Podcast: How and How Not to Read Jesus’s Parables (Doug O’Donnell)

July 07, 2025 by: Crossway

This article is part of the The Crossway Podcast series.

What Are Parables, and Why Did Jesus Use Them?

In this episode, Dr. Doug O’Donnell helps us understand the significance behind Jesus’s parables. Doug elaborates on three ways that Jesus used parables, how we should read and understand them, and why they are such an important part of Jesus’s story.

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The Parables of Jesus

The Parables of Jesus

Douglas Sean O'Donnell

This 12-week study helps readers study some of Scripture's most famous narrative parables and understand their place in the storyline of Scripture.

Topics Addressed in This Interview:

00:37 - What Is a Parable?

Matt Tully
Doug O’Donnell is the senior vice president of Bible editorial at Crossway and is a member of the ESV Translation Oversight Committee. He’s also the author of a number of books, including The Parables of Jesus: A 12-Week Study, which is part of Crossways Knowing the Bible Study series. Doug, thanks so much for joining me today on The Crossway Podcast.

Doug O’Donnell
It’s great to be with you again, Matt.

Matt Tully
Today we’re going to talk about some of the parables of Jesus, these really interesting and sometimes confusing stories that we find in the Gospels. But to start us off, I wonder if you can just first give us a brief, understandable definition of a parable. What is a parable?

Doug O’Donnell
The word parabolē in Greek is made up of two different words: the preposition para, which means beside, and bolē, which means to cast or to throw. So, literally, to toss next to is how you could translate, or place alongside. By that etymology, a parable is making a comparison of one thing to another. God is like a longing, loving father who forgives and embraces a prodigal son who’s returned home. The growth of the kingdom of God is like a mustard seed. Sometimes it’s a story. Sometimes it’s just a saying that can be classified as a parable. I think we’ll mostly talk about the story-type parables. But these two realities, like the prodigal son and the kingdom of God is like this, they are alike in some way, and together they teach theological truths and spiritual lessons. So, the parables of Jesus are unique in that they’re by Jesus and they’re about Jesus and they’re going to signify something about the kingdom of God. Thinking of some of the parables he teaches, if they were in a different context, it just might be he’s talking about agriculture and sowing seeds. There’s nothing spiritual in any of the words that he uses in the sower and the seed. But it’s spiritual and it’s about Jesus and it has moral applications because Jesus taught it. And then for that one, he explains what it’s all about. So that’s the gist of a parable. I’ve done some work with Charles Simeon Trust, and they’ve got a really good definition that I work with, and it’s this: a parable is a simple and usually narrative story (so not all of them are stories, but most of them are) grounded in the real world and used to provoke the audience on a spiritual or moral matter, or even make a spiritual or moral point.

Matt Tully
And you highlight in this study that the Gospels contain something like seventy distinct parables, and you break them up into three categories. What are those categories, and why is that a helpful way to think about them?

Doug O’Donnell
First and continuous with how the Hebrew Scriptures use the word mashal are Jesus’s aphorisms. For example, "Can a blind man lead the blind? Will they not both fall into the pit?" They are these short, little sayings.

Matt Tully
It’s not like a story. It’s a saying.

Doug O’Donnell
Yeah. Second are similes: "The kingdom of heaven is like . . ."—and there are all sorts of ones that Jesus teaches—"the treasure hidden in the field." And then third, and this is what we mostly think of when we think of the parables of Jesus, there are stories, symbolic stories, like the parable of the sower. Those are the three types of parables.

Matt Tully
We’re focused today, and the New Testament is focused, on the parables of Jesus, but do we see other parables from other people in the biblical story?

Doug O’Donnell
There’re just a few examples. Probably the most popular one in the Old Testament is Nathaniel. When he rebukes David, he tells the story of the lamb, and David gets all upset, and the punchline—this is very much how Jesus teaches parables—the end stresses, "You are the man, David.? He tells him, "The parable is all about you." And then David is supposed to react, and that’s what parables are to do for us is cause us to react in a certain way, maybe shock us, and then we react in a certain way. In that case, it leads him to repentance.

Matt Tully
As you’ve described what parables are, would you say it’s accurate or complete to say a parable is essentially an illustration? You think of your pastor preaching every Sunday morning. Many of them are going to start their sermon with some kind of illustration that doesn’t immediately have a spiritual significance. It’s a sports illustration or it’s something from what just happened in the week before. Are those all parables?

Doug O’Donnell
I do think one of the purposes of parables is to get people to listen. I see it in preaching. When I start to share a story—"The other day I was doing this"—everyone starts to listen.

Matt Tully
And so Jesus probably knew that too.

Doug O’Donnell
He knew that too, and he’s a master storyteller, when you look at the parables and how he taught. And so he does use illustrations, including parables, as a way of drawing people in. He uses the word listen or he who has ears or these sorts of things related to parables because he actually wants people to listen to them. But parables are more than that. Jesus teaches in Matthew 13 and Mark as well that they reveal and they conceal. That’s another purpose. For those who have been given the gift of faith, parables are supposed to bring some kind of understanding of who Jesus is or how I’m to relate to him or what the kingdom of God is like. For those who don’t believe, they actually can be means of judgment and ways of concealing God’s truth because of doubt or unbelief. I did my PhD work at the University of Aberdeen, but my supervisor was a guy named John Nolland. He lived in Bristol, so I would go to Bristol, England. I remember I came to the Bristol Cathedral, and on the outside there’s stained glass. It’s an old building. You can’t see what the figures of the stained glass are. They’re concealed. But if you go inside, everything lights up because the sun is coming through and you can see, Oh, there’s a picture of the return of Jesus. Oh, there’s a picture in the stained glass of the twelve disciples. And that’s an illustration I often use of what parables are. They reveal or they conceal. Those on the inside can see what they mean. Those on the outside are blinded to what their intention is. And then I think a third thing that parables do is they give us these word picture summaries of the kingdom of God. So like I said earlier, they’re about Jesus in some way. He’s the king, and his kingdom is a rule of mercy and righteousness. They’re going to teach us something about the nature of the kingdom and the nature of the King.

07:08 - Revealing and Concealing

Matt Tully
I want to go back a little bit to what you said about how these parables, depending on who you are, they’re doing two different things: they’re revealing spiritual truth or they’re maybe concealing it. As you said, Jesus himself is saying that, so we’re not imposing that on the text. How do we reconcile that idea that comes from Jesus with this broader theological truth that we, as Christians, often embrace? I think of 1 Timothy 2:4, where we see that God desires that all would come to a knowledge of him, that all would come to repentance and faith. So, this is more of a theological question for how do we fit Jesus’s words about the way he was teaching and intentionally hiding truths about himself from people who are listening with this other theological truth?

Doug O’Donnell
That’s a deep question. It’s early in the morning, Matt. Are you sure you want to ask that? I think Jesus deals with this in his own ministry. Where he talks about this revealing and concealing in Matthew 13, he’s previously ministered in various towns and there’s been reactions to his ministry. His invitation is open to all. That’s what he’s been doing throughout Galilee. He’s preaching to everyone who will listen. Then, there are negative reactions to him throughout that preaching ministry, which begins after the sermon on the mount. The sermon on the mount is chapter five through seven, but then in eight you have healings and you have teachings, and Matthew goes back and forth from those things—healings, exorcisms, teachings. And there are reactions to the teachings. And then when Jesus starts to talk about parables, he talks about revealing and concealing, these are the purpose of parables. But then he gives his first parable, the parable of the sower and the seed. And that explains why different people react differently to his teaching. And there’s, of course, mystery to it, but basically, if your heart is ready to receive the teaching, it will be received with joy. If it’s not (there are three different negative responses), then you won’t produce fruit. So it is this mix of the sovereignty of God, where God opens the ears of those who can’t hear and he opens the eyes of those who can’t see. It is a sovereign work of God. But the way he teaches the sower and the seed, I think there’s this mix of the sovereignty of God but also human response and the necessity of being receptive in a certain way. And if you’re not receptive in a certain way, you won’t produce the fruit of believing in Jesus.

Matt Tully
Obviously, we can’t get into this very deep, as you said, deep-for-a-Monday-morning conversation about God’s sovereignty and our responsibility and how we come to faith. But it is interesting that these issues that sometimes we can think of in the abstract, these big, theological gotcha questions that we wrestle with, they are right there in the Gospels. They’re right there in Jesus’s own teaching. I think of John 6 and things he’s teaching there as well about who comes to him and who doesn’t. We’ll put a pin in that for now.

Doug O’Donnell
The next episode will be on the sovereignty of God and human responsibility.

10:06 - Key Interpretive Principles for Parables

Matt Tully
We’ll figure out how the parables fit into that. Another big picture question that we have on the parables is just how we’re supposed to approach them to begin with. I think all of us would know, whether from our own Bible reading or maybe from hearing a sermon preached, that some of the parables do seem pretty clear, or at least parts of them seem clear. We know that the good Samaritan was good. He did a good thing in caring for this man on the side of the road. But sometimes the meaning can be harder even for us as Christians today to really penetrate. So I wonder if you could just help us by laying a groundwork for what are some of the key interpretive principles or guidelines that you think we should take when it comes to trying to sit down and unpack one of Jesus’s parables?

Doug O’Donnell
I’ll give you a few things that I always go through in my mind. I don’t know if you’ve heard for Bible reading the COMA method—context, observation, meaning, application. I use that as I approach parables. There’s more that I could say, but just a few things here. Context: Where in the Gospel of Matthew, Mark, or Luke is this found?

Matt Tully
Why didn’t you say John there?

Doug O’Donnell
Because John has some parable-like elements. Jesus uses lots of similes and metaphors throughout John, but there’s not a story parable in the Gospel of John. Which is interesting. Don’t ask me why that’s the case. I was fearful of that question.

Matt Tully
But it is interesting.

Doug O’Donnell
It is interesting, because there’s plenty of teaching in John.

Matt Tully
Plenty of deep, theological waters in John.

Doug O’Donnell
Yeah, but parables are just found in the Synoptics, and there’s only two parable stories in Mark, so it’s mostly Matthew and Luke. And Luke has a lot of unique parables too. I remember a friend of mine did a sermon series on the unique parables in Luke, and there’s enough material there to do that, and some famous ones. The parable of the good Samaritan is one example. So, what was the question again?

Matt Tully
Context.

Doug O’Donnell
Oh yeah, context! So, where is it found in the Gospel? Jesus is going to tell the parable of the wicked tenets in Mark (one of the story ones) right before he is going to go into Jerusalem and all the bad things are going to happen. That parable ends with the tenets killing the son. So, it’s very strategic where he tells that story.

Matt Tully
And that’s the case oftentimes, right? These little stories are happening right before or right after real events that happened to Jesus that are then connected in a meaningful way.

Doug O’Donnell
Yeah, absolutely. "Context is king," we say in Bible reading, but especially in the parables. You’ve got to ask yourself, Where is this happening in the storyline of these three Gospels? Because it’s quite significant. The other thing related to context is to look at what happened directly before and directly after. In the parable of the unmerciful servant, Peter asks, "How many times should I forgive? Up to seven times?" And then Jesus says, "Seventy times seven," and then he tells the parable. And so he’s answering Peter’s question. Oftentimes there will be a question that Jesus is answering, and then he tells a parable. Another important thing is historical context—understanding all of these story parables are real life characters, real life things going on, like a woman with leaven making bread. They’re not these esoteric, deep spiritual things that you have to like wonder, What does "a woman" mean? What does "leaven and "bread" mean? We know what all the things are.

Matt Tully
They’re very normal, everyday things in that culture.

Doug O’Donnell
They are folk stories of that first century culture (Middle Eastern culture). We might know what leaven is in bread, but we don’t know what a denarius is. And the Bible doesn’t define what a denarius is, so we do need to know some historical background and cultural background to say, "Oh, that’s a day’s wages." And then when we come to the parable of talents, when Jesus uses the term "talents," and that is a monetary term. In the parable of the unforgiving servant, for example, he says 10,000 talents. Well, what does that mean? Well, 10,000 was the highest Greek number back then. A talent was the highest monetary unit. So it means the most money you could think of.

Matt Tully
That’s a lot of money.

Doug O’Donnell
An astronomical debt is the context of what he’s talking about there that God forgives. So, you do need to know some of those cultural things, and you can’t just learn it by reading the Bible, although that’s the place to start. But sometimes you need to look up in a Bible dictionary or something. What is a talent? What is a denarius?

Matt Tully
A good study Bible.

Doug O’Donnell
A good study Bible. So "C" is context. "O" is observation. How many characters are here? What are the details? I often list out the characters and then all of the little things that are named. And you’re just doing that observation because you want to get to meaning. I would say a character always has a double meaning or a secondary meaning. Sometimes a thing or a place might have a secondary meaning or a symbolic meaning but not always. For example, oil in the parable of the ten virgins. Off the top of my head, Augustine thinks it’s faith, Luther thinks it’s good works. Or "oil" just might mean "oil."

Matt Tully
It’s just the substance that he’s using to illustrate a broader point.

Doug O’Donnell
Exactly. So, I think that sometimes where we get in trouble historically is, as you look at medieval exegesis as early as Augustine, (and it’s partly his fault), we see this over symbolization of everything’s got twenty different possible meanings. When you do that, it’s like everybody’s doing what is right in their own eyes. You don’t have any consistency of meaning. And so the observation step is just saying I want to observe things so that I can get meaning. Craig Bomberg’s PhD work, and he’s done wonderful books on the parables that are really helpful, but he wrote his dissertation saying that every character has a second meaning. Most of the parables are three characters. So, there’s your three-point sermon. And we can walk through some of these parables, but you’ll see in the parable of the prodigal son, the father’s a character, and there’s a second meaning of who he is and what we should learn about him. There is the prodigal son and who he is and what we should learn about him. And then there’s the older son. And all three of those have points to them. And so the meaning comes from really looking at who the characters are and what they do. And then application is related to some things I said earlier. What is it about Jesus and his kingdom that we’re learning? These aren’t just moral tales. Even the parable of the good Samaritan—"Go and do likewise"—is an application of moral responsibility, but it’s more. What does this teach us about Jesus and what he’s going to do for us? And as a member of the kingdom of God, I ought to act this way.

Matt Tully
You say we should be thinking about all the parables as being Christ centered or telling us something about Jesus, not just a general spiritual truth?

Doug O’Donnell
Yeah. And sometimes it’s because Jesus is directly telling us, "I’m the bridegroom in this story, by the way," or "I’m the son in this story who gets killed." So, sometimes he’s talking about himself. The Gospel of John doesn’t have parables, but in the I am statements Jesus is constantly talking about himself. We need to ask, What is he saying about himself, and what is he saying to us who believe in relation to his kingdom and the kingdom ethics or evangelism or whatever the point is he’s trying to get across?

17:30 - The Parable of the Good Samaritan

Matt Tully
Let’s jump into just three of these parables for a little bit. Let’s start with the good Samaritan in Luke 10. This is maybe one of the most, if not the most well-known, parable of Jesus in the Bible. Even non-Christians would have a general idea of what’s going on in this story. But I wonder if you could just start by summarizing what happens, and maybe help us draw out some of these observations of what things we should be paying attention to or the context that we should be thinking about.

Doug O’Donnell
Yeah, sure. Using the grid I just used, it’s interesting that in Luke 10:23 Jesus turns to his disciples and said, "Blessed are the eyes that you see what you see. For I tell you, many prophets and kings desire to see what you see and did not see it, and to hear what you hear and did not hear it." And so again, it’s like Jesus is saying, "Listen, I’ve opened your eyes so you can see certain things." And then the next thing that happens is a lawyer—meaning, a scribe or someone who knows the law of God, the law of Moses—stood up to put him to the test, saying, "Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?" So that context tells us that it’s significant. Who’s asking the question? Is he testing or trying to trip him up in some way?

Matt Tully
To get him to somehow violate the law so they could then say, "Hey, you clearly are not a reliable teacher."

Doug O’Donnell
Right. And then Jesus responds to him with a question, which is often what he does: "What’s written in the law? How do you read it? You know the Bible." Then he answers, "You shall love Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself." And he said to him, "You’ve answered correctly. Do this and you will live." So, the context is really important to how this is setting up. And then there’s another question. "But he [the scribe], desiring to justify himself,"—so these are really important phrases. He’s trying to test Jesus. He’s trying to justify himself. He said, "Who is my neighbor?" And so he’s trying to justify his view of I love the people who are lovely. I love Jewish people, who are religious and devout. And then by that way, I’m keeping God’s law of loving my neighbor. And I’m right with God. I’m justified in his sight. And Jesus is going to turn that on his head. Again you’re going to have three characters. You’ve got two religious characters, a priest and a Levite. And so you have this religious class. You’ve got a person who is robbed and beaten on his way from Jerusalem to Jericho. Jericho would’ve been where a lot of the priests would’ve lived. It’s a nicer town. And they go to Jerusalem to offer sacrifices and do their duties. So, they’ve just gone from doing mercy ministries in the temple.

Matt Tully
Good spiritual things.

Doug O’Donnell
Good spiritual things. And then they encounter this guy who’s been beaten and robbed on the side of the road. And they walk on the other side. They do nothing to help him. Now, there are religious reasons why they might do this. For example, a Levitical priest couldn’t touch a dead body. But Luke tells us he’s not dead. He’s almost dead. And if you’ve ever been around someone almost dead, they’re breathing and they’re probably crying or they’re making noises, especially if you just got beaten. So, they’re unmerciful. The two people you think would be merciful are unmerciful. And then comes along—surprise, surprise—a Samaritan. Now, a Samaritan to those two other characters and to the scribe is kind of a half-breed Jew. He would be looked down upon. You remember in John 4 when Jesus goes through Samaritan territory, his disciples are asking, "What are we doing here?" And then he encounters a Samaritan woman. They’re shocked by the whole situation. It shocks their Jewish religious sensibilities that he would be in Samaria talking to a Samaritan woman. So they’re the religious enemy in a lot of ways. I sometimes contemporize it. In the historical context right now we just bombed Iran. It would be like an Iranian coming to help a US soldier who got hurt. It’s so shocking. You would say we're at war and we’re enemies with one another. In parables Jesus is shocking our spiritual sensibilities. He’s certainly doing that with this lawyer. The Samaritan comes along, and he shows mercy in very tangible ways. He cleans his wounds, he carries them to an inn, he pays the money to have the man cared for, and then he’ll return. Now, the interesting thing is he’s got somewhere to go. He has to go somewhere, but he’s like, "When I come back, if there’s any extra money, I’ll pay it all." So, he’s as busy as the other two guys, but he stops and he shows mercy. And then as Jesus often does in parables, at the end there’s something called an end stress. This is what the parable’s about. There’s these three characters where you can learn something about the nature of the kingdom, but then there’s also if you have to summarize what’s this all about, Jesus says this to the man: "Which of these do you think prove to be a neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers?" And the scribe said, "The one who showed him mercy."

Matt Tully
The scribe knew the right answer.

Doug O’Donnell
He knew the right answer. Yeah. And then Jesus said to him, "You go and do likewise." And so this is one of the most moral applications of a parable. There is this element of how we, as Christians, are to be merciful. But it’s not just moralistic, though. Moralistic would be there’s no connection to Jesus and what he has done for us—let’s just be good, merciful people. But I think there’s something a little deeper about all of the actions of the Samaritan. In some ways, they reflect what Jesus is going to do for his followers, as it will be explained as Luke continues on. But he’s done more than just come from one side of the road to the other. He’s come from heaven to earth to save us. He’s going to pay for all of our debts. He’s going to be in the ultimate act of mercy—a substitute, in a sense. Where that man is just helping him physically, he’s going to take on all of the sin and the anguish that the man was experiencing. So, I think there are deeper elements. There’s the good Samaritan, the character that we’re supposed to be like, then there’s sort of the Great Samaritan, you might say, who is Jesus and what he’s done and how he invites us to be part of that kingdom through faith.

Matt Tully
That’s such an amazing thing because when you think about that deeper significance, Jesus is equating himself in this story with a Samaritan.

Doug O’Donnell
Yeah. That’s pretty shocking.

24:00 - The Parable of the Prodigal Son

Matt Tully
The Samaritan who is the outsider, the less-than character in the story. That’s how people are going to view him, even though he truly is the one who is the good neighbor compared to everyone else. So yeah, it’s amazing how much can be there as we slow down and really think about what's being said. Let’s talk about another story, another very famous parable of Jesus in Luke 15, the prodigal son. Again, I wonder if you could start this one by answering what are some of the ways that you’ve heard people interpret this story or apply this parable that you would say are kind of missing the mark?

Doug O’Donnell
Oh, it’s funny you ask that one. Let me give you just a little bit of how Augustine would do this. It says, "A certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho. Adam himself is meant [So, the man is Adam is what he says]. Jerusalem is the heavenly city of peace, whose blessedness from which Adam fell. Jericho means the moon and signifies our mortality." These sorts of things. It’s an allegorical way of interpreting parables. And so you can get the same for the parable of the prodigal son. All sorts of little things, like what the pigs symbolize or something. Well, historically and culturally they’re unclean animals, so they do symbolize something. But some say the pigs mean demonic forces or something like this. So, there are wrong ways throughout the history of interpretation, where it’s usually the little details that get over spiritualized or moralized, and that can be a danger with any of the parables, but especially some of these famous ones.

Matt Tully
One of the things that you draw out in this study is that maybe one of the biggest ways that we can sometimes misunderstand this story is by putting so much of the focus on the younger son, the prodigal son. And again, we named the parable "The Story of the Prodigal Son." But you want to say that the older brother is an essential character in the story that we too often overlook or downplay his role, in part because Jesus doesn’t say as much about him, and yet we should see him as a really important piece of this puzzle.

Doug O’Donnell
Yeah. He says more than you might think. The parable starts in verse 11, and then it ends in verse 32. And in verse 25, now his older brother is in the field, so you have verse 25 through 31 really focusing on this older brother. And yeah, I think when I preached early on in my life, I might have stopped at verse 24, because the story’s kind of over, right? The son has come back, the father’s forgiven him.

Matt Tully
In my mind, that’s where we often end the story.

Doug O’Donnell
Yeah. And then there’s this whole other story about how the older brother does not receive him back and is very negative. He does not like that his father has been merciful, and all of these sorts of things. Again, this is where the cultural context really matters, because the prodigal is represented by those sinners who have come to faith in Jesus and understand the nature of their sin and what they’ve done wrong. And then God the Father, through Jesus, has opened his arms. You think of Matthew, the tax collector, and his friends who Jesus dines with. That’s the group of people that are following Jesus. That type of people are following Jesus. Meanwhile, you have the very religious leaders, like we just saw in the last parable—the Levite, the priest, the Pharisees, the Sadducees, the Herodians, and these type of people who are not receiving Jesus. And so the older brother represents them. Again, it’s the end stress of the parable. This is how Jesus ends the parable is to think about that character more than we probably do. As Christians to think, Am I like that sometimes? I see this guy come off the street who started coming to our church, and it really bothers me that he hasn’t sort of cleaned up his act. Or it’s someone from such a sinful background. I’ve been a good Christian my whole life, and they’ve got this background. Will I accept them?

Matt Tully
It almost seems the older brother is indignant that the father would be willing to extend so much grace because of all these bad things.

Doug O’Donnell
Right. And he totally misunderstands the nature of the kingdom—back to Jesus—and what Jesus has come to do, which is to seek and save the lost, as he’ll say at the end of the Zacchaeus narrative. So, this parable fits with that. And this whole section in Luke 15 is all about things that are lost and found. The lost sheep, the lost coin, and then you have the lost son. But he ends it all by talking about the older son kind of as a jab against half of his audience—those who would not be merciful, those who don’t view grace the way that Jesus does.

Matt Tully
I do think understanding the parables of Jesus goes a long way. Who he’s affirming and then who he’s critiquing goes a long way to helping us understand even why the religious establishment wanted him dead by the end. He was constantly pushing on them and calling them out in different ways.

Doug O’Donnell
He was, in a subtle, subversive type of way. But they understood this parable was about them. And I should say,

Matt Tully
You see them often getting angry after that.

Doug O’Donnell
Yeah. They understand what the story’s about, as they would’ve here. I also say the flip side, back to the reveal and the conceal. I find (and believers find) that parables are so amazing. Not just that he is a master teacher, but he weaves in all of these themes as he’s teaching about himself and about the nature of the kingdom that are just brilliant. Peter Williams’ book, The Surprising Genius of Jesus, expounds on this.

Matt Tully
It’s a wonderful book that does exactly this.

Doug O’Donnell
There is this genius to him. So, if you don’t believe in Jesus, I would be like, "Well, look at his parables and look at his teachings. No one else teaches like this. There’s such depth in such small, short stories that it should at least get your attention."

Matt Tully
Yeah, absolutely. One last question about the prodigal son. One thing that’s notable is that at the end of the story, Jesus never tells us whether or not the elder brother decides to go into the feast. The last admonition of the father is, "Come in! Let’s go!" And he leaves it kind of hanging. We don’t know what happens. Why do you think Jesus leaves the story open-ended like that?

Doug O’Donnell
Yeah, that’s a great question. I think on one side it could be judgment to his hearers who don’t believe—"You won’t be coming into the feast." The other side, on a more positive note, is it’s like an invitation. The father wants the older son to be part of this family and stay part of this family. He’s actually, I think, quite gentle with him in the invitation to receive his brother back and to understand the nature of mercy and forgiveness. So, I think it’s both, but I think it is a gracious invitation by our Lord for those who are hardhearted. The feast is here. You just have to accept it on my terms. This is what mercy means. This is what forgiveness means. And we all need mercy and forgiveness.

Matt Tully
I’m struck that in the first half of the story, the lost son is the one who’s out there carousing and wasting his inheritance. But by the end, the lost son, the one who’s not in the party with the rest of the family, is the older brother. You are left hanging, wondering what his decision was and maybe what would my decision be?

Doug O’Donnell
Yeah, but I think that’s, again, back to the genius of Jesus, when you leave a story, in a sense, unfinished, you leave it to the reader or the hearer to fill in the details. And there’s something really intriguing from a literary point of view. At the end of Acts, Paul is in prison. What happens? Or at the end of Mark’s Gospel, if it’s the shorter end, did Jesus rise, and what happened to the church? And so you need Acts to fill in the picture in that case. And so I think these are designed by Jesus—in this case, the parables—to get us to think deeply and to respond in a certain way. Am I going to come into the celebration, or am I going to stay out of the celebration?

31:29 - The Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus

Matt Tully
One last parable: the rich man and Lazarus from Luke 16. This is one of those that can be tricky for us. I think oftentimes one of our definitions of parables is that these are all fictional characters. They’re often not named. But then we have this parable where you do have someone named Lazarus, and we’ve seen that name in the Gospels before. We’ve seen that name in Jesus’s mouth before. So, who should we understand Lazarus and the rich man to be? And why did Jesus name him like this?

Doug O’Donnell
I should say some scholars debate whether even this is a parable, in part because he names the person, and this is the only parable he does that. I think it is a parable just because of the way it’s told.

Matt Tully
It’s told just like any other parable.

Doug O’Donnell
Yeah. I don’t think, though, the Lazarus in John 11, his friend that he raises him from the dead, that it’s not necessarily the same Lazarus.

Matt Tully
Because it’s an interesting connection that you’ve got this guy who dies and he’s in the afterlife. And then you have a Lazarus who’s raised from the dead. Is there some connection here?

Doug O’Donnell
And there could be, and maybe it’s not clear to me. I think some of these names are just common names, like Simon. Lazarus is not common to us. We don’t know anyone named Lazarus.

Matt Tully
It’s like the name Matt. I know a lot of Matts.

Doug O’Donnell
Yeah. I take it just to be that. But I could be corrected. Maybe there is a connection because there’s both death and some sort of resurrection in the the parable, you might say, to Abraham’s side. There are a lot of historical things that you have to grapple with. What is Hades? What is Abraham’s bosom? And then also theologically, because these are symbolic stories, you’re trying to think like, Well, is this teaching us about heaven and hell? In some ways, I say yes, and in other ways, you can’t press every detail and say that this is exactly how hell will be. Jesus talks about hell with fire and how it’s unquenchable, and some of that is described in the agony of the rich man.

Matt Tully
But you also get a visual picture of these two planes separated by a huge chasm. Is that literally what we’re supposed to be thinking?

Doug O’Donnell
Is that literal? Can people see each other in heaven and hell? If we didn’t have this parable, I’d say no. In hell there’s utter darkness, and there’s no way of seeing someone who’s in heaven. So, you need to sort of think as broadly theological as you can. That doesn’t mean, though, there’s not a point to how the rich man acted in life, he is judged for that. This is one of the trickiest parables for those kinds of reasons, or there’s no explicit mention of faith. Did Lazarus have faith, or did he get to heaven just because he was poor and had a hard life? And you have to sort of wrestle with those things and let Scripture interpret Scripture, saying that by his name he’s a Jew, so he believed in the God of Abraham. And that’s sort of assumed, I think, in the parable. But the parable is more of a warning. It’s not a parable about faith and this is the nature of faith. It’s a parable about don’t act like this rich guy, because this is what’s coming to those who act this way. Again, it’s a very moral parable, where this rich man is feasting his whole life, and he overlooks the guy who has nothing at his very gate, day after day. And he’s religious enough. He says, "Send someone to my brothers." So, he has a sense of empathy or sympathy for what might happen to them. He’s a very interesting sort of character, but the main point walking away is you don’t want to be like the rich guy. And again, it’s this twist of riches were seen as God’s blessing. Back in the day but also people today think of that. If I’ve got money, I’m good with God. And this is saying that’s not the case necessarily, and how you treat people really matters to God. Are you merciful or not? It’s very similar to the parable good Samaritan in that focus, and it’s a theme played throughout Luke constantly in Jesus’s teaching about caring for the least and the people he welcomes into the kingdom who come to him needy and desperate.

Matt Tully
Doug, just a few more questions here before we go. What’s your favorite of Jesus’s parables and why? If you had to pick one to preach on this Sunday, what would you pick?

Doug O’Donnell
I do love the parable of the good Samaritan. Because it’s overdone, I can’t call it my favorite. Overdone in the sense that’s what most people pick or preach on. But it’s such a great story. I like the parable of the unmerciful servant. It’s a judgment parable. It’s in Matthew 18. We talked about the talents—10,000 talents. Robert Gundry, in his commentary, says it’s zillions. What’s the highest made up number you can think of? That’s the debt we are in. We’re indebted to God that much due to our sin. And God, the master, just waives it. And so that first part of the parable is just the most merciful picture. This is what forgiveness looks like. This is what mercy looks like. The second half, of course, is the guy acting unmercifully. And there’s a lot to learn from there. I like preaching, too, the surprise of it. All the parables have a twist to them. You would think he comes out of being forgiven like a superhero of forgiveness. And instead he just forgets everything that happened to him. And that can often happen to us too. I sometimes forget how merciful God has been to me. And when someone does something against me that’s really ticky tack, I can be like, "I’m not forgiving them." I forget the debt that has been paid for me.

Matt Tully
It’s such an amazing parable for me as well because to me it works in reverse. You hear the first half of the parable and everyone’s like, "Amen! That’s beautiful. I love that." But it’s not until you get to the end where then you’re called out as: "But look at how stingy you are with grace and mercy.: It causes you to go back and realize, I didn’t actually understand the first part. I thought I did. But I don’t understand.

Doug O’Donnell
Again, it’s Peter asking the question, and he thinks he’s being super generous by saying seven times. Some people would say you get one shot, and I’m saying seven. I’m pretty forgiving here.

Matt Tully
That’s patient.

Doug O’Donnell
And then Jesus tells the parable to be like, "Peter, you need to learn a little bit more about forgiveness."

Matt Tully
But it’s rooted in God and in Jesus and how he thinks about us.

Doug O’Donnell
What God has done for us in Christ—the astronomical debt that’s been paid for.

Matt Tully
Final question. Is there a parable that still confuses you a little bit or you feel like I don’t know if I’ve squeezed out every last bit of meaning that is here for me?

Doug O’Donnell
I do think the parable we just talked about, the rich man and Lazarus, because of some of the theological questions that need to be answered that people will be thinking if you’re preaching on it or teaching on it, that I’m not totally sure or settled in my mind. For example, is this a depiction of hell? Or if I’m teaching it to a group of people, do I say with authority that this is exactly what hell is like, or not? I’m very comfortable with saying there is judgment and Jesus is talking about that. But there are other places where Jesus is clearly talking about hell and the doctrine of hell, and I would rather settle in those places. So, that’s one. I think, too, I get a little tripped up by some of the smaller parables. "The kingdom of God is like . . . ." I’m more comfortable with the stories, because I can say, "Oh, here’s the character. Here’s the plot. This is how it’s working." And often Jesus will tell us a little bit more about how we’re to apply it at the end.

Matt Tully
He would turn to his disciples afterwards and say, "Let me explain this to you a little bit more."

Doug O’Donnell
Yeah. And so those are the things I get, but when he says the kingdom of God is like this and like this and like this, I’m getting my head around what exactly does he mean? And then how do I teach that to someone else, especially if they’re all lumped together, one after the other? Whereas the prodigal, the lost son, the lost coin—all the lost ones—those all fit together. But in Matthew 13, when he goes one after the other, how do they all fit together? And how do we interpret each one independently as well?

Matt Tully
That’s what I love about Scripture and the teachings of Jesus is there’s so much depth there, more than what we could mine in one reading or 1,000 readings. And so it really rewards repeated digging into the text, seeing what he’s saying, and thinking afresh through the Spirit what that might mean for us today. Doug, thank you so much for helping us to understand a little bit better the parables of Jesus and hopefully get excited about the idea of digging in. And your study that you’ve written, as part of the Knowing the Bible series, is a great tool to start that journey to understanding the parables of Jesus a bit better.

Doug O’Donnell
Thank you, Matt. Honored to be with you.

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