In the New Testament there are even more symbols of the believers than of the Spirit. This indicates that as God, Christ, and the Spirit are mysterious, so the believers also are mysterious. We are mysterious because something divine has been incorporated into us. The divine element has been dispensed into us and wrought into our being. As a result, we, the believers in Christ, are mysterious. In this message we shall begin to consider the many symbols of the believers found in the New Testament.
First, the New Testament uses the wheat of life to symbolize the believers. Matthew 3:12 tells us that the Lord Jesus will separate the wheat from the chaff and gather the wheat into His barn: “He will thoroughly cleanse His threshing floor and will gather His wheat into His barn, but He will burn the chaff with unquenchable fire.” Those symbolized by wheat have life within; they are the living children of God. The Lord Jesus will baptize them in the Holy Spirit (Matt. 3:11) and gather them into His barn in heaven by rapture. In order to become children of God, we must be baptized through water into the Spirit. We need to be born of water and of the Spirit (John 3:5). First, we are baptized through water; then we are baptized in the Spirit. In this way we are regenerated to become children of God, the believers symbolized by the wheat of life, which will be gathered into the Lord’s barn. Those symbolized by chaff, like the tares in Matthew 13:24-30, are without life. The Lord will baptize them in fire, putting them into the lake of fire. Chaff in 3:12 refers to unrepentant Jews, whereas the tares in Matthew 13 refer to nominal Christians. The eternal destiny of both will be the same-perdition in the lake of fire (Matt. 13:40-42).
According to Matthew 13, the wheat of life grows with the tares, the false believers, and will be reaped into the Lord’s barn. Matthew 13:25 says, “While the men slept, his enemy came and sowed tares amidst the wheat and went away.” These men were slaves (v. 27), referring to the Lord’s slaves, mainly the apostles. When the Lord’s slaves were sleeping, not watching, His enemy, the Devil, came and sowed false believers amidst the true ones.
A tare is a kind of darnel, a weed resembling wheat. Its seeds are poisonous, producing sleepiness, nausea, convulsions, and even death. The sprout and leaves of the tares look the same as those of the wheat. It is impossible to discern one from the other until the fruit is produced. The fruit of the wheat is golden yellow, but that of the tares is black.
The wheat is the sons of the kingdom, the real believers regenerated with the divine life. The tares are the sons of the evil one, the Devil. The sons of the kingdom are the sons of God who have the divine life within them. The sons of the evil one are the false believers, believers only in name, who do not have the divine life in them.
Both the tares and the wheat grow in the field, which is the world (Matt. 13:38). Some have wrongly interpreted the field, saying that it is the church. According to this interpretation, in the church there are both false ones and real ones. But the Lord Jesus says clearly in verse 38 that the field is the world. The wheat and the tares are allowed to grow together in the world, not in the church. This means that the false believers and the true ones live together in the world. The church is not to tolerate the false believers, but both the false and the true are allowed to grow together in the world. In the world there are both true and false believers, but this must not be so in the church.
To gather up the tares from the field means to take away the false believers from the world. The Lord Jesus did not want His slaves to do this, lest while taking away the false believers from the world, the true ones might also be taken away from the world (Matt. 13:29). The Lord told His slaves not to separate the wheat from the tares but to allow them both to grow together until the harvest. This means that the false believers must be allowed to exist in the world with the true believers.
In Matthew 13:30 the Lord Jesus goes on to say, “Allow both to grow together until the harvest, and in the time of the harvest I will say to the reapers, Gather first the tares and bind them into bundles to burn them up, but the wheat bring together into My barn.” The harvest is the consummation of the age, and the reapers are angels (v. 39). At the consummation of this age, the Lord will send the angels to gather all the tares, all stumbling blocks, and those who do lawlessness, bind them into bundles, and burn them with the fire of the lake of fire (vv. 30, 40-42). Then the wheat, the righteous, will be brought together into the King’s barn, the kingdom of their Father, to shine forth as the sun (vv. 30, 43).
As believers, we may have the full assurance that we are wheat and not tares. What does it mean to be real wheat? If we realize that we are sinful, fallen, and lost and if we truly believe in the Lord Jesus Christ-that He is the Son of God incarnated to be a man, that He died on the cross for our sins, that He was resurrected physically and spiritually, and that He is now the life-giving Spirit dwelling in us as our life and everything, we are certainly the wheat of life.
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