and the field is the world; and the good seed, these are the sons of the kingdom, but the darnel are the sons of the evil [one];
Here the Lord stops speaking in pictures. He hands His disciples the key and names each part of the parable of the weeds. Two of those definitions carry the whole chapter: the field is the world, and the two crops growing in it are two families of people.
The word translated "world" here is not the same word used a few verses later for the end of the age. One writer warns against flattening the two together:
If we treated these words as having the same meaning, we would miss the thought in some of the passages. For instance, in Matthew 13:38, "The field is the world" means the material world with people living in it. In Matthew 13:40, "The end of the world" is really "the end of the age" — the period that will close when the Lord appears.
In the first parable of the chapter the seed was the word. Here the seed is people, planted in the world by Christ — and the enemy copies His work:
Here the seed is not strictly the word. It is the children of the kingdom, brought into the world by Christ. They have their life — their moral existence — from Him. We sow the word. But here the great fact is that the Son of Man brings His own into the world. It is a work which He begins… When He has done that, Satan does the same, active in evil on the ground where good has been done.
The title itself carries a promise. It also marks off one kind of person from another:
In the parable of the tares, Scripture calls saints "sons of the kingdom" (Matt. 13:38), for they will certainly inherit it. Mere men of the world it calls "sons of this world" (Luke 16:8), who in their generation are "wiser than the sons of light."
Israel held the title only as a nation. Once the King was present on earth, it became real in individuals:
The King was truly on earth, gathering souls around Himself by the word of the kingdom, the seed the sower spread abroad. All who heard and received His word became in reality what Israel was only as a nation: true sons of the kingdom.
The weeds are not everyone in the world who is evil. They are a narrower group, planted right where the wheat is:
The tares mean, not all the children of the wicked one, but only those sown among the wheat, as counterfeit and false plants. They are hypocrites — people of every kind who falsely claim to be Christians, whether they know it or not.
Behind the two seeds stand two persons, deliberately set against each other:
The Son of Man and the wicked one, as others have well remarked, are opposed to each other… Scripture always shows Satan acting as the great personal opponent of the Son. The Son of God has come "that He might destroy the works of the devil." The devil uses the world to entangle people and to stir up the flesh, working on the heart's natural liking for present honour and ease.
The Lord said "world," not "church." So this parable gives no ground for tolerating open evil in a congregation:
In His wonderful discourse in Matthew 13, our Lord teaches that the wheat and the tares are to grow together. Yes — but where? In the church? No. They grow "in the field," and He tells us that "the field is the world." To confuse these two is to falsify the whole Christian position and to do away with all godly discipline in the assembly.
That leaves one thing forbidden and another commanded:
They were not to be rooted out of the field. The church was to put them out when they showed themselves to be wicked persons. The church and the kingdom are quite distinct, though the one may be said to be inside the other. The limits of the kingdom stretch far beyond the limits of the true church of God… The tares are to be put away from the Lord's table, but not rooted out of the field. The church was not to use worldly punishments in dealing with offenders. But the very thing the Lord is here guarding His disciples against came to pass, as the long list of martyrs so painfully shows.
Commentators differ on how far "sons of the kingdom" reaches. Most read it as true believers. F. W. Grant argues the phrase is broader, pointing out that the same words in Matthew 8:12 describe people cast into outer darkness — so, he says, the term "is not interchangeable with those born again."
- Field. The Lord defines it Himself: the inhabited world, not the church, and not the end of the age.
- Seed. The first parable sowed the word; here that word stands up as people. Christ brings His own into the world, and they draw their life from Him.
- Sons. The title marks out heirs. Israel held it only as a nation; now it belongs to all who hear and receive the word of the kingdom.
- Counterfeits. The weeds are people, not ideas. They look like wheat, and the personal enemy of the Son of Man planted them.
- Restraint. The field is the world, so believers do not uproot. The church is not the field, so they still put away open evil.
and the enemy who has sowed it is the devil; and the harvest is [the] completion of [the] age, and the harvestmen are angels.
Here the Lord explains His own parable. In one verse He names three things: who sowed the weeds, when the field is cleared, and who clears it. Each answer takes away a comfort we might want. The evil was deliberate, the cure waits, and the hands that bring it are not ours.
The enemy had a motive and a method. One writer traces how he worked — not by open attack, but by copying:
The devil is the enemy, and the sowing of the weeds was his countermove. He could not stop the kingdom of heaven from being set up in the world where he was the prince. So he went to work at once, with great cunning, to oppose it and spoil it. He opposed it by imitating it.
Two different words stand behind "world" in verse 38 and "the end of the age" here. Mixing them up changes the whole picture:
"The world" in verse 38 must not be confused with "the world" in verse 39. They are totally distinct words and things. "The world" in verse 39 means the age. It is a course of time, and not a geographical sphere. Verse 38 means the sphere, the place where the gospel goes out. Verse 39 means the span of time in which the gospel is either advancing or held back by the enemy's power. The harvest is the completion of the age, that is, of the present era. It is the time while the Lord is absent and the gospel goes out over the earth... The Lord shows here that an end will come to the present sending out of the word of the kingdom, and that a day is coming when the effects of Satan's work must be fully developed and judged.
Older English versions read "the end of the world" here. Commentators call that a mistranslation, and point to the context: the Lord cleans the field, He does not destroy it:
I repeat that the end of the age is not the end of the world. The phrase "end of the world" in Matthew 13:39 is a clear error of translation... Far from being the end of the world, the very context proves the contrary. The Lord sends His angels and clears out of the field or world what is offensive to Him. The evil is judged, the scandals removed... So this is far from being the end of the "world". The harvest that closes this age will be the start of the world going on in blessing under the displayed kingdom of the Son of Man.
The servants in the parable wanted to do this work themselves. Naming the reapers as angels answers them, and settles what a disciple may do about evil in the meantime:
The servant wished to do the reapers' (the angels') work. Not so; the angels are the executioners of God's wrath. So this teaches us that the work of judgment is not the business of Christ's disciples while He is absent and rejected. We are not told to root out heresy and evil men by the strong arm of the sword. To do so is to leave the proper place of the Christian. We are to bear testimony to Christ and against the evil, most certainly. But we are to leave judgment in the hands of God, in the hands of Jesus.
The clearing waits for the end of the age, so the mixture stands. Can the damage be repaired in the meantime, and the first order of things set up again?
The Lord settles this question plainly and with authority, and His answer is no. He tells us that nothing will remedy the evil for the whole length of this age. The time of harvest — that is, the judgment — will root it out, and until then the evil goes on. Remember, though: separating from the evil, and enjoying the presence of Christ with the "two or three," is quite a different thing from claiming to set that order up again now that the evil has come in.
What men's hands were unfit to do, angels will do at a stroke. The same moment that removes the weeds also secures the wheat:
Men's hands are declared unfit for this separation. It is left to angels' hands, in the day of the harvest of Christendom. They are the reapers then. The field is to be cleared of wheat and weeds alike. At one moment the order goes out to gather the weeds in bundles to be burned, and to gather the wheat into the barn. So solemnly the day of Christian profession ends.
- Enemy. The weeds were not an accident of soil or weather. A person sowed them, and the Lord names him: the devil, working by imitation, not by open attack.
- Age. The harvest comes at the end of the age — a stretch of time, not a place. It is the span while the Lord is absent and the gospel goes out.
- Not extinction. This is not the world's destruction. The Lord clears out of the field what offends Him, so the world can go on in blessing under the reign of the Son of Man.
- Reapers. The clearing belongs to angels, not to disciples. Our part is testimony against evil. We leave the sword and the sentence to Christ.
- Meanwhile. Nothing will remedy the evil before the harvest, so the mixture stands. Separation from evil is a duty; rebuilding what has been spoiled is not on offer.
As then the darnel is gathered and is burned in the fire, thus it shall be in the completion of the age.
The Lord has just named every part of His own story — the sower, the field, the seed, the enemy, the harvest. Now He draws a line from a farmer's bonfire to the close of this age, and one word here has confused readers ever since: what ends when the weeds are burned?
The older translation reads "the end of this world." But the word for "world" in verse 40 is not the same word as in verse 38. One writer sets the two side by side:
If we treated these two words as meaning the same thing, we would miss the thought in some of the passages. For instance, in Matthew 13:38, "The field is the world" means the physical world where people live. In Matthew 13:40, "the end of the world" really means "the end of the age" — the period that closes when the Lord appears.
The difference matters. The next verses show an earth that is cleared out and then carries on, not one that is cancelled:
This is not the end of the world; the next verse proves the opposite. The Lord sends His angels and clears out of the field (that is, the world) everything that offends Him. He judges the lawless, removes what makes people stumble, and destroys the bad crop and the bad fish... The field, or world, that Satan's schemes had spoiled will be cleared of all its corruptions and of the lawless people behind them. So the harvest that closes this age is not the end of the world at all. It is the start of the world going on in blessing, under the openly displayed kingdom of the Son of Man.
The verse ties the outcome to the burning of the weeds, and a farmer burns them at the end, not while the crop is growing. So the mixture is not cleaned up before then:
The parable is not about discipline among God's children. It deals with another question: is there a cure for the evil Satan brought into this whole period "while men slept"? Can this period be put back on its original footing? The Lord decides that question at once, and with authority: no. He tells us that all through this period the evil will get no cure. The time of harvest — that is, the judgment — will root it out, and until then the evil will go on.
Verse 39 has already said the reapers are angels. That sets a clear line between the work of now and the work of then:
The angels bring in judgment from God, while the gospel lays hold of poor sinners to save them. The Lord shows here that the present sending out of the word of the kingdom will come to an end. A day is coming when the effects of Satan's work will be fully developed and judged. "The reapers are the angels." We have nothing to do with the judging, only with spreading the good; the angels deal with the judgment of the wicked.
Earlier in the parable the weeds — "tares" in the older wording — are tied into bundles before they are burned. One writer will not guess how that will happen, but he points to something already at work:
The Lord does not say that the wheat is tied into bundles to be taken to heaven. Nothing points to any special preparation of the saints before they are taken up. But God does deal with the tares in that way. The angels are to gather the tares into bundles before the Lord clears them out of the field. I will not claim to know how that will happen. Perhaps the way people group themselves together today is paving the way for the Lord's final action about the tares. But the principle of worldly association is growing fast.
The burning is not the last word here. Once the bad is taken away, the good comes into view — and the Lord's choice of verb is worth weighing:
Then comes the separating. The angels gather the tares and throw them into the fiery furnace, and "the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father." Notice how exact the wording is: they shine — it does not say they are caught up. It will be a new age, with no mixing of the good and the bad. The gathering out of the wicked for judgment closes this age, so that the good may be blessed in the next.
- Age, not world. The harvest closes this age, not the planet. The same harvest that ends one age opens the next, under the reign of the Son of Man.
- Wait. Until the harvest the evil the enemy sowed gets no cure. Good and bad grow side by side for the whole age.
- Bundle. Before the fire comes the tying. The angels bundle the false with the false, and the true are left standing apart.
- Burn. The reaping belongs to the angels. Our work now is to spread the good, never to sort the field.
- Shine. The last word is not fire but light. With the offenders cleared out, the righteous shine like the sun in their Father's kingdom.