The Parable of the Sower: Luke 8:4-18
The parable of the sower is a commonly preached, but unnecessarily contentious parable. It serves to illustrate the extensive grace of God towards Man as well as the responsibility of man in the reception of the gospel. This simple message is reiterated in verses 16-18 which follow this parable where the concept of the hidden being revealed returns alongside the call to rightly “hear”, that is, to receive the gospel and be blessed in abundance or to reject it and ultimately have even that which you think you have stripped away from you. We should therefore understand the parable of the sower and the following section about the lamp under a jar/bushel as a single teaching, in the form of a big and a little parable of the sower.
This parable consists of the Word, the hearers of the Word, the external pressures upon the hearer, and the fruit that the Word produces in the believer. The concept of seeds being planted, grown, and producing fruit is common in the O.T. In Ezek 36, Jer 31, Hos 2, Dan 2, and Is 55 this concept is used in relation to the eschatological kingdom of God.[1] The use of “mysteria” in Luke 8 and Dan 2 (Septuagint), refer to the manifestation of God’s redemptive work in history in the context of God’s kingdom.[2] God’s redemptive work culminates in the person and work of Christ who is the King of that Kingdom. Therefore, we should remember V. 16-18 of Luke 8, wherein the light is not hidden but is revealed. In Isaiah 6:9-13 Isaiah is commissioned to prophesy of God’s redemptive kingdom work to a people who would, in turn, harden their hearts, deafen their ears, and blind their eyes so that they could hide from its reality. When Christ is explaining the reason for His parables to the disciples, He quotes Isa 6:9 and teaches the same thing that is taught in the parable itself. That is, that those who have a knowledge of these secrets of God were given them to know, but not all who hear have ears to hear. But there are those who despise God and want to hide from the secrets of His work. Thus, Christ’s use of parables is a poetic play upon His reference to Isa 6. Preaching in parables does not actually hide the meaning from anybody, but these are those who as we will see later in His interpretation, have deafened their ears, blinded their eyes, hardened their hearts, and turned away from the Word. In like step Christ preaches in a hidden manner to the hard of heart the mystery that is hidden, so that hearing they may not understand.[3]
From the first giving of the parable in V. 4-8, it is easy to pull out a fatalistic understanding of salvation. For if we are the soil, and some of us by nature are inhospitable to the seed then it can be no fault of our own if we try to receive the Word and find that we by nature or external circumstance cannot. But to come away from it with a fatalistic soil differentiation would be an overly literal reading. We know this for two reasons; firstly, when contrasted with Christ’s interpretation of this parable we see that it was never intended to teach an essential difference in the hearers but a difference in their reaction to the seed. Secondly, when the entirety of Scriptural testimony is taken into account, such as 1 Cor 2:14, John 6:44, Rom 3:11, we see in fact, that we are all equally unable within ourselves to respond to the Word in faith. The difference between these scenarios is not that some people are more or less incapable of receiving the Word than others. But it is a difference in response to the Word.
It is important to note that there is nothing in the text that would indicate a causal difference in these situations on the part of the Word. Joel B. Green in his commentary on Luke says of this that; “Jesus’ words also prohibit any interpretation that might suggest that God had kept some from salvation; to the contrary, the message has been broadcast widely, but God has not decreed how it will be apprehended.”[4] When we take into account Isaiah 55, we see that this parable is teaching the direct opposite of a causal difference in these situations on the part of the Word. Isa 55 begins with a universality of offer “Ho, every one that thirsts, come ye to the waters, and he that hath no money; come ye, buy, and eat,” and ends with a promise of effectual certainty on God’s part:
“For as the rain cometh down, and the snow from heaven, and returns not thither, but waters the earth, and makes it bring forth and bud, that it may give seed to the sower, and bread to the eater:So shall my word be that goes forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it.”
Isaiah resolves the tension in V. 2-3 by placing a call to right hearing and acceptation of the Word in-between the universal administration of the Word and promise of effectual certainty on God’s part; “hearken diligently unto me, and eat ye that which is good, and let your soul delight itself in fatness. Incline your ear, and come unto me: hear, and your soul shall live; and I will make an everlasting covenant with you, even the sure mercies of David.” There is no natural difference in ability among the hearers and neither is there a discrepancy with the Word given to those who do not grasp the gospel in faith. God gives His Word to all men, those who are elect and those who He knows will refuse His gift of salvation, but in giving His Word to them He gives them the gift of saving grace. It is in the rejection of this Word that leaves one without its gift of salvation, not a lack of its efficacy or a natural inability. Joel B. Green describes this in his commentary as two opposing wills. That of God, for the hearer to be saved and that of others, to resist the work of God.[5] The only difference we see in these scenarios is that 3 parties reject this gift and the 4th holds on to it until the very end. God wills that all men would come to salvation (2 Pet 3:9). According to Isa 55 and Rom 10, it is in the Word that He is working that will to its end. What happens in all of the first 3 scenarios mentioned is that for some reason or another they rejected the grace given to them in the Word.
The first scenario describes one who is hearing this Word, but before they can believe it Satan comes and takes the Word away from their heart so that they do not believe and receive salvation. R.T. France points out in his commentary on Mark’s account of this parable that Satan’s action here is immediately following the hearing of the Word. He says; “In this case the failure is immediate; the seed fails to penetrate and is lost, just as in Moule’s analogy the ‘half-witted or stupid’ viewer of the cartoon sees nothing but a picture.”[6] Although it is important to note Mark’s inclusion of the immediacy of this act of Satan, France’s insistence that the seed never penetrates the heart may be difficult to synthesize with Mathew’s account of this parable in Matt 13:19 where the text reads; “the evil one comes and snatches away what was sown in their heart,” especially since the other two accounts of this parable are merely silent in regard to the penetration of the heart, rather than being explicitly negative. While this sowing in the heart is contrasted with the individual receiving the Word in Matt 13:20, a seed sown in the heart is still within rather than without, and therefore any lack of mention of penetration of seed in Mark or in Luke should be compared with Matthew’s sowing of the seed. This snatching away of the seed manifests itself in two ways: the first is that the hearer may be entirely complacent to the Word because of their hard heart. Matthew’s gospel identifies the reason for the hearer’s failure to grasp this Word in faith as their lack of understanding in Matt 13:19. This teaches the hearer that in all parables, or all teachings of Christ, that they must rightly hear and understand the words of Christ as a revelation of God’s eschatological kingdom as it is manifested in and through Christ’s person and work, rather than taking them for simple moral lessons. This is the meaning of the prophecy in Isa 6:9 “hearing you do not hear” and Isa 55’s call to right hearing.[7]
In the second scenario the hearer receives the Word and as Luke’s account tells us, does indeed truly understand the teaching and believes for a time. But when they experience a testing of their faith through suffering or temptation it is shown to have no depth. This scenario as well as the third is very similar to that found in James 2:17. Although on surface-level the individual grasped the things of Christ they abandoned Him the moment that He became inconvenient by standing in the way of their pleasure, when threatened by the suffering of persecution, or out of anger towards God for their suffering as Job’s wife instructs him to do in Job 2:9.
The difference between the second scenario and the third scenario is found in what causes them to fall from their belief. They both for a time believe, and both fall away from that belief due to external pressures because their faith lacked depth. In this scenario it is not that the external pressure is coming at them to attack their faith, but as the text indicates, as they went along with their life they became preoccupied with the anxieties and pleasures in the current world. These people are those who although once felt very fervently zealous for the Lord have since become either too busy to concern themselves with the things of God or they have turned away to other gods such as entertainment, money, or sex. When these concerns or pleasures fill our hearts and minds there is no room left for Christ, and so we fall away in forgetting about eternity and looking instead to the perishable things for our rest.
In the last scenario the hearer receives the Word in understanding and strengthens their faith by tending to it and by fixing their eyes upon Christ. This is what Luke means when he says that the hearer “holds fast” to the Word. If one would persevere to the end of salvation, they must persist in their faith in God’s Word. Only then will they stand undeterred in times of trial, remain fixed upon Christ as they go through their life, and bear much fruit.
This whole teaching is then re-administered again in a more condensed form in V. 16-18 where Christ again reminds those in His hearing that the hidden is now being revealed and is progressing to a full and complete revelation of all things. This final revelation will be a revelation of Christ’s person and work, of mans sin, and of the worthlessness of man’s prideful gain. Those who fail to rightly hear, understand, and cling to Christ, will have all that they think they have taken away from them just as God had given it to them in the first place, while all those who received Christ by faith will inherit the world.
In conclusion, the parable of the sower is a parable about the danger of ignoring, forgetting, or rejecting the gospel. It warns against the laxity of the complacent or “too busy” Christian and displays the urgency of the situation. The parable of sower is more important than ever in today’s fast-scrolling, semi-conscious consumer culture where people are learning to only half-read, and half-listen, because as France states, the caution of the parable is against the “half-witted or stupid’ viewer of the cartoon (who) sees nothing but a picture”[8]
[1] Beale & Carson, David W. Pao and Eckhard J. Schnabel, Commentary on the New testament use of the Old Testament (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2007), 305.
[2] Ibid
[3] Edwards, James R, The Pillar New Testament Commentary: The Gospel of Luke, (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2015) p. 237.
[4] Green, Joel B. The New International Commentary on the New Testament: The Gospel of Luke, (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997), 328.
[5] Ibid, 328
[6] France, R. T. (2002). The Gospel of Mark: a commentary on the Greek text (p. 205). Grand Rapids, MI; Carlisle: W.B. Eerdmans; Paternoster Press.
[7] Edwards, James R, The Pillar New Testament Commentary: The Gospel of Luke, (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2015) p. 240-241
[8] France, R. T. (2002). The Gospel of Mark: a commentary on the Greek text (p. 205). Grand Rapids, MI; Carlisle: W.B. Eerdmans; Paternoster Press.
