Parable Theory
“‘In them is fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah:
“You will be ever hearing but never understanding;
you will be ever seeing but never perceiving.
For this people’s heart has become calloused;
they hardly hear with their ears, and they have closed their eyes.
Otherwise they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts and turn, and I would heal them.”
But blessed are your eyes because they see, and your ears because they hear. For truly I tell you, many prophets and righteous people longed to see what you see but did not see it, and to hear what you hear but did not hear it.’”
Today’s Text: Matthew 13:1-17 (Living Life Daily Devotional)
This is Jesus’s response to His disciples about why He teaches to the crowds in parables. I wrote my dissertation on Mark’s version of this episode. Many believe that Jesus’s response means that He taught in parables in order to enforce God’s predestined election. In other words, by teaching in parables, Jesus was separating out those who are saved from those who are not—that is, those who understand the word of God versus those who do not.
No doubt, the question of why some people respond positively to the hearing of the gospel while others do not is an unsolvable mystery. Only God knows.
And so, it’s important to keep in mind that the Bible is more rhetorical than it is informational. What that means is that God did not give us His word simply to fill our heads with theological information. God gave us His word in order to transform our hearts so that we might know His will and become like Jesus—that is, Bible as life-transforming rhetoric.
The definition of rhetoric is the art of persuasion. God gave us the Scriptures in order to persuade us to trust in Him and to follow Christ in His great plan of salvation for the world. Of course, that persuasion must include theological information. But theological information found in the Scriptures serves a higher purpose (2 Timothy 3:16-17), and so we must pay greater heed to the higher purpose than to the theological information.
And truth be told, the higher purpose of Scripture (that is, to lead us into God’s agenda) is quite straightforward and clear. On the other hand, the theology that comes out of the Scriptures is not always so straightforward and clear.
And so when people say that the Bible is “easy,” they are talking more about the Bible’s instruction concerning how we ought to live—that is, to prioritize God’s desires and agenda over ours because of faith and obedience.
We should be concerned about the theology of the Bible, but we must never prioritize the theology over the message that comes through the rhetoric of Christ.
Did Jesus teach in parables to sift out the damned from the kingdom of God? Who cares. What Jesus is really saying here to us believers is “Don’t let your hearts get calloused and hard, because we will miss out on the life that God has called us to follow as followers of Jesus Christ.”
Father, You are the Author of life, the Creator of heaven and earth. You know the end from the beginning. You know the great mysteries that we have no capacity for understanding. Give us wisdom to see Christ and to hear Christ, so that we might follow Him and Him alone. In Jesus’s name. Amen.
