Biblical Imagery
By Jerry Batson, Th.D.
Special to The Alabama Baptist
Last week Theology 101 considered the image of fire as a way of thinking about the Bible. This week we turn to another image, that of seed.
The image of God’s word as seed is most famously found in Jesus’ parable of the sower. After a brief telling of the parable, Jesus’ disciples asked Him the meaning of the parable. His opening words of explanation were, “The seed is the word of God” (Luke 8:11).
Like good seed, the Bible is a fruitful Word. When Jesus explained the significance of His words becoming implanted in His hearers’ hearts, He described the resultant fruitfulness of those words: “These are the ones sown on good ground, those who hear the Word, accept it, and bear fruit: some thirtyfold, some sixty and some a hundred” (Mark 4:20).
God’s word read, pondered and applied will produce in a believer a harvest of godly attitudes, upright conduct, sincere praises and truthful words.
Life-giving Word
From the word of God imaged as good seed, we experience it as a life-giving Word. This seems to be the idea in Christ’s brief parable of the growing seed in Mark 4:26–29. In the parable He described a man scattering seed on the ground. The planter then passed the nights and days without reference to the seed, but he soon discovered that the seed did indeed “sprout and grow” even though he did not know how it happened.
In view of the fact that the planter in the parable did not tend his planting, the seed nevertheless yielded crops by itself, “first the blade, then the head, after that the full grain in the head” (v. 28). Surely Jesus was not advocating laziness in tending the field. Rather His point apparently was that the life of the grain was resident in the seed and would manifest itself in due time as a grain harvest.
As good seed God’s word is alive and active. The Bible, as God’s written word is a living and fruit-producing Word. The key to the fruitfulness, however, is the condition of the heart into which it is sown.
The Bible speaks of a person being born again, “not of corruptible seed but incorruptible, through the word of God which lives and abides forever” (1 Pet. 1:23). Ancient seeds have been discovered and found to contain life in that they could still germinate after a couple of thousand years. Like such seeds the truth of the Bible continues to abide as enduring truth for life.
Totally trustworthy
The beloved Psalm 100 ends with the declaration that “the Lord is good; His mercy is everlasting, and His truth endures to all generations” (v. 5). The enduring nature of the Bible as incorruptible seed resounds again in 1 Peter 1:25: “The word of the Lord endures forever. Now this is the Word which by the gospel was preached to you.” This enduring truth is not corrupted by error, omission or inconsistency. It is totally true and trustworthy.
Like with good seed sown on good soil, the good word of God must be implanted in the good soil of an open and obedient heart. As in Jesus’ parable about the sower, if the heart is hardened, cluttered or unfocused, the truth of the Bible cannot take root, grow and become fruitful.
The choice is ours. The Bible can be ignored, resisted or displaced, but if received and obeyed from the heart, it becomes “the implanted Word which is able to save” (James 1:21).
EDITOR’S NOTE — Jerry Batson is a retired Alabama Baptist pastor who also has served as associate dean of Beeson Divinity School at Samford University and professor of several schools of religion during his career.
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