Rev. Don Campbell
Heretic Hunters Are Not Licensed by Jesus
When Jesus spoke the Parable of the Tares, saying they should be allowed to grow with the wheat until harvest time, he said that he was speaking of the kingdom of heaven (Matt 13:24). When he explained the parable to the disciples, he said that he is the Sower, and the field is the world (vv.37-38). Some have concluded that allowing the tares to grow with the wheat means that Christ is forbidding church discipline. Others say that he is not restraining the church at all. However, in verse 41, the tares are gathered out of the kingdom, not out of the world, so we must not get hung up on one word, but let Jesus do his own interpreting.
We are not called to a life of isolation, living in spiritual gated communities; we are in the world, but not of the world (John 17:14-41). Our parable shows that the world is in the kingdom, also. Sometimes humans lack both the wisdom and the authority to separate the two.
The servants in the parable are not preachers, elders, or local congregations but the angels of heaven. In the parable, we are all either wheat or tares, and only heaven may know which. The wheat is not in one plot of the field and the tares in another; the two are intertwined.
If some heretic hunters had their way, there would be no tares for the angels to gather out of the kingdom at the end of the age. When men usurp the work of God’s angels, lives are uprooted, and souls are lost. Those who believe they have the right to be inquisitors, ferreting out and destroying all heretics, as they identify them, should remember the words of Jesus to James and John when they wanted to call down fire from heaven to consume an entire Samaritan village: “You do not know what manner of spirit you are of” (Lk 9:55, NKJV).
If heretic hunters are not licensed by Jesus, then they must get their authority from the devil.
