GREAT THINGS ENTERPRISE
CLAUDE BLACK
Mark 4:30
Explaining Love
A Scottish proverb says, “Some things are better felt than telt.” Writers, for example, have tried to define love only to resort to metaphors. According to William Shakespeare: “Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind. And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind.” According to the great Greek sage, Aristotle, “Love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies.” William Faulkner said, “You don’t love because: you love despite; not for the virtues, but despite the faults.” One final example, Alfred Lord Tennyson tried to explain love when he said, “Love is the only gold.”
On one occasion, as Jesus tried to paint in the minds of his disciples a picture of the Kingdom of God, “And he said, ‘To what shall we liken the Kingdom of God, or by what parable shall we illustrate it?’” (Mark 4:30) In this rhetorical question, Jesus tried to bring his disciples to use their imagination, their own life experience, to illustrate the Kingdom of God. It is possible that once Jesus posed this question, he paused and looked around the audience to see if anyone would offer a parable, an illustration, before he proceeded with his own.
The word Mark used for “liken” in this instance is “homoioo”: to make like, to compare, or to liken. In this set of parables, Jesus used the seed to illustrate the Kingdom of God—the seed planted in different soil or the seed that ripens to harvest.
As writers and poets have tried to find a good illustration or definition for love, likewise it might be a good exercise for a believer to say, “To what shall we liken the Kingdom of God, or by what parable shall we illustrate it?”
Directory