By Phillip Rolfes | Staff Writer
August 26, 2025
In Matthew 13:10-15, Jesus explains to His disciples why he teaches in parables. His response might leave you feeling somewhat perplexed:
“Then the disciples came and said to him, 'Why do you speak to them in parables?' And he answered them, ‘To you it has been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it has not been given. For to him who has will more be given, and he will have abundance; but from him who has not, even what he has will be taken away. This is why I speak to them in parables, because seeing they do not see, and hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand.’”
Is Jesus deliberately trying to be ambiguous or hide His teaching by using parables?
Short answer: No.
But let’s unpack this.
What Are Parables?
According to the Ignatius Catholic Study Bible, a parable is “a spoken or literary ‘comparison’ between two things for illustration” (cf. the Word Study on page 1749).
Jesus’ parables are short stories that make use of common, everyday images and experiences that would’ve been familiar to His immediate listeners. He uses these images and experiences to illustrate certain truths about the kingdom of heaven.
For example, in the Parable of the Sower that immediately precedes Jesus’ words quoted above, the “word of the kingdom” is compared to seed being sown, and the different qualities of soil common in first-century Palestine are compared to the hearts of those who hear the word.
Some are closed off to the word. Some receive it with joy but soon fall away. Some are too distracted by concern for the world to even give the word a chance. And others are fertile soil that yields abundant fruit.
The meaning of such a parable would’ve been easily grasped in the agricultural society of first-century Palestinian Jews... at least to those who wanted to grasp its meaning.
The sad truth is that not everyone wanted to grasp the meaning of Jesus’ parables.
It’s important to note that, in Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus doesn’t always teach in parables. In fact, up until chapter 13, Jesus’ teaching is rather straightforward.
But once we reach chapter 13, there’s a dramatic shift from Jesus’ customarily straightforward teaching to His more parabolic approach.
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What happened?
We see toward the end of chapter 12 that the tension between Jesus and the Pharisees has come to a head. Not only have they rejected Him, but they’ve also attributed His miracles—the works of the Holy Spirit—to the “prince of demons” (cf., v. 24).
2 Reasons Jesus Teaches in Parables
This leads us to the two reasons Jesus taught in parables.
Parables invite the sincere and humble-hearted—i.e. His disciples—to lay hold of God’s truth through the everyday experiences and imagery with which they are familiar.
- Parables obstruct the proud-hearted—i.e. the scribes and Pharisees—and keep the heavenly mysteries concealed from the unworthy and insincere.
As a result, Jesus' parables benefit and enrich the lives of the faithful while at the same time confounding the hard-hearted and unbelieving.
Are Jesus’ Parables Deliberately Ambiguous?
So, let’s circle back to our original question: Is Jesus deliberately trying to hide His message, restricting His teachings on the kingdom to a chosen few?
Of course not.
The clarity or obscurity of the parables lies not in the parables themselves, but in the hearts of the listeners.
In commenting on this passage, St. John Chrysostom says:
“[I]f the blindness were natural, it were meet to open [their eyes]; but because it was a voluntary and self-chosen blindness, therefore He said not simply, ‘They see not,’ but, ‘seeing, they see not;’ so that the blindness is of their own wickedness.” (Homilies on Matthew, homily 45, par. 2, emphasis added)
The Catechism of the Catholic Church tells us, “The parables are like mirrors for man: will he be hard soil or good earth for the word?” (CCC, par. 546).
The challenge for us today is to stand before the mirror of the parables and ask ourselves, honestly and with all sincerity, in what ways we are more like the scribes and Pharisees—blinded by our own sinfulness and therefore incapable of perceiving the depths of Jesus’ words—and in what ways are we sincere and humble disciples who hear the words of Christ and act on them (cf. Mt 7:24)?
If you’re ready to stand before the mirror of the parables, then I encourage you to check out Ms. Joan Watson’s new course Mysteries of the Kingdom: A Course on the Parables, available in our Digital Library.
