Matthew 21:19

This verse is the key to the story of Jesus and the Fig Tree, and it's easy to see why it is controversial. It seems terribly petty for the Lord to kill a tree simply because it was not bearing fruit when He was hungry. In fact, the version of this story in Mark says the figs were not even in season, so there was no reason to hope for fruit from the tree.

If we understand the story spiritually, though, we can see that this verse is rich with meaning. The fig tree represents the natural human, or in this case the natural church: the Jewish church, which was at the time completely external in nature. Leaves stand for individual, free-standing facts, thoughts, and knowledge; fruit stands for the desire to be good and to do what is good. So the tree having leaves but no fruit, then, means that the Jewish church of the time had some true ideas, some external knowledge of spiritual things, but had no desire for good, no motivation to use that knowledge to serve people.

So why make it wither? That gets into a somewhat subtle subject: the difference between "facts" and what the Writings call "truth." Truth, as the Writings mean it, includes facts and knowledge put into patterns by the desire for good, like bricks mortared together into a wall instead of bricks lying scattered on the ground. Without a use in mind, a desire to do something good, facts are just facts, not part of a greater truth.

Water corresponds to natural truth – ideas assembed into useful patterns, helping us understand day-to-day life. Without this pattern and the desire for good that inspires it, leaves – individual facts – will wither and die.

By making the tree wither, then, Jesus was showing the fate of the Jewish church, which was in the process of losing even its external hold on spiritual knowledge because of the lack of goodness within.