Luke
8:1-3 Jesus' traveling companions described. It must have been quite a crowd.
There were the twelve that Jesus had called as apostles (Luke 6:12-16), plus
several women of whom three are named. Considering the treatment of John the
Baptist by Herod (Luke 9:9), it seems striking that the wife of Herod's steward
would travel with Jesus. There must have been some degree of strain in her
life, because of her husband's job and her decision to follow Jesus and
evidently contribute to the support of His ministry. Mary Magdalene is
mentioned in other passages, but here we have the revelation that seven demons
had gone out of her. We have no other information on Susanna. Perhaps she was
named for the heroine of the 13th chapter of Daniel in the Septuagint, the
godly woman who was blackmailed by some Jewish elders but refused to go along
and was ultimately vindicated by Daniel's intervention. An odd collection of
people, but perhaps this is what church is like. A bunch of disparate people
who have nothing in common except for their devotion to Christ.
Luke
8:4-15 The parable of the sower and the seed. Here we have the first of Jesus'
teaching parables. (Considering the parable told to Simon the Pharisee as
simply making a point.) In this parable Jesus cites Isaiah 6:9 in Luke 8:10 as
an explanation for teaching in parables. In context, Isaiah has just received
his commission, after having a vision of the throne of God with the cherubim
crying, "Holy, Holy, Holy", Isaiah's own recognition of his uncleanness
of speech and purification by one of God's seraphim. The essence of Isaiah's
commission is that most people will ignore his words and ultimately reap the
consequences of their choices. But there will remain a remnant, compared to the
stump of a tree that has fallen, that will remain. And so Jesus will tell
parables to the great multitude (Luke 8:4) but only explain it to His disciples
(Luke 8:9-10).
The point of the parable is
straightforward. The word of God goes forth, proclaimed as good news. Most will
not receive it (hearkening back to Isaiah's commission), for a variety of
reasons. The devil steals it from their heart (not their mind!); some fall into
temptation because the word of God does not take root in their heart; some are
so pre-occupied with worldly concerns that the word is choked out of their
life; but a few receive the word into their heart and hold it fast, and it
grows up to bear fruit.
The emphasis of this parable seems to
be that it is not circumstances, nor is it the mental condition of understanding
God's word, that is the critical factor in the outcome. It is the condition and
response of the heart to God's word. Jesus describes these conditions as having
an honest (kalos) and good (agathos) heart, and a heart that holds
the word fast (katechousin). Without
getting into the difference between heart and spirit, it appears that there is
a spiritual dimension to each human life, to which God speaks His word. This
spiritual dimension is affected by choices and decisions that are made by the person,
that result in his or her heart being responsive and receptive to God's word,
or it is not. We can explain the theology of salvation and the love of God, but
mere mental understanding of these things does not produce fruit. There is a
spiritual transaction that Jesus is describing, in which a person's spirit
comes into relationship with God's word, and ultimately with God's Spirit, that
produces the fruit of salvation.
No comments:
Post a Comment