“Let both grow together until the harvest.” — Matthew 13:30
When many people hear the word hell, they immediately think of a future destination where unbelievers are punished after death. For generations, this understanding has dominated popular Christian imagination. Yet when we examine the teachings of Jesus within the larger story of Scripture, we discover a far richer and more profound picture.
In Matthew 13, Jesus tells the parable of the wheat and the weeds. A farmer sows good seed in his field, but during the night an enemy secretly plants weeds among the wheat. When the servants discover the problem, they ask whether they should immediately pull up the weeds. Surprisingly, the farmer says no. Both must grow together until the harvest.
At first glance, this appears to be a simple story about judgment. But Jesus is actually revealing something much deeper about God’s mission in the world.
The Bible begins not with heaven and hell, but with heaven and earth. In Genesis, God’s intention is that His presence and His creation exist together in harmony. Humanity was created to reflect God’s character and steward His good world. However, when humans chose autonomy over trust, sin entered creation. Violence, pride, selfishness, oppression, and death followed.
This is where the biblical idea of hell begins to take shape.
Hell is not merely a future reality. According to Jesus and the apostles, it is also something humans unleash into God’s world through sin. Whenever people abuse power, exploit others, nurture hatred, spread lies, or dehumanize their neighbors, they are participating in the destructive forces of hell.
Jesus confronted this reality repeatedly. He accused the religious leaders of His day of creating “children of hell” through their hypocrisy and pride (Matthew 23:15). Likewise, James describes the destructive power of the human tongue as being “set on fire by hell” (James 3:6). These passages reveal that hell is not only something awaiting judgment in the future; it is a present reality that spreads wherever human rebellion against God takes root.
This understanding changes how we read the parable of the wheat and the weeds.
The servants want immediate judgment. They want to identify the bad plants and remove them. Yet the farmer refuses because the weeds and wheat look remarkably similar during their early stages of growth. Pulling up the weeds too soon would destroy the wheat as well.
Jesus’ point is clear: His followers are not qualified to separate the righteous from the wicked. Human beings are poor judges of the human heart. We tend to magnify the sins of others while minimizing our own. We are quick to label others as weeds while assuming that we ourselves are wheat.
This is why Jesus consistently opposes religious pride. Hypocrisy is itself part of the problem. The Church is not called to be the judge of the world. The Church is called to sow good seed and cultivate wheat.
In other words, followers of Jesus are not commissioned to hunt weeds. They are commissioned to spread the good news of the Kingdom.
That good news is that God has not abandoned His broken world. In Jesus Christ, heaven invaded earth. Jesus became the truly human person that all humanity was meant to be. He confronted evil, carried the consequences of human sin, and allowed the full weight of humanity’s rebellion to fall upon Himself at the cross. Through His resurrection, He announced that God’s purposes for creation would not be defeated.
The Kingdom of God is God’s answer to hell.
Yet Jesus takes the problem of evil even more seriously than we do. We want obvious evils such as violence, exploitation, and injustice removed from the world. Jesus wants the roots removed as well. He seeks to eliminate the pride, lust, hatred, greed, and selfishness that give birth to those evils in the first place.
This is why following Jesus can be painful. Like a surgeon removing a deadly disease, Christ works within us to remove what destroys us. The process is uncomfortable, but it is an act of mercy.
The hope of the gospel is that Jesus does not merely see what we are. He sees what His grace is making us. Even when we recognize traces of hell still lingering within our hearts, Christ sees the finished work He is accomplishing.
Therefore, the call of this parable is not to condemn others but to humble ourselves before God. We confess the hell that still resides within us. We receive the grace offered through Christ. We pray for those around us. And we trust that the Judge of all the earth will one day set everything right.
Until then, our task remains simple: grow wheat, proclaim the Kingdom, and allow Jesus to continue getting the hell out of us and out of His world.
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