![]() What is it that leads such a person to reject the truth of God in the first place? According to Paul, it is a determined opposition to the nature of God Himself, which the apostle describes as human “godlessness and wickedness” (Romans 1.18). ![]() Here we see both halves of the circle: Sin leads to a rejection of God and God’s truth, and the rejection of truth leads to even greater sin. The person begins by suppressing the truth about God that may be known from nature, plunges into the spiritual ignorance and degradation that inevitably follows, and at last comes not only to practice the sins of evil persons but to approve of them as well. This type of person is described in the first chapter of Romans. Sin hardens the heart, and the heart that is hardened sins even more broadly and deliberately. What is it that makes the human heart hard? There can be only one answer: sin. Because the soil is hard, the seed that falls there merely lies on the path and does not sink in, and the birds (which Christ compares to the devil or the devil’s workers) soon snatch it away. This ground has been trampled down by the many feet that have passed that way over scores of years. The first type of soil represents the hard heart, of which there are many today as well as in Christ’s time. ![]() The emphasis is on the various kinds of hearts and how they reject or receive Christ’s message. The seed is the Gospel of the Kingdom, and the soil is the human heart. But this one is, and the explanation Jesus gives is our starting point. Not all of Christ’s parables are explained. “A farmer went out to sow his seed” (Matthew 13). Here it is compared to a farmer sowing seed. The first parable is an ideal one with which to begin, since it deals with the beginning or origins of the Kingdom. ![]()
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