TT In Jesus’ parable of the wheat and the weeds, who is the devil and who are his children?
Ed The parable is recorded in Matthew 13:24–30. A man sowed good seed in his field, but his enemy came by night and sowed the field with weeds. (The word Jesus used probably refers to darnel, sometimes called “false wheat”, a plant that looks like wheat when it’s growing but is actually toxic.) The man told his servants to let the weeds grow so as not to disrupt the wheat, then at the harvest the wheat would be gathered into the barn and the weeds burnt. Jesus interpreted the parable in verses 36–43. The farmer is Jesus himself, the enemy is the devil, the good seed are the ‘sons of the kingdom’ and the weeds are the ‘sons of the evil one’; the harvest is the judgement at the end of the age when the angels will gather the faithful into the Kingdom but throw the weeds into a fiery furnace.
The ‘sons of the evil one’ can be identified from various other parts of the Bible. For example the Apostle John urges his readers to follow Christ in their lives: ‘By this it is evident who are the children of God, and who are the children of the devil: whoever does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor is the one who does not love his brother’ (1 John 3:10). Children of the devil are followers of Christ who fail to allow their faith to transform their lives.
The Bible contains many warnings about false believers infiltrating the Christian community, in the way the weeds were sown in the parable. The Apostle Paul warned the elders of the Ephesian congregation, ‘I know that after my departure fierce wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock; and from among your own selves will arise men speaking twisted things, to draw away the disciples after them’ (Acts 20:29–30). And he warned about ‘false brothers secretly brought in’ (Galatians 2:4).
The fiery furnace into which the ‘sons of the evil one’ are thrown can also be identified. Jesus said that there will be a judgement when he returns, which will divide those who have been faithful from those who have been unfaithful: ‘Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels’’ (Matthew 25:41). Prophecies such as Isaiah 66:24 indicate that the destruction of the wicked will involve a literal fire.
So the ‘sons of the evil one’ are followers of Christ who will turn out to have been unfaithful. It’s not easy to tell them apart from those who are faithful. It’s possible to change from being one to being another. That’s the sobering message of this parable: it’s not about a special class of devilish people, it’s about the need for Christ’s followers to watch ourselves —are we wheat or are we weeds? And the devil therefore is not a supernatural being who is waging a campaign against God—the Bible devil is nothing other than our sinful human nature, which will turn us from wheat into weeds if we let it.