"When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways." 1 Corinthians 13:11
Or…at least I prefer to think I have. But each time I discover a remnant of childish reasoning that has been left unchallenged; I am humbled all over again.
There are a few examples of this:
· my childish view of Heaven a s a boring, ‘spiritual’ place had been left unchallenged until a few years ago when I read Randy Alcorn’s book “Heaven” and discovered that the Bible actually teaches Heaven to be a vibrant, ‘physical’ place that serves as the dwelling place of God and redeemed, resurrected man.
· my childish perception of the discipline of God, realizing that discipline is not the same as punishment. This became clearer to me one day when I took my infant daughter to get her vaccinations. The pain caused by the vaccines were not punishment for the sleepless nights my daughter had caused me, they were to protect her from worse pain by making her stronger and better able to withstand the devastating diseases she might otherwise have faced in the future.
· and, most recently, my childish understanding of the parable of the Sower and the Seed.
It’s embarrassing to admit this misunderstanding especially because it involves such a familiar passage of Scripture. But this is a testament to the necessity of studying and meditating on ALL passages of Scripture, including those passages “I have already read.” Our understanding of Scripture cannot grow and mature if we do not meditate on the whole council of Scripture and this includes those passages of Scripture we feel are for new Christians or Sunday School classes.
Anyway, I didn’t realize that I was ignoring the whole counsel of Scripture until last evening when I was reading John MacArthur’s “The Gospel According to Jesus.” In Chapter 11, MacArthur enters into a discussion on the parable of the Sower and the Seed and I, in typical fashion, turned off my brain because “I already knew everything about this parable.”
In this parable the seed is the Gospel, “the message about the King and His kingdom.”[1] “The point of this parable is not that something is wrong with the Sower or his method. Nothing is wrong with the seed. Nothing is fundamentally wrong with the composition of the soil, either. The problem is the condition of the soil.”[2] There are four soils mentioned: the soil along the path, the rocky soil, the weedy soil and the good soil representing, respectively, the unresponsive heart, the superficial heart, the worldly heart and the receptive heart.[3] What differentiates the good soil/receptive heart from the other soils/hearts is that the plant that grows up in the good soil produces fruit. John MacArthur writes, “fruit, not foliage, is the mark of true salvation.”[4] And not all good soil is equal. Some good soil yields thirtyfold, other soil bears sixtyfold and still other soil produces hundredfold.
So far, so clear.
My mistake had been regarding the nature of the fruit. For some reason I had gotten it into my head as a child that the fruit described in this parable referred to converts. I thought that some Christians might lead thirty people to Christ over the course of their life time, others might lead sixty people to Christ while the super Christians would lead a hundred or more people to Christ. I can’t even tell you where or how I got this idea into my head. Perhaps I was overly focused on the numbers given in the parable that I let it determine the interpretation. “A hundred fruit…a hundred converts. That would be a good lifetime achievement.”
The problems with this understanding are manifold. You cannot tell the godliness of a person by the number of converts he or she has been involved in harvesting; after all, Paul may plant, and Apollos may water but it is God who gives the growth (1 Cor. 3:6). This understanding generates a wrong standard and subsequently creates a wrong goal.
The fruit Jesus is referring to in this passage includes those characteristics listed by Paul in Galatians 5:22. Some Christians will abound a hundredfold in love, in peace and in self-control while others may only yield thirtyfold. “Not every Christian will always bear as much fruit as he or she ought to or could…Christians are sometimes disobedient, and of course they still sin.”[5] But the goal is production of the fruit of the spirit to the glory of the Father.
