Enduring Faith – Matthew 13:18-23

John’s first letter to the church, our 1 John, is arranged around a series of three-fold tests of genuine faith: (1) do you love your brother in Christ, (2) do you obey Christ’s commands, and (3) do you hold correct doctrine about Jesus. And there is a fourth that he begins with, do you confess your sins. Did Jesus teach anything like this? Yes, we have already seen it in his sermon on the mount (Matthew 7:15-23) and we see it now in his first parable.

“Hear then the parable of the sower: When anyone hears the word of the kingdom and does not understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away what has been sown in his heart. This is what was sown along the path. As for what was sown on rocky ground, this is the one who hears the word and immediately receives it with joy, yet he has no root in himself, but endures for a while, and when tribulation or persecution arises on account of the word, immediately he falls away. As for what was sown among thorns, this is the one who hears the word, but the cares of the world and the deceitfulness of riches choke the word, and it proves unfruitful. As for what was sown on good soil, this is the one who hears the word and understands it. He indeed bears fruit and yields, in one case a hundredfold, in another sixty, and in another thirty.” (Matthew 13:18-23 ESV)

Without repeating the parable he told in public, Jesus gives the disciples in private the interpretation.  The seed being sown by the sower is the message of the kingdom and the different locations and results are different kinds of listeners and their responses.  Three of the listeners are unfruitful:

(1) the one who never really understands the message because Satan convinces him that it is unimportant, (2) the one whose initial reception of the message, when tested by tribulation or persecution (two forms of suffering), gives up on the message because the kingdom for him meant only freedom from suffering, and (3) the one who is lured away from the gospel by the pursuit of riches, believing that real control over one’s life comes from money or some other form of power.

One soil is responsive, the listener who is good soil, whose commitment to the kingdom is evident in his fruitfulness.  And it doesn’t particularly matter how much fruitfulness, but it is marked by this person not giving up on the message but staying loyal to it and, as God has gifted him, producing a crop of kingdom character and evangelistic fruit.  We are meant to ask what kind of soil we are with the implication that we can repent if we are not fruitful.

Jesus is highlighting the reality that many may seem to be believers in the kingdom message but fall away. By so doing they demonstrate that their “faith” was not a saving faith, was not genuine faith based in true repentance. They were only temporarily converted, not truly converted. Some have framed this reality as the perseverance of the saints. True saints, truly saved people, persevere in the faith. They evidence true faith by continuing to bear fruit. Their spiritual growing does not stop.