Luke 13:9

9. And if… and if not Upon these two ifs hangs eternity. God may surround and ply him with means; but he leaves it at the last to the man himself to decide, by his own free will, between these two ifs. If God has indeed predetermined the matter, if the barrenness of the tree is the secured consequent of his own previous decree, then the events of the entire parable become a farce, and the lesson becomes an enigma.

Cut it down The echo of the owner’s words in Luke 13:7 . Cut it down, says divine justice; and in due time, still more fatally, Cut it down, responds divine mercy. The nation and the man may, like Jerusalem after the crucifixion, survive a few abandoned years after the sentence has gone forth Cut it down But the day of doom without mercy at last arrives, a type and prelude of a more terrible wrath in the world of retribution.