#do not despair
…Immediately after the sin of Adam and Eve is narrated, the Torah declares that man can master his passionate lust for sin. God turns to Cain and warns him, “If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? If, though, you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you shall master over it.” (Genesis 4:6-7) For the architects of Christian theology, [who preached a new doctrine of inherent, unconquerable depravity, one wonders if] this [divine] declaration of man’s ability to restrain and govern his lust for sin [would be judged, ironically, as] nothing short of heresy. [On the contrary], the fact that the Torah places the comforting promise immediately following the sin in the Garden of Eden [should be] profoundly [reassuring] for [all who hear it, and celebrated by Christians as well as Jews].
Rabbi Tovia Singer
The parable of the sower is plain. The seed sown is the word of God. The sower is our Lord Jesus Christ, by Himself, or by His ministers. Preaching to a multitude is sowing the corn; we know not where it will light. Some sort of ground, though we take ever so much pains with it, brings forth no fruit to purpose, while the good soil brings forth plentifully. So it is with the hearts of men, whose different characters are here described by four sorts of ground. [Yet the sole quality] that distinguished the good ground was fruitfulness. By this true Christians are distinguished from hypocrites. Christ does not say that this good ground has no stones in it, or no thorns; but [only that it had] none that could hinder its fruitfulness. All [hearts] are not alike; [yet nevertheless, for love of God] we should aim at the highest, to bring forth most fruit. [Even if we begin with stones and thorns, if we recognize them, we must not let them hinder God’s Word within us– for neither stones nor thorns are permanent fixtures, and we may implore the Gardener to aid us in tending and protecting His grain of the Gospel until harvest. Thus with all diligence] let us look to ourselves, that we may know what sort of [ground] we are.
Matthew Henry; Commentary on Matthew 13:23
The vine had long been a beloved symbol of Israel… in the Last Supper discourse, on the way to Gethsemane, it acquires a new dimension, the pain of pruning. However, the suffering of Jesus is not the principal point here: [rather, it is that all] disciples of Jesus must be prepared to bear the pain of pruning. The image is a powerful one. To an uninstructed onlooker, the wretched, seemingly lifeless twigs left on the vines appear totally unable to burgeon in a few months into the rich harvest of grapes. The most powerful of all the aspects of the symbol is the sap pulsing through those apparently dead branches. There is all the difference in the world between those docked shoots [still thriving within], and the dead twigs scattered on the ground, [their wild growth availing nothing.Humble] adherence to the vine, to Christ himself, alone gives life to the Church.
Dom Henry Wansbrough; Commentary on John 15
‘If you ask for bread, your heavenly Father will not give you a stone.’ The sages call this a kal va'chomer inference (i.e., קַל וְחמר, “light and weighty”), namely, that if a light condition is true, then a heavier one is certainly true. Jesus used this kind of reasoning all the time: If God cares for the needs of the birds of the air, how much more (kal va'chomer) will He care for your needs? (Matt. 6:26). If God so clothes the grass of the field, how much more (kal va'chomer) will He clothe you (Matt. 6:30)? If your heavenly Father knows the number of hairs on your head, surely He knows the state of your soul. And if God wants us to walk in righteousness, kal va'chomer does He want us to know His love. Only God can give to us the love for Him that He fully knows we so desperately need; only God can deliver us from our “disordered loves” to take hold of what is truly essential. All we can do is ask, and keep on asking- even as we struggle on, despite ourselves- until we begin to understand what we really need.It’s as if we are constantly being asked, “Is this what you want?” and our choices confess the truthof what we believe. Only God does the miracle of real change within the human heart- only God can give life from the dead!
John J. Parsons
Trusting in God (in Hebrew, bittachon - בִּטָּחוֹן) does not mean that we are obligated to affirm that this is “the best of all possible worlds,” though it does mean we believe that eventually God will wipe away every tear and make all things right. Bittachon is a word for this world, which says, “Though He slay me, I will trust in Him…” Those who call upon the LORD can trust not only in concealed good behind ambiguous appearances (“all things work together for good”), but also in a future, real, substantive good that will one day be clearly manifest for us all. We fight the “good fight” of faith, which is a worthy struggle that eventually is realized for blessing. Meanwhile, may the LORD our God keep us from such depth of sorrow that leads to sickness, darkness and despair.
John J. Parsons
Every time that we sin, we are born of the devil. But every time that we do good, we are born of God.
Saint John Chrysostom
