There has been much ink spilled on how to interpret the parables of Jesus – some good and some bad. One important area of understanding and interpreting parables is the reason as to why Jesus spoke in them. Mark 4:11-12:
And he said to them, “To you has been given the secret of the kingdom of God, but for those outside everything is in parables, so that
“they may indeed see but not perceive,
and may indeed hear but not understand,
lest they should turn and be forgiven.”
Jesus used the parables to confound the minds of the “outsiders” in order to display the hardness of their hearts in sin. As the Puritans would put it, sin has rendered our minds incapable from grasping holy things – such as the kingdom and Gospel of God. Sin is the great barrier between man and God that keeps him from seeing and perceiving. It has caused our minds to miscarriage any understanding of the invisible God.
Repentence and forgiveness is the remedy given. What a beautiful picture of the Gospel! Repentence and faith which leads to the forgiveness of sins causes our hearts to not only see and perceive the mystery of the kingdom and Gospel of God, but delight in it.

