Mark 4:10

And when he was alone, they that were about him with the twelve asked of him the parables. And he said unto them, Unto you is given the mystery of the kingdom of God: but unto them that are without, all things are done in parables: that seeing they may see and not perceive; and hearing they may hear and not understand; lest haply they should turn again, and it should be forgiven them.

They that were about him with the twelve ... refers to a wider circle of believers, perhaps including the seventy.

The mystery of the kingdom of God ... "Nowhere in the New Testament does this term (mystery) correspond to esoteric knowledge and rites as in the so-called mystery religions of the Roman Empire."[6] "Mystery" in the New Testament sense refers to a glorious truth long concealed but now revealed (Romans 16:25,26). Cranfield described the mystery as the fact "that the kingdom of God has come in the person, words, and works of Jesus."[7] According to New Testament definitions of it: (1) it is the enlightenment of all nations concerning the obedience of faith to the only wise God through Jesus Christ (Romans 16:25-27); (2) it is the plan of redemption formulated by the Father before the world was, but now preached in Christ (1 Corinthians 2:7); (3) it is the revelation of God's purpose of summing up all things in heaven and upon earth in Christ (Ephesians 1:10); (4) it is God's eternal purpose of including Gentiles as fellow-heirs with Jews, fellow-members of the spiritual body of Christ, and fellow-partakers of the promises in Christ (Ephesians 3:6); (5) in short, it is the gospel of Jesus Christ (Ephesians 6:19), hidden under the types and shadows of the old covenant, but now proclaimed to all nations through Christ and his apostles.

That seeing they may not perceive, etc. ... Jesus' statement here to the effect that the parables were intentionally designed to blind some of his audience is viewed as a problem by some of the commentators. Even Cranfield referred to it as "a stumblingblock"[8] but admitted the meaning to be that the kingdom of God, "in accordance with Old Testament prophecy, remains hidden from many, ... something that is within the purpose of God."[9] Barclay wrote that "The real difficulty of the passage (is that) if we take it at its face value, it sounds as if Jesus taught in parables deliberately to cloak his meaning, purposely to hide it from all ordinary men and women."[10]

Barclay's analysis is correct except in his identification of the persons from whom Jesus hid his message by the parables. (See under Mark 4:2). If Jesus had spoken plainly and unambiguously of his Messiahship and kingdom, the Pharisees could have accomplished his murder prematurely; therefore, it was under the most positive necessity that Jesus cloaked his teachings in those beautiful and humble parables, which in no sense hid his message from "ordinary men and women," they being the very ones who fully understood him. They did, however, fully hide it from the proud, arrogant, unspiritual priesthood who organized the cabal against him and finally accomplished his judicial murder. This purpose of concealment was a fundamental characteristic of the parables. In addition to the reasons for speaking in parables cited under Mark 4:2, above, Cranfield has the discerning word that "God's self-revelation is veiled, in order that men may be left sufficient room in which to make a personal decision."[11]

JESUS' EXPLANATION OF THE PARABLES

Despite the fact that scholars reject the understanding of the parables as to a great extent allegorical, and having plural analogies in them, it is clear that our Lord's explanation is untroubled with any such restrictions. Barclay thought that "a parable must never be treated as an allegory";[12] but Cranfield noted that Jesus' interpretation "certainly allegorizes this one."[13] Cranfield also refuted the view which would make this interpretation, not of Jesus, but of the early church. The following analogies are in the parable:

The seed is the word of God.

The way side soil is the hardened hearer.

The shallow soil is the unstable hearer.

The thorny ground is the hearer who allows the cares, riches and pleasures of life to choke out the word.

The good ground is the faithful hearer who bears fruit.

The birds of the air are the evil one.

The sun's heat is persecution and tribulation.

The thorns are the cares, riches, and pleasures of life.

The variable yields are the variable effectiveness of Christians in bearing fruit.

The sudden sprouting of seed on the rocky ground stands for the ease with which the unstable are converted.

The sower stands for God.

There are interlocking triple portions in the parable.

There are three types of unproductive soil; the thorns are the cares, riches and pleasures; and the productive soil has three gradations of 30-fold, 60-fold, and 100-fold. For further discussion of this parable, see the Commentary on Matthew, (Matthew 13:18-23) pp. 190-192.

May see and not perceive ... lest ... they should turn and be forgiven ... The whole of Mark 4:12 is taken from Isaiah 6:9,10, a passage Matthew quoted in this context. This appeal to Isaiah is important for a number of reasons. It shows that Jesus' speaking in parables was a fulfillment of the prophecy, and that the reason many in Israel would be unable to understand was their own self-caused hardening, confirmed by the judicial hardening from the Father. They are wrong who find in the parables the cause of Israel's failure to understand. "Their eyes they have closed" (Matthew 13:15) is the true reason why they could not see. It is an inaccurate reading of what Mark here recorded to make it mean that Jesus spoke in parables in order to prevent some people from being saved. In this place, as throughout the entire New Testament, the truth is not fully discernible from a single passage; but life and understanding come from the soul's reception of "all that the prophets have spoken" (Luke 24:25), "every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God" (Matthew 4:4), and of the essential truth that every passage of God's word must be understood in the light of the principle laid down by Jesus Christ that "again it is written" (Matthew 4:7). The exegesis practiced by many of the critical scholars of postulating what they call "truth" upon this or that isolated passage in one gospel or another is nothing but a somewhat more sophisticated employment of the "proof-text" method so readily condemned in others.

It is neither in the proof-text method, nor in the proof-passage method, nor in the proof-gospel method (as in the Markan priority theory) that God's truth may be fully learned. This fact is implicit in the fact that even the Son of God himself refused to accept the Scriptures quoted by the devil, except in the light of what was "again written" elsewhere. If our Saviour and head of our holy religion relied upon the consensus of ALL that the sacred writers had written, how may his servants hope to achieve true knowledge by any other device? (Matthew 4:1-7).

[6] Henry E. Turlington, The Broadman Bible Commentary (Nashville: Broadman Press, 1946), p. 298.

[7] C. E. B. Cranfield, op. cit., p. 153.

[8] Ibid., p. 155.

[9] Ibid., p. 156.

[10] William Barclay, op. cit., p. 89.

[11] C. E. B. Cranfield, op. cit., p. 158.

[12] William Barclay, op. cit., p. 86.

[13] C. E. B. Cranfield, op. cit., p. 158.