that fruitlessness can be tolerable or that it doesn't really matter whether a fig tree had any figs or not.  No decent vinedresser would ever concede that a fig tree is a fig tree without any figs.  Such a thing is as inconceivable as a Christian who forfeits the privilege to serve, give, love, or sacrifice as if such things don't really matter.

For you see, the fruitfulness of the fig comes not from the tree but from the toil of the Vinedresser.  Jesus began with a barren stud planted in the ground of Calvary, with bleak and empty branches.  Upon it he poured the stimulant of his own blood.  He tended to that tree, he cultivated that cross, he worked on it, sacrificed on it, depleted himself upon it, and that tree became the tree of life.

The ground, once despoiled, is now conserved to bring forth abundantly.  The once defile sinner, for whom He hung upon that tree, is now saved to have what only Christ could restore to him ... life and fruitfulness.

It does not matter how many other advantages we may have if we are unfruitful.  We have untold advantages, yet all the gifts of God mean nothing without Christ.  Our sin and failure is not a condition to overcome by taking another crack at it, hoping for another chance, or pretending that tomorrow we will be more able than today.

Rather, let us benefit from the nourishment Jesus Himself brings us.  Let us depend on the efforts and accomplishment of Jesus who forfeited his very life in order that we might be spared severance from God.  You and I have not been cut down.  Christ has advocated for us with the outlay of his own life.  He carried the liability.  He took the loss.  He went beyond reason, beyond justice, and beyond price so God could come seeking fruitfulness and find in us all the abundance of Christ ever after.

Would we ever give Him up?  Not a chance.