What is the meaning of the Parable of the Leaven?

217 In verse 21 the kingdom is likened unto leaven; and leaven is just that which spreads throughout the whole mass in which it is placed, and also gives a character to the thing in which it is. It is the nominal profession of Christianity which is spread into a great mass - a great system. Looked at as a doctrine it has leavened whole countries. Still it is not what the Lord could own; as leaven in Scripture is never used in a good sense. The idea is, the spreading of the doctrine while the king is away.

128 Verse 21. Here the kingdom is likened unto leaven, and leaven is that which spreads throughout the whole mass, and also gives a character to that in which it works. It is nominal profession of Christianity which is spread into a vast system. There is not a word here about the Holy Ghost, but about the effect in the world. In Matthew 13, in the first parable, there is individual result, and not the kingdom spoken of. In the first three of the six similitudes, it is the public appearance; in the last three, the inward character is described.

But, besides the outward power, our Lord compares the kingdom to "leaven which a woman took and hid in three measures of meal until the whole was leavened." The man is the figure of the agent in what is done publicly, the woman of the resulting condition of what is done hiddenly. Hence Babylon is compared to the woman in Revelation. There is the spread of doctrine, of creed, of a mere verbal confession which does not suppose faith. It is not only that there is that which, rising from the least beginning, becomes a great and towering power in the earth; but there is also a doctrinal system spread over a defined space (Christendom) which affects men's minds and feelings. This is compared to leaven, and leaven in Scripture is never the symbol of what is good. The leaven of the Pharisees and of the Sadducees was their doctrine, which differed in each, but was far from good.

Here the leaven was hid in the three measures of meal till the whole was leavened. It does not mean all the world becoming Christian — a vain and groundless inference, opposed to many plain Scriptures which treat of this subject expressly. There is a very small part of the world even nominally Christian; a very much larger part consists of Buddhism, Mahomedanism, and of heathenism. We hear of "three measures," a certain definite space of the world which God has permitted to be influenced by nominally Christian doctrine — a witness even more than enough.

Next comes the parable of the leaven. The likeness is the leaven. The woman is not a sower; it is not the Lord who sows what is designated as the good seed; it is not a great tree in the world. It is a doctrine which insinuates itself everywhere in certain limits, and forms the entire lump according to its own nature. The whole is leavened: it is Christendom. But in neither of these two parables do we arrive at judgment. It is the kingdom such as it is when the grain of mustard seed or the leaven has fully acted and produced its effect. It is true that leaven is always employed in an evil sense; yet I do not think this is the aim of the parable, but the doctrine which forms all in one sole lump where it penetrates. If it was purely the evil as evil, we should have had some exception. This is marked in the tares, but on another side. It is not the good that is sown, nor the Lord who sows; so that the notion of positive good is carefully avoided as well as of him who does so. The point is not the word of God, but the fact of the general profession of Christians and in a form where no idea of good is presented; for certainly leaven is not, in the word, an image of good. No more is the parable the description of an individual. There is hardly need to discuss this point, because it is a similitude of the kingdom of the heavens, and in no case is an individual the kingdom of the heavens. Besides, the result in an individual is not that which is depicted here.

The parable of the leaven is still plainer. It marks diffusion over a certain defined quantity, three measures. But it is the spread of leaven; and the instructed scribe knows that leaven is every where the symbol of that which is corrupt. Let the reader compare 1 Cor. 5:6-13 with Ex. 12:15, 17, 18, 19, 20. Lev. 2:4-5, 11; Lev. 6:17. Also Matt. 16:12. Gal. 5:9. Again, we find where the mingled state was to be described, the presence of evil was marked by that of leaven. Lev. 23:17. This parable, then, proves the exact contrary of that which is here drawn from it. It is the progress of corrupt, not of sound, doctrine, if we are to read the parable with a spiritual eye.

What then signifies "the leaven"? Does the bearing of it revert to the opening parable and its appeal to individuals? Does it not rather continue the line of the comparisons of the kingdom? Surely the latter only, setting forth the assimilating effect of a doctrine, or creed, over a certain measured sphere till it was wholly permeated. This very distinctly differs from seed with a principle of life that bears fruit, a suited and frequent figure in scripture. Never is leaven so employed elsewhere. From earliest days it symbolised a corruption that tended to work and spread, as in the Passover, authoritatively applied in 1 Cor. 5 to evil which must be purged out. By our Lord it was used to set forth the teaching of Pharisees and Sadducces, of which the disciples were to beware. Compare Gal. 5:9 for doctrine, as 1 Cor. 5 for immorality.

Clearly, the two occasions differ widely, and they must not be confused. The Lord's parable of the woman hiding leaven in three measures of meal till the whole was leavened (Matt. 13:33) was not a similitude of the church or assembly, but of the kingdom of the heavens, as the verse declares. It concerns, therefore, Christendom, or the whole mass of nominal Christian profession. In this it agrees with the companion parables of the field and the tree, in both of which there are foreign elements also (the tares and the birds), even as here the leaven is seen concealed in the meal. The Lord in these few words portrays the mixed condition of those who avow allegiance to Himself during the period when He is absent from the earth and in the heavens.

In His interpretation of the parable of the wheat and the tares, the Lord definitely forbids the rooting up of the tares; they were to grow together with the wheat until the harvest at the end of the age, when the Son of man Himself by His angels will gather out of His kingdom all “them which do iniquity.” Thus the procedure for the kingdom is in contrast with what is advocated for the church in 1 Cor. 5. The Son of man will, by-and-by, do in His kingdom what His servants are told to do now in the assembly. In the Gospel leaven is allowed to remain and spread, but in the Epistles it is to be purged out that it may not spread. In the Gospel the leaven is hidden, but in the Epistle its presence is known.

"Another parable spake he unto them, The kingdom of heaven is like unto leaven," etc. Here we have the kingdom presented, not as a secular worldly power, but as a principle or doctrine which thoroughly pervades all that is submitted to its influence. There are some who conceive this parable to be descriptive of the grace of God in the soul. But while the kingdom of God is said to be "righteousness and peace," etc., it is never so said of the kingdom of heaven, which is always dispensational, and not moral merely. The kingdom of heaven is ever the kingdom of God, but the expression "kingdom of God" does not always mean "kingdom of heaven." This parable, too, be it remarked, in common with those preceding, was spoken outside to the multitude, giving an external picture of the kingdom which sets aside another idea, viz., that the leaven is symbolical of real christianity, spreading universally until the whole world be converted. But there is no such prediction respecting the gospel in the whole book of God; on the contrary, in the very first parable in this chapter, out of four classes to whom the word is preached, there is only one class which brings forth fruit. It is inferred that the word will not be universally received. In the field the tares, as such, continue to the end; they do not become wheat. In the parable of the net, there were caught both good and bad fishes. All exhibit the same truth, that evil men will be found in every age up to the end. There are many passages in the Old Testament which foretell a time when all in Israel shall know the Lord, from the least even unto the greatest; a time of all but universal blessedness. But nowhere is it said that this will be the effect of preaching only; other and far different means besides will be used to accomplish this. The unprejudiced mind may easily know that all these passages predicting future peace and happiness for the world refer to a future age, to be ushered in by judgement upon those that have not received the gospel. Another reason for rejecting the above interpretation is, that it gives to the symbol "leaven," a meaning which it has nowhere else in scripture. Leaven never suggests the idea of anything good. Wherever used, it is symbolical of corruption. In the Mosiac economy all the types which have an especial reference to Christ were free from leaven. Where the worship of the saint was shadowed forth, there was leaven, as denoting the presence of the flesh, which though mortified, and by the energy of the Holy Spirit kept under, yet will ever be present while he is dwelling in this present world. It will only be when the mortal and the corruptible shall be changed into the immortal and the incorruptible, that worship shall be free from the effects of the flesh. So in its most virulent and worst forms, as exhibiting the extreme enmity of the unrenewed heart against God, the hypocrisy of the Pharisees is called leaven. We read too of the leaven of Herod. The apostle Paul speaks of the unleavened bread of sincerity, and here, by implication, leaven symbolises hypocrisy. It may be remarked also, but with no desire to press it beyond its legitimate import, that the hiding of the leaven is not the act of the Lord.

The parable, then, presents the universal diffusion of the Christian religion within certain limits — not the growth of faith or the communication of life, which is rather represented by the wheat which took root in the ground; not the rise and progress of an ecclesiastico-secular power, "a great tree," resembling the symbols of an Egyptian or Babylonish dynasty; but a definite sphere filled with the profession of Christ. It is the state of the kingdom which will bear a resemblance to the act of a woman who hides leaven in three measures of meal until the whole be leavened. To all but God the distinction between good and evil is lost. Outwardly it is an indiscriminate mass which bears the name of Christ. God simply shows us here the historical fact; and the external appearance is a lump thoroughly leavened. As the tree represented Christendom aspiring to power in the earth, so the leaven, spreading over the three measures of meal, sets forth Christian doctrine professed and propagated throughout a given sphere. It does not appear to be the design of the Lord to pronounce a moral sentence in these early parables to the multitude. Of course the spiritual man ought to judge of all things; but here the object is to represent such facts as meet the eye and mind of men outside. Nor have they failed to be observed, as will appear from the following passage of Guizot's History of Civilisation in Europe:

Nothing is clearer than that "leaven," from its first mention in Exodus 12, has the uniform significance of evil. The only passage which is claimed as an exception is Matt. 13:33-34, and this contention has sprung from the mistake of confounding the gospel with the kingdom of heaven, or rather from taking the leaven to signify the gospel and its effects in this world, supposing it to work on effectually until all the world shall have been permeated by its blessed power and influence. A knowledge of dispensational truth, and of the object of these parables of the kingdom of heaven, would have corrected this error. After the parable of the sower, with its explanation (vv. 1-23), there are six similitudes of the kingdom, three of which were given to the multitude, and three to the Lord's disciples in private - a distinction which gives the clue for their interpretation. The first three then (of which the parable of the leaven is one) give in different aspects, the outward form in the world of the kingdom of heaven, which is co-extensive with Christendom, during the session of Christ at the right hand of God. The similitude the Lord uses will consequently represent the fact that "evil" or corruption was almost immediately introduced among His professing people, and that this will work on and on increasingly until "the whole" be leavened. The final form of the kingdom of heaven will thus be corruption, and it is this fact which explains the ground of the judgments which will in the issue be visited on Christendom. But the question is, Is any special evil designated by leaven? We think not; for in 1 Cor. 5 it was immorality, and in Galatians 5 it was Judaizing doctrines. Any spiritual evil therefore, whether worldliness, immorality, evil doctrines - anything, in short, that might corrupt the saints or the church, might be properly termed leaven. To understand this is to answer a second question whether, when its presence is detected, it should be always dealt with in the same way. In some cases, as in 1 Cor. 5, it could only be removed by the excommunication of the person in whom it was discovered, and by whom it had been introduced into the midst of the assembly. Other forms of it, as in Galatians 5, might require a different discipline, the true character of which could only be discerned by a knowledge of the Scriptures, the teaching of the Holy Spirit, and by acquaintance with the state of soul of any who might be fostering the presence of leaven. Three things should always be remembered: first, that leaven is unmitigated evil; secondly, that when present it always spreads and corrupts; and lastly, that the only divine way of treating it is to purge it out in the way suited to its form and appearance.

The fourth parable (v.33) speaks of the intensive (rather then extensive) character that would develop (and has developed) in the kingdom of heaven. The women is no doubt typical of the professing church, who should be at all times subject to the Man Christ Jesus, for He is the teacher, and her place is to be taught. But she introduces the leaven (typical of evil as a corrupting agent) into three measures of meal, hiding it there. Three measures of meal are found in Gen.18:6; 1Sam.1:24; and Judges 6:19, all in connection with offerings to the Lord; for all speak of the pure Manhood of the person of Christ, and leaven was forbidden in the meal offering (Lev.2:11). But underhandedly there has been wicked doctrine introduced in the professing church to corrupt the doctrine of Christ, so that now all Christendom is permeated with this corruption so offensive to the blessed Lord whom they profess to serve.