Honors Reading Room

A word before you read. Richard Chenevix Trench (1807–1886) was an Anglican scholar who later became Archbishop of Dublin. His Notes on the Parables was read by pastors for generations, and it is still one of the most thoughtful older books on the subject. As you read, compare his counsel with the guidelines you learned in Unit 1. You will find that many of them are not new.

1. What a Parable Is and Is Not

Trench began by distinguishing the parable from its neighbors. A fable, he observed, usually makes trees or animals speak and act like people, and it generally teaches practical prudence: how to get along in the world, how to avoid being fooled. A parable, by contrast, keeps to what could really happen in nature or human life, and it aims higher, at the relationship between people and God. That is why Jotham's talking trees in Judges 9 read so differently from the sower or the prodigal son.

A proverb is a single compressed saying; a parable is a picture that unfolds. And an allegory, in Trench's view, weaves its meaning into the story itself, so that the names and actions already tell you what they stand for, as in John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress. A parable keeps the story and its meaning side by side, so the listener must make the connection. The story of the lost coin is simply a story about a woman and a coin until the hearer realizes it is about God and a sinner.

2. Why the Lord Taught in Parables

Trench believed that the world of nature and ordinary life is full of likenesses to spiritual truth, because the same God made both. The seed, the vine, the shepherd, and the father are not random pictures that Jesus happened to borrow. They were created in a world meant to point beyond itself. When Jesus spoke of sowing and harvest, He was opening the meaning that God had already placed in the world.

He also saw several purposes in the parables. They attract the listener, because everyone loves a story. They preserve the truth, since a story remembered carries its lesson for years, even before it is fully understood. And they test the hearer. To those who are hungry for truth, a parable becomes a door; to those who are indifferent, it remains only a story. In this way the parable judges the listener even as he listens to it. This is close to what we saw in Unit 1 about Mark 4:11–12.

3. Trench's Counsel for Interpreters

Trench offered practical counsel that still holds. First, grasp the central truth the parable was told to teach, and let every detail be read in its light. Second, look for the occasion of the parable, since the setting often explains the whole. Third, remember that the Lord's own explanations of the sower and the wheat and tares are models of how to interpret the rest. Fourth, an interpretation should be natural, not forced; if we must strain and twist to make a detail fit, we have probably gone too far.

He also warned that parables should not be made the first foundation of doctrine. A parable can illustrate and confirm truths taught plainly elsewhere in Scripture, but it is unwise to build a doctrine chiefly on a detail of a story. That is sound advice when we come to hard verses such as the outer darkness in the parable of the talents or the details of the rich man and Lazarus.

4. Where Trench Went Further than We Would

Trench lived before the modern debates about allegory, and in practice he was more willing than most evangelical scholars today to find meaning in the smaller details of a parable. He admired the church fathers and sometimes followed their spiritual readings, including readings of the Good Samaritan that saw the inn and the innkeeper as pictures of the church and its ministry. Modern interpreters, as we learned in Unit 1, are more cautious.

Yet Trench's instincts were usually sound. He loved the parables, he read them in the light of the whole Bible, and he never forgot that they point to Christ. His book is a reminder that careful reading is not a modern invention. Every generation of faithful readers has tried to hear what the Lord was saying, and we stand on their shoulders.

5. Applying Trench's Counsel: The Prodigal Son

Trench's rules become clearer when we try them on a familiar parable. Take the prodigal son. First, grasp the central truth. The parable was told to show the Father's joy over a returning sinner and to expose the elder brother's refusal to share that joy. Every detail must be read in that light. Second, look for the occasion. Luke 15:1–2 tells us: the Pharisees were grumbling that Jesus received sinners and ate with them. The elder brother is therefore not an afterthought; he is the point of the story for those who first heard it.

Third, let the Lord's own explanations guide us. Jesus does not explain this parable, but He explains its two companions with the same refrain: there is joy in heaven over one sinner who repents. That refrain tells us what the father's feast means. Fourth, keep the interpretation natural. The robe, the ring, and the sandals clearly show that the son is restored to full sonship; that reading arises naturally from the culture. But if we begin to argue that the ring is the Holy Spirit, the sandals are the gospel of peace, and the fatted calf is the Lord's Supper, we have moved from interpretation to invention. Each of those truths may be taught elsewhere in Scripture, but this parable does not teach them.

Finally, Trench's warning about doctrine applies here too. The parable does not mention the cross, and some have argued from that silence that the father forgives without any atonement. Trench's counsel answers that argument. A parable is not meant to contain the whole of Christian doctrine. It shows one great truth vividly, and the rest of Scripture fills in the picture. The father's welcome is real, and it is costly, as the cross makes clear. Reading the parables with Trench's balance protects us from both extremes: from treating every detail as a code, and from forcing a single parable to answer questions it was never told to answer.

A CTS digest of Richard Chenevix Trench, Notes on the Parables of Our Lord (first published 1841; public domain).

A word before you read. Matthew Henry, an English Puritan pastor, wrote a devotional commentary that preachers have used for three hundred years. Keil and Delitzsch, two German Lutheran scholars, wrote a careful technical commentary on the Hebrew text. Together they represent two ways of reading the prophets: the warm heart of the pastor and the close eye of the scholar. This digest follows the Old Testament parables of Units 2 through 6 through their eyes.

1. The Vineyard: Grace and Its Wordplay

Matthew Henry loved to draw out the application of Isaiah's Song of the Vineyard. He dwelt on how much God had done for His people, and on the question, "What more could have been done?" as a searching word to every church that enjoys great privileges. For Henry, the vineyard was a mirror for his own congregation: the more God gives, the more fruit He rightly expects.

Keil and Delitzsch paid close attention to the Hebrew. They drew attention to the wordplay in Isaiah 5:7, where God looked for mishpat, justice, and found mispach, bloodshed, and for tsedaqah, righteousness, and heard tse'aqah, a cry. The prophet's art, they showed, was part of his message: the words sound nearly alike, just as Judah looked righteous from a distance.

2. The Potter and the Plumb Line: Sovereignty and Response

Both commentaries saw in Jeremiah 18 a balance that later readers sometimes lose. God is truly sovereign, as the potter is over the clay. Yet in the very same passage God declares that His announced judgments and blessings depend on how a nation responds (Jeremiah 18:7–10). The older commentators held these truths together without embarrassment. God's threats are real warnings, not empty words, and His invitations to repent are sincere.

In Amos 7 they noticed the progression of the visions. Twice Amos prays and the Lord relents; at the plumb line he no longer intercedes. Henry drew a pastoral lesson: God is patient and hears the prayers of His servants, but there comes a point when a people's sin has made the measuring line the only fitting answer. That is a warning to every church not to presume on God's patience.

3. Nathan's Wisdom

Matthew Henry admired the wisdom of Nathan's method. A direct accusation might have provoked the king's pride or anger; a story allowed David to judge the case fairly before he knew it was his own. Henry drew the lesson that those who must reprove others should do it with both faithfulness and prudence: faithfully, because sin must be named; prudently, because the goal is repentance, not merely victory in an argument.

He also noticed the severity of David's verdict. David was quick to condemn the rich man, even beyond what the law required, before he saw himself. Henry observed how common it is for people to be harsh judges of others' sins while blind to their own, which is exactly the trap a parable springs.

4. Hosea: A Hard Command and a Great Love

Older commentators disagreed about Hosea's marriage, just as modern ones do. Some believed it must have taken place only in vision, because they could not imagine God commanding a prophet to marry an unfaithful woman. Others held that it was a real marriage and that its very scandal was the point. As we saw in Unit 6, most evangelical interpreters today take the account as real events, while recognizing the difficulty.

All of them agreed on the heart of the message. Israel's idolatry was spiritual adultery, and God's love was stronger than Israel's sin. Henry was especially moved by Hosea 11:8, where God's heart churns within Him and He cannot give Ephraim up. For the classic commentators, as for us, Hosea was ultimately a picture of the gospel: the Husband who pays the price to bring His unfaithful bride home.

5. Reading the Prophets' Parables as Christians

The classic commentators read the Old Testament as Christian pastors, and they were not embarrassed to trace its lines forward to Christ. Their approach offers a model, if we use it carefully. The first question is always what the prophet meant for Israel in his own day. Isaiah's vineyard was a real indictment of Judah's injustice. Jeremiah's potter was a real call for Judah to repent before Babylon came. Amos's plumb line was a real sentence on the northern kingdom. A preacher who skips this step turns the prophets into a collection of devotional pictures.

The second question is how the New Testament itself takes up these images. Here the connections are not invented; they are in the text. Jesus retold Isaiah's vineyard in the parable of the tenants. Paul took up Jeremiah's potter in Romans 9. Paul and Peter both quoted Hosea's reversal of the children's names to describe the Gentiles becoming God's people. James quoted Amos's promise of the rebuilt tabernacle of David at the Jerusalem council. The prophets' parables do not end in the Old Testament.

The third question is how the prophet's message reaches us. The older commentators applied these texts with great directness. Henry never let his readers observe Judah's sins from a comfortable distance. If God looked for fruit in His vineyard, He looks for fruit in His church. If He measured Israel with a plumb line, He measures us. If He loved unfaithful Israel, He loves unfaithful believers who return to Him. That is the strength of the old pastoral commentaries: they read the text carefully and then insisted that it be obeyed. A modern student who adds today's historical knowledge to their warm application will be well equipped to preach the prophets' parables.

These three questions also guard against two errors. One error reads Christ into every detail of an Old Testament story, as though the prophets had no message for their own time. The other refuses to read the prophets in the light of Christ at all, as though the New Testament had not already done so. The classic commentators, at their best, avoided both. They let the prophets speak to Israel first, and then they followed the lines the apostles themselves drew.

A CTS digest drawing on Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible (1706–1714), and C. F. Keil and F. Delitzsch, Commentary on the Old Testament (German original 1861–1875); both public domain.

A word before you read. Alexander Balmain Bruce (1831–1899) was a Scottish pastor and professor, best known for The Training of the Twelve. In The Parabolic Teaching of Christ he organized Jesus' parables into three great families. His arrangement is a helpful way to review this whole course and to see how the parables fit together.

1. Three Families of Parables

Bruce divided Jesus' parables into three groups. The first he called theoretic parables, those that teach the nature of the kingdom of God: how it comes, how it grows, and what it is worth. The second he called evangelic parables, those that reveal the grace of God toward sinners. The third he called prophetic parables, those that speak of judgment and of the accountability of all who hear. No classification is perfect, and some parables belong to more than one group, but Bruce's arrangement helps a student see the whole landscape at once.

2. The Parables of the Kingdom

In the theoretic group stand the sower, the wheat and the tares, the mustard seed, the leaven, the hidden treasure, the pearl, and the dragnet, the parables of Units 7 and 8. Bruce emphasized that Jesus was correcting false expectations. Many in Israel expected the kingdom to arrive suddenly, in visible power, destroying the wicked at once. Jesus taught instead that the kingdom comes like seed: it depends on how it is received, it grows quietly, it begins small, it lives for a time among weeds, and it will be complete only at the harvest. Bruce saw great comfort in this for discouraged workers. The smallness of the beginning is no argument against the greatness of the end.

3. The Parables of Grace

The evangelic parables were Bruce's special love. Here belong the lost sheep, the lost coin, and the lost son; the Pharisee and the tax collector; the laborers in the vineyard; and, in its own way, the unforgiving servant. Bruce insisted that these parables were told in defense of Jesus' actual conduct. He really did eat with tax collectors and sinners, and the religious leaders really did complain. The parables explain why: because God Himself seeks the lost and rejoices when they are found.

Bruce also saw clearly the danger of the elder brother. The parables of grace are aimed as much at the respectable as at the rebellious. Those who think they need little grace are always tempted to resent grace given to others. The laborers who worked all day and the Pharisee in the temple are warnings that religious people can stand very near God's grace and still refuse to rejoice in it.

4. The Parables of Judgment

The prophetic parables include the wicked tenants, the wedding banquet, the talents, and the other parables of the Olivet Discourse, together with the builders who face the storm. Bruce noticed that many of these were spoken in the last days of Jesus' ministry, in Jerusalem, as the conflict with the leaders came to a head. They speak of privilege and responsibility, of long patience and final accounting.

Bruce did not set grace and judgment against each other. The same Lord who told of the father running to his son also told of the owner who comes to settle accounts. Grace is not an excuse for carelessness; it is the very reason for faithfulness. For the preacher, Bruce's three families are a reminder to preach the whole counsel of the parables: the nature of the kingdom, the wideness of God's mercy, and the certainty of the day of reckoning.

5. Using Bruce's Families to Plan Your Preaching

Bruce's three families of parables are not only a way of organizing a book. They can help a pastor plan a balanced year of preaching. Many preachers have favorite parables and return to them again and again. One pastor preaches the prodigal son every few months but has never preached the talents. Another loves the parables of judgment and seldom preaches grace. Bruce's scheme exposes the imbalance.

A pastor might plan a series in three movements. The first movement, drawn from the kingdom parables, would help the church understand what God is doing in the world: the word sown, the kingdom growing quietly, the wheat and weeds together, the treasure worth everything. The second movement, drawn from the parables of grace, would open the heart of the Father: the lost things found, the forgiven debt, the tax collector justified, the latecomers welcomed. The third movement, drawn from the parables of judgment, would call the church to faithfulness: the tenants, the talents, the builders facing the storm.

Each movement needs the others. Kingdom without grace becomes a program; grace without judgment becomes sentimental; judgment without grace becomes harsh. Bruce understood that Jesus held all three together. The same Lord who welcomed sinners warned the religious leaders, and the same Lord who warned of the outer darkness promised the joy of the Master to the faithful.

Bruce also reminds preachers that the parables were spoken into real conflict. Jesus did not tell them in a quiet classroom. He told them to crowds, to critics, and to disciples who did not yet understand. A preacher who remembers this will not preach the parables as pleasant stories. He will preach them as Jesus did, to people who need to be moved: the complacent, the discouraged, the self-righteous, and the lost.

A CTS digest of Alexander Balmain Bruce, The Parabolic Teaching of Christ (1882; public domain).

A word before you read. Unit 1 gave a brief overview of how the church has read the parables. This reading tells that story more fully, as a conversation across centuries. Notice that the same questions keep returning: How many details carry meaning? How do we keep the parable tied to Jesus' own purpose? And how do we let it speak to our own day?

1. Alexandria and the Search for Hidden Meaning

In the third century, Origen of Alexandria taught that Scripture has layers of meaning, like a body, a soul, and a spirit. The plain story was the body; beneath it lay deeper spiritual meanings. When Origen preached on the Good Samaritan, he passed along an interpretation he credited to an earlier elder: the wounded man is Adam, Jerusalem is paradise, Jericho is the world, the robbers are hostile powers, the priest is the law, the Levite the prophets, the Samaritan Christ, the inn the church, and the Samaritan's promise to return the second coming of Christ.

About two centuries later Augustine developed the same approach, as we saw in Unit 1. These readings were not foolish. They were the work of men who loved Christ and wanted to find Him on every page. But they often replaced the question Jesus was answering with a system of doctrine the interpreter brought to the text.

2. Antioch and a Voice for Restraint

Not everyone in the early church read this way. In Antioch a different tradition stressed the historical and plain sense of Scripture. Its most famous preacher, John Chrysostom, whose eloquence earned him the name "Golden Mouth," warned his congregation not to pry into every word of a parable. When he preached on the laborers in the vineyard, he told his hearers that they should grasp the purpose for which the parable was spoken and not be anxious to find a meaning in every detail. Chrysostom still preached Christ from the parables, but he kept his eye on the main point.

Through the Middle Ages, however, the allegorical approach generally prevailed. Teachers spoke of four senses of Scripture: the literal, the allegorical, the moral, and the heavenly. A parable could be mined at every level. The result was often rich devotion, but also great uncertainty, since each interpreter could find what he wished.

3. The Reformers Return to the Plain Sense

The Reformers insisted that Scripture must first be read in its plain, natural sense. John Calvin, commenting on the Good Samaritan, acknowledged that the allegorical reading of Adam, the church, and the innkeeper was admired as clever, but he rejected it. He said it had nothing to do with Christ's meaning, and that we must have more reverence for Scripture than to reshape its sense at our pleasure. The parable, he said, was told to show that the name "neighbor" extends to every person, since the whole human race is bound together.

Luther and Calvin did not always avoid allegory themselves, but they changed the direction of interpretation. From their time forward, Protestant preachers increasingly asked first what Jesus meant to His original hearers before asking how the parable applies today.

4. The Modern Conversation and a Balanced Path

At the end of the nineteenth century Adolf Jülicher swung to the opposite extreme, teaching that each parable makes only one general point and that allegorical details are foreign to Jesus' teaching. In the twentieth century C. H. Dodd and Joachim Jeremias insisted that the parables be heard in their setting in Jesus' ministry as announcements of the kingdom. Later scholars studied the parables as works of literary art, and others, like Kenneth Bailey, opened the village culture behind them. Evangelical scholars such as Craig Blomberg sought a balance: a parable usually makes one main point for each main character, and some details carry meaning when the text itself signals it.

The long history teaches humility. Every generation has both helped and hindered the church's reading of the parables. The balanced path this course has followed is not new. It joins Chrysostom's restraint, the Reformers' plain sense, and modern attention to setting and culture, while keeping the ancient conviction that the parables lead us to Christ.

5. What This History Means for the Pulpit

Why should a pastor in a small church in Mexico or Cuba care about Origen, Chrysostom, Calvin, and Jülicher? Because every preacher stands somewhere in this conversation, whether he knows it or not. When a preacher turns the oil and wine of the Good Samaritan into the Holy Spirit and the blood of Christ, he is following Origen. When he insists that the laborers in the vineyard teach one main lesson, he is following Chrysostom. When he asks what Jesus meant to the lawyer before asking what the story means today, he is following Calvin. Knowing the history helps him choose his path deliberately rather than by accident.

The history also offers practical tests for a sermon. Would Jesus' first hearers have recognized this meaning? If not, the preacher should be cautious. Does the interpretation come from the text, or from a system brought to it? Even true doctrines can be read into the wrong passage. Does the sermon still lead to Christ? The Reformers' plain sense was never meant to produce Christless moral lectures. And does the sermon ask for a response? The parables were told to change people, not merely to inform them.

Finally, the history is a reason for humility and charity. Great saints have disagreed about how to read the parables. Augustine's allegories nourished the faith of millions, even when they missed Jesus' point. Modern scholars have corrected old errors and made new ones. A pastor who knows this will hold his own interpretations with conviction but not arrogance, and he will listen respectfully to brothers and sisters who read a parable differently. He will also be grateful: across twenty centuries, the church has never stopped listening to the stories Jesus told.

That gratitude is a fitting end to a course on the parables. We do not read them alone. We read them with Origen's love for Christ, Chrysostom's restraint, Calvin's reverence for the plain sense, and the careful historical work of modern scholars, all in the company of the Holy Spirit, who inspired the parables and still opens them to those who come and ask.

A CTS digest drawing on Origen, Homilies on Luke (3rd century); Augustine, Questions on the Gospels (c. 400); John Chrysostom, Homilies on Matthew (c. 390); and John Calvin, Harmony of the Gospels (1555), all public domain; with later scholarship summarized in the CTS unit texts.

A word before you read. Charles Haddon Spurgeon (1834–1892) pastored in London for nearly forty years and was called "the Prince of Preachers." His sermons were printed every week and sold around the world, and many are available in Spanish. He preached on the parables again and again. This reading looks at how he did it, as a bridge to the WiseSpeak capstone in Unit 15.

1. Every Road Leads to Christ

Spurgeon once told of an old minister who advised a young preacher that, just as from every village in England there is a road to London, so from every text in Scripture there is a road to Christ. The young man's task was to find that road and take it. Spurgeon lived by that counsel, and nowhere more than in the parables. When he preached the lost sheep, he spoke of the Shepherd who laid down His life. When he preached the prodigal son, he lingered on the father running, and he told his hearers that this is how God receives the sinner who comes home.

This is not the same as the old allegorizing. Spurgeon did not turn every detail into a symbol of Christ. He found the road from the parable's main point to the gospel, and he walked it plainly, so that no one could leave the service without hearing how to be saved.

2. Plain Words for Plain People

Spurgeon's congregation included shopkeepers, servants, factory workers, and the poor of London, as well as the educated. He believed that Jesus' own parables showed how to speak to such people. Jesus used farms, lamps, coins, and weddings; Spurgeon used the streets, trades, and homes of Victorian London. He spoke in short, vivid sentences and was not ashamed of homely comparisons.

In his lectures to young preachers he compared illustrations to windows that let light into a building. A house needs windows, he said, but a house made entirely of windows would not stand. Illustrations should serve the truth, not take its place. That is the same principle behind the CTS standard that illustrations make up only a small part of our teaching. The parable itself is already the great illustration; the preacher's own stories are windows beside it, not a replacement for it.

3. Pressing for a Verdict

Spurgeon never preached a parable as a lecture. He believed Jesus told parables to move people to act, and he preached them the same way. He addressed his hearers directly: the careless, the anxious, the backslider, and the self-righteous. After describing the soils, he asked which ground his hearers were. After the prodigal's return, he urged the wanderer to rise and go to the Father that very day. He treated the parable as Nathan treated his story: a mirror held up until the listener saw himself.

This directness is one of the most important lessons for preachers of the parables. The story must be explained, but it must also be applied, and the application must reach the will. The WiseSpeak objective, stated as an action, serves the same goal.

4. Learning from Spurgeon's Weaknesses Too

Spurgeon was not a flawless interpreter. Like many preachers of his time, he sometimes spiritualized details of a parable more than the text warranted, drawing lessons from a lamp or a coin that Jesus probably never intended. His great strengths, his love for Christ and his passion for souls, sometimes carried him past the careful reading this course has urged.

A wise student learns from both. Take Spurgeon's heart: his Christ-centered focus, his plain speech, his urgency for decision. Add the discipline of careful interpretation: the setting, the main characters, the surprise, the ending, and the restraint that refuses to force every detail. Put the two together, and you will preach the parables in a way that is both faithful to the text and alive in the pulpit.

5. Spurgeon's Pulpit and the WiseSpeak Method

Spurgeon did not use the vocabulary of WiseSpeak, but his best parable sermons show many of the same marks. He usually announced a clear subject early, so his hearers knew where he was going. His divisions were often parallel and easy to remember, and he was fond of arranging them so that each point could be summed up in a single word. His sermons had unity: they were about one thing, pressed home from several sides. And they had movement: they built toward an appeal rather than wandering to a stop.

At the same time, WiseSpeak adds disciplines that even Spurgeon did not always practice. The probing question forces the preacher to ask what exactly the parable answers, which guards against drifting into a favorite theme. The keyword tests whether the divisions truly belong together. The objective, stated as an action, keeps the appeal specific. A student who combines Spurgeon's warmth with these disciplines will preach with both heart and clarity.

Spurgeon's own preparation is also instructive. He was a man of prayer and wide reading. He studied the text, read the commentators, and then, as he often said, sought the Lord for the message that his people needed that week. He believed that the Holy Spirit alone could make a sermon effective, and he urged his students to pray over their sermons as much as they studied them. That is a fitting word for anyone preparing to preach the parables, which Jesus said the Father reveals to those who come humbly and ask.

The final unit of this course asks you to build a parable sermon of your own. As you do, remember the example of the London pastor. Study the text carefully. Find the road to Christ. Speak plainly. Let your illustrations be windows, not walls. Press for a response. And above all, pray, because the same Lord who told the parables must open the ears of those who hear them.

A CTS digest drawing on Charles Haddon Spurgeon's published sermons in The New Park Street Pulpit and The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit (1855–1917) and his Lectures to My Students (1875–1894), all public domain.