The Meaning of the Parable of the Wheat and the Tares
Written by the Scripture Guide Team
The Parable of the Wheat and the Tares is usually read as a teaching about final judgment — but its central command is "let both grow together until the harvest." The parable's primary lesson is not about what will eventually happen at the end but about what must not happen before it: the premature human attempt to purge the field.
The standard reading of the Parable of the Wheat and Tares treats it as an anticipation of final judgment: the good will be separated from the bad, the righteous from the wicked, the genuine from the counterfeit, and this separation will be accomplished at the end of the age by the angels at the Son of Man's direction. This reading is confirmed by Jesus's own interpretation of the parable, given privately to the disciples in Matthew 13:36-43. The judgment is coming; the separation will be final and complete.
But the parable's dramatic center — the moment around which the entire story turns — is not the harvest. It is the conversation between the servants and the householder after the tares appear. The servants want to act immediately: "Wilt thou then that we go and gather them up?" (13:28). The householder's answer is the parable's central teaching: "Nay; lest while ye gather up the tares, ye root up also the wheat with them. Let both grow together until the harvest" (13:29-30). The restraint is the instruction. The servants are told not to do the thing that seems most obviously right — pull the tares — because the pulling would damage the wheat.
The thesis that governs the parable is this: the authority to purge the field belongs to the angels at the appointed time, not to the servants in the present season. The servants' impulse to separate immediately is not wicked; it is the natural response of people who care about the field and recognize the damage that tares cause. The householder does not rebuke them for the impulse; he corrects the action the impulse would produce. The corrective is the parable's primary instruction: the community of the kingdom exists in a mixed field, and the premature human attempt to make it unmixed will do more damage than it prevents.
Matthew 13:24-26
Another parable put he forth unto them, saying, The kingdom of heaven is likened unto a man which sowed good seed in his field: But while men slept, his enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat, and went his way. But when the blade was sprung up, and brought forth fruit, then appeared the tares also.
The enemy's sowing happens while men sleep — in the interval of ordinary inattention, not during the period of active vigilance. The tares appear only after the wheat has grown enough to show fruit: they were present from the beginning but became distinguishable only later. This is the diagnostic problem that makes the servants' proposed purge dangerous: if the tares were invisible at first, the confidence of later identification may not be as reliable as it appears. The parable is partly about the epistemological problem of tare-identification — the difficulty of being certain enough about the distinction to justify the action.
Matthew 13:28-30
He said unto them, An enemy hath done this. The servants said unto him, Wilt thou then that we go and gather them up? But he said, Nay; lest while ye gather up the tares, ye root up also the wheat with them. Let both grow together until the harvest: and in the time of harvest I will say to the reapers, Gather ye together first the tares, and bind them in bundles to burn them: but gather the wheat into my barn.
The householder's "Nay" is the parable's theological pivot: the servants are not rebuked for caring, but they are definitively prevented from acting. The reason is specific — the rooting up of tares risks rooting up wheat. The harvest workers who will eventually separate the tares are the reapers, not the servants, and they are directed by the householder at the appointed time, not by the servants' own initiative. The letting-both-grow-together is not permanent tolerance of evil; it is the specific provision for the season before the harvest, when the separation would cause more damage than it prevents.
Matthew 13:37-39
He answered and said unto them, He that soweth the good seed is the Son of man; The field is the world; the good seed are the children of the kingdom; but the tares are the children of the wicked one; The enemy that sowed them is the devil; the harvest is the end of the world; and the reapers are the angels.
Jesus's own interpretation makes the field the world, not the church — a distinction with significant ecclesiological implications. The parable is not primarily about the mixed community of the visible church but about the mixed state of the world in the age between the first and second advents. The wheat and tares grow together in the field of the world; the final separation is the angels' task at the end of the age. This does not eliminate the church's responsibility for its own discipline (addressed elsewhere in Matthew 18), but it does specify that the parable's restraint-command is addressed to a different and larger domain.
Matthew 13:43
Then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father. Who hath ears to hear, let him hear.
The harvest outcome for the wheat — shining "as the sun in the kingdom of their Father" — is the eschatological positive that gives the letting-grow-together its context. The restraint is not permanent; the wheat is not abandoned to coexistence with the tares forever. The shining is the final state of the people who are allowed to grow rather than being prematurely uprooted. The let-grow instruction is in service of this outcome: the wheat reaches its harvest condition precisely because the premature intervention that would have damaged its root system is prevented.
1 Corinthians 4:5
Therefore judge not before the time, until the Lord come, who both will bring to light the hidden things of darkness, and will make manifest the counsels of the hearts: and then shall every man have praise of God.
Paul's "judge not before the time" is the epistolary parallel to the householder's "nay" — the restraint of the final judgment to the appointed time and the appointed Judge. The "hidden things of darkness" that the Lord will bring to light are precisely the things that the servants in the parable cannot see: the root system, the interior condition, the question of whether what appears to be a tare might have wheat underneath. The premature judgment that operates on visible appearances is the action the parable corrects; Paul's instruction specifies why — the hidden things are not yet visible.
Romans 14:4
Who art thou that judgest another man's servant? to his own master he standeth or falleth. Yea, he shall be holden up: for God is able to make him stand.
Paul's "to his own master he standeth or falleth" applies the parable's logic to the specific context of the Roman community's judgment of one another over practices. The servant is accountable to the master, not to the other servants — which is the exact relationship the parable establishes: the field belongs to the householder, the servants serve at his direction, and the sorting is his task at his appointed time. The servants who would gather up the tares are doing exactly what Paul diagnoses: judging another man's servant, which belongs to the master's authority.
2 Timothy 2:19-20
Nevertheless the foundation of God standeth sure, having this seal, The Lord knoweth them that are his. And, Let every one that nameth the name of Christ depart from iniquity. Flee also youthful lusts: but follow righteousness, faith, charity, peace, with them that call on the Lord out of a pure heart.
"The Lord knoweth them that are his" is the parable's epistemological point reframed as comfort: the uncertainty about who is wheat and who is tare at the human level does not reflect uncertainty at the divine level. The Lord knows His own — with the full knowledge that the servants do not have and the angels will exercise at the harvest. The instruction to "depart from iniquity" is the positive response to the parable: since we cannot infallibly sort the field, we can pursue the character that marks the wheat, and trust the One who knows the difference to make the final identification.
Matthew 18:15-17
Moreover if thy brother shall trespass against thee, go and tell him his fault between thee and him alone: if he shall hear thee, thou hast gained thy brother. But if he will not hear thee, then take with thee one or two more, that in the mouth of two or three witnesses every word may be established. And if he shall neglect to hear them, tell it unto the church: but if he neglect to hear the church, let him be as an heathen man and a publican.
Matthew 18's church discipline instruction exists in the same Gospel as the wheat-and-tares parable, and they do not contradict each other. The tares parable addresses the world-field and the eschatological judgment; Matthew 18 addresses the specific case of sin within the community and the process of pastoral correction. The two together establish the distinction: the judgment of who belongs in the world-field is not the church's task; the pastoral process of addressing sin within the community is. The parable does not eliminate church discipline; it prevents the church from overreaching into the eschatological sorting that belongs to the angels.
Deep Dive
The Servants' Error and Why the Householder Allows It
The servants in the parable are not villains. They are the people who care about the field's integrity, who recognize what the enemy has done, and who want to act on behalf of the householder's investment. Their question — "Wilt thou that we go and gather them up?" — is the question of genuinely concerned stewards. The householder does not rebuke them for asking; he instructs them in the limits of their role. The error is not malice but overreach: they are proposing to do at the servant level what belongs at the master level.
The restraint the householder imposes is itself a form of trust: by not allowing the servants to purge the field, he is extending to the wheat a protection that the servants' well-intentioned action would have removed. The wheat that would have been damaged in the servants' pulling is the wheat that the householder is preserving by holding the servants back. The restraint is not indifference to the tares; the harvest will come, and the tares will be bound and burned. The restraint is the specific provision for the interval when the separating action would do more harm than good.
The Epistemological Humility of the Parable
The tares — likely darnel (Lolium temulentum) in the original agricultural context — were notorious in Palestinian farming precisely because they were indistinguishable from wheat at the early stages of growth. The roots of wheat and darnel intertwine as they develop, which means that even after the tares become identifiable above ground, pulling them risks pulling the adjacent wheat along with them. The householder is not being naive about the damage tares cause; he is being precise about the limits of the servants' ability to separate them cleanly.
The epistemological implication is significant: the confidence that the servants feel about which plants are tares may exceed the accuracy of their identification. The plants that look like tares from the servants' vantage point may have wheat root systems. The plants that look like wheat may have tare roots. The final reapers bring knowledge to the harvest that the servants in the growing season do not have. Paul's "judge not before the time, until the Lord come, who both will bring to light the hidden things of darkness" (1 Corinthians 4:5) is the parable's epistemological lesson restated: the hidden things that are not yet visible are precisely what the final judgment will reveal, and acting on what is visible now — before the hidden things are disclosed — is the servants' specific error.
The Field Is the World
Jesus's interpretation of the parable specifies that "the field is the world" — not the church. This has been a significant point of theological debate across church history, particularly during periods when the church has claimed the authority to purge society of what it has identified as the tares. Augustine's use of the parable to argue against the Donatists, who wanted to maintain a rigorously pure church, correctly distinguished between the mixed community of the visible church and the eschatological harvest. But the parable's field is even larger than the visible church: it is the world, the entire human community in the age between the advents.
This means the parable's restraint command has implications not only for ecclesiology but for the church's engagement with the broader social and political order. The impulse to purge society of what the church identifies as tares — through coercive political action, through the forced imposition of religious standards on the general population — is the servants' error applied to the world-field. The world-field contains both wheat and tares; the final separation belongs to the angels at the end of the age. The church's task in the world-field is to be wheat, not to harvest before the harvest time.
Patience as Theological Virtue
The let-grow-together instruction is a command to patience in the specific form that the parable requires: the patience of the person who can see the tares, recognizes the damage they do, and refrains from the purging action that the impulse would drive. This is not passivity or indifference; it is the active restraint of the impulse out of trust in the householder's judgment about the timing and method of separation.
The virtue the parable develops is not the general virtue of being unconcerned about wrong; it is the specific virtue of trusting the One who owns the field to manage the harvest at His own time and in His own way. The servants who practice this patience are not pretending the tares are not there; they are restraining themselves from an action that would damage the wheat in the name of removing the tares. The patience is in service of the wheat's growth, not in service of the tares' comfort. But it requires the recognition that the servants are not the harvesters, and the harvest time is not now.
Practical Application
- Bring the parable's epistemological humility to the current impulse to identify who is and who is not genuinely Christian in a specific community context: examine whether the confidence of the identification exceeds the accuracy of the information available. The darnel that looks like wheat and the wheat whose roots are entangled with darnel roots are both present in the field. The question is whether the specific action the identification would produce — the pulling, the excluding — could damage wheat along with the tares it targets.
- Apply the "field is the world" clarification to the distinction between church discipline and social coercion: the Matthew 18 process addresses sin within the covenant community; the parable's restraint addresses the world-field. Church discipline within the community according to Matthew 18's process is not the servants' error; applying church-level standards to the general population of the world-field is.
- Use 1 Corinthians 4:5's "judge not before the time" as the practical expression of the parable's restraint: identify the specific person or situation about which a premature final verdict has been delivered — the person written off as a tare — and practice leaving the hidden things to the One who will bring them to light. The verdict that feels final may be operating on visible-only information.
- Examine the servants' impulse within yourself: the care about the field's integrity and desire to act on behalf of the householder are legitimate. The parable does not ask the servants to stop caring; it redirects the care from sorting others to growing. The positive action is the redirection of energy from purging to becoming unmistakably wheat.
- Study 2 Timothy 2:19-20's "the Lord knoweth them that are his" as the comfort that makes patience possible: the uncertainty at the human level does not reflect divine uncertainty. Practice the specific release of the cases that feel most pressing — the people whose status seems most ambiguous — into the hands of the One who knows perfectly what the servants cannot.
Common Questions
Does the parable mean the church should never exercise any form of discipline?
No. Matthew 18:15-17's church discipline process and 1 Corinthians 5's instruction to remove the immoral person from the community exist in the same New Testament as the wheat-and-tares parable. The parable does not eliminate church discipline; it specifies a different domain and a different concern. The parable addresses the world-field and the eschatological judgment; church discipline addresses specific, visible, unrepentant sin within the covenant community through a specific pastoral process. The parable's restraint prevents the overreach of claiming the angels' eschatological sorting authority; it does not prevent the church from exercising the pastoral responsibility for its own community that Matthew 18 establishes.
If the field is the world and not the church, why do so many interpret the parable as being about the church?
The history of interpretation has been significantly shaped by Augustine's use of the parable against the Donatists, who demanded a purified community. Augustine's reading was theologically productive and generated a long tradition of reading the parable ecclesiologically. Jesus's own interpretation specifies the field as the world, but the pastoral application to the visible church's mixed membership follows naturally because the logic is the same: the authority to make the final separation belongs to the divine Judge at the appointed time, not to human servants in the present season.
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