Mark 4:14 Commentary and Bible Study

The seed is the word of God. Moreover, it is the gospel, the eternal powerful transforming message of God. Nobody can stop it once it starts to work in a life. The gospel is a message telling us about God. He is holy and must punish sin, yet he is also merciful. Man is in a wretched state, fallen and cut off from God, so that even the best things he can achieve are only done for himself. God, though he must judge us, has found a way to deal with sin; he has found a solution to the great problem of our alienation from him. God has done it by sending his Son into the world, not only to be born as a babe in Bethlehem, but to suffer and die on Calvary. We are sinners, we have offended against a holy God, we are under condemnation, we have no spiritual life in us. We are doomed as people, we will be judged. Christ has come, the second Person of the Trinity, equal with the Father. He suffered and died on Calvary’s Cross to bear away the full punishment due to us, if we believe in him, for our sin. On Calvary’s Cross that eternal weight of punishment and separation that we were to endure was put upon him and he bore it away. He made a substitutionary atonement for us and by trusting in him and depending upon him entirely and yielding our lives to him, we may be saved, we may be reconciled with God, know communion with him, receive a new nature, newness of life and a heavenly hereafter. That is the gospel, that is the seed that is sown by Christ and by all those who serve him.