This text is excerpted from The Parables of Jesus: Revealing the Plan of Salvation, by John W. Welch and Jeannie S. Welch, with art by Jorge Cocco Santangelo and art commentary by Herman du Toit. The book is available from Amazon here. Used by permission. 

Following directly after the parable of the sower comes the parable of the wheat and tares. It adds one more cruelty to the list of things that the sower’s enemy will perpetrate in trying to diminish or destroy the efforts of the sower.

Jesus can be found quite clearly in this parable as the master of the household (see Matthew 13:27), the one who planted the field with good seed. The enemy who comes as men sleep and who then sows the field with the seed of a certain kind of weed called zizania is identified and referred to in the parable of the sower as the evil one, Satan, or the devil.

Jesus’s surprising but highly sensible solution to this problem is to allow the wheat and the tares to grow together.

SETTING AND CONTEXT

This parable is found only in what is sometimes called the “parable sermon” in Matthew 13 and is the second in that series of kingdom parables. As such it can be most specifically understood as a sequel to the parable of the sower. In the context of the historical playing out of the plan of salvation, the parable of the wheat and tares makes it prophetically clear that problems will arise shortly after the sower plants the field. Continue reading →