Posers

Jesus tells an interesting story in Matthew 13. As a read it today, once again I was struck by the severity of His words.  He starts it by saying “the kingdom of God is like…” He tells the story of a farmer who plants seed in his field and of the farmer’s enemy who sowed tares (literally “false grain”) into the field while the farmer slept. The tares grew along with the wheat and in the process raising questions about how to deal with the situation.


Jesus goes on to explain the meaning of the story later in Matthew 13. The field is the world. The wheat plants are the sons of the kingdom. The tares are the sons of the wicked one or the sons of wickedness. There will come a time of reckoning, a time of separation. In the meantime however, the two types of plants grow simultaneously.

We must understand that the two plants, while sown almost simultaneously and grown simultaneously, are fundamentally different. They have two completely different sources and two completely different destinations. At the core, at the root of their DNA, a basic dissimilarity exists.

I have noticed recently how fashionable it has become in Christian circles to use the following phrase – “he is still a brother in Christ” or “she is still a sister in Christ”. Really now?? Jesus clearly and repeatedly states that not everyone who names His name abides in His kingdom. The wheat and the tares have nothing in common except being in close proximity to each other. Wheat is wheat. Tares are tares. The kingdom of God has no fellowship with the kingdom of darkness.

Interestingly Jesus, in His explanation of the story, told the disciples that the tares are those who “practice lawlessness”. The implication is that the tares are those people who do things outside of ways of God. This is not talking about people who become ensnared in sin and need and desire restoration in their place of brokenness. Based on other scriptures where the word is used, it indicates that this lawlessness is most likely a conscious choice to live and act outside of God’s ways, usually while still attempting to put forth a façade of goodness. For instance, Jesus told the Pharisees that they were full of lawlessness.

If it quacks like a duck, if it walks like a duck, it is a duck. Posers are still posers, regardless of their efforts to present themselves as something else. Tares are not wheat. In the same way, those whose self-centered attitude keeps people from entering the kingdom of God are neither brothers nor sisters to the children of the Kingdom.