The Seed

The Lord spoke these words with his own death in full view, days before the cross, when certain Greeks had come seeking him and the hour had come at last for the Son of man to be glorified. And the glory he speaks of is not a throne but a grave, not a crown but a burial. He reaches for the plainest picture a farming people would know. Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone. But if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit. A single grain, held back and kept safe, remains a single grain forever. Only by being buried, only by the death of falling into the dark ground and breaking open, does it become a harvest.

He says it first of himself. He was the corn of wheat. Had he spared himself, had he come down from the cross and kept his life intact, he would have abided alone, one perfect grain, holy and solitary and fruitless, saving no one. Instead he fell into the ground and died, and out of that burial rose the whole vast harvest of the redeemed, the countless multitude that no man can number, every one of them a grain sprung from the death of the one Seed. His dying was not the defeat of his mission but its very means. The grain that broke in the dark of Joseph’s tomb came up bearing much fruit, and we are that fruit.

THE LAW OF THE SEED

But the Lord does not leave this as a truth about himself alone. He states it as a law, and a law holds everywhere. Life comes through death, fruit through falling, gain through loss, harvest through burial. This is not a grim exception tucked into an otherwise comfortable gospel. It is the very shape of the kingdom, the cross set at the center of everything and its pattern pressed into every part. The whole creation preaches it, every buried seed and every fallen leaf, and the whole Christian life is built on it. There is no fruit that did not first fall into the ground. There is no resurrection that did not pass through a grave.

The apostle, teaching the same truth, was almost impatient with those who could not see it. Thou fool, he said, that which thou sowest is not quickened, except it die. It is not made alive unless it dies. We think of death as the enemy of life, and in one sense it is, but in the economy of God death has been conscripted into the service of life, made the doorway through which the greater life comes. The farmer does not weep over the buried seed as over a loss. He buries it in hope, knowing the burial is a sowing, and that what goes down in apparent death comes up in multiplied life.

THE SELF THAT MUST FALL

And then the Lord turns the law upon us, for it was never meant to be admired from a safe distance. He that loveth his life shall lose it, he says, and he that hateth his life in this world shall keep it unto life eternal. There it is, the seed and the soul. The self that is clutched, protected, loved and spared, abides alone and barren, a single grain that will rot in its own keeping without ever bearing anything. The self that is surrendered, that falls into the ground and dies to its own will and its own glory, is the self that bears much fruit. We are terrified of this dying, and so we hold the seed tight, and wonder why our lives are barren, not seeing that the very holding is the barrenness.

For the death the Lord means is not usually one dramatic martyrdom but a daily falling, a continual dying to self that the apostles knew well. I die daily, said Paul, and again, always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our body. The life of Jesus is made manifest through the dying of the self, day after day, in the small surrenders, the laid-down preferences, the crucified will. I am crucified with Christ, Paul could say, nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me. The buried seed does not resist the burial. It lets itself be covered over and broken open, and in the breaking the germ of new life is set free.

FALLING INTO THE GROUND

This is the daily cross the Lord set before all who would follow him. If any man will come after me, he said, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me. For whosoever will save his life shall lose it, but whosoever will lose his life for my sake, the same shall save it. Save and lose, keep and forfeit, the whole paradox of the seed turned into a command. The soul that spends itself clutching at its own life, guarding its comfort and its will and its reputation, is losing the very thing it grasps. The soul that lets that life fall into the ground for Christ’s sake finds it again, multiplied, in a harvest it could never have grown by hoarding.

GOD GIVES THE INCREASE

There is a great relief hidden in the law of the seed, once we see it, for the seed does not raise its own harvest. It falls, and dies, and is broken open, and after that the whole work of bringing forth the fruit belongs to God and the ground and the rain, not to the seed at all. The seed’s one act is to die. The increase is given. So the apostle, speaking of the labor of the gospel, said, I have planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the increase. So then neither is he that planteth any thing, neither he that watereth, but God that giveth the increase. Our part is the falling and the dying. The harvest is his to raise.

This frees us from the exhausting and faithless labor of trying to engineer our own fruitfulness. We are not asked to produce a harvest by strain and cleverness, to make our surrendered lives visibly and impressively fruitful on some timetable of our own. We are asked only to fall into the ground and die, to make the surrender, to let the self be buried, and then to leave the increase to God. Much anxiety in the spiritual life comes from the seed trying to do the ground’s work, the surrendered soul fretting over whether its surrender is bearing fruit, measuring, counting, digging. Die, and leave the harvest to the One who gives the increase.

And this guards us too from pride, for if the harvest is God’s doing and not the seed’s, then no seed may boast of its fruit. The wheat that stands golden in the field did not make itself; it only died and was raised. So whatever fruit God brings from a surrendered life is his glory and not ours, and the soul that bears the most fruit is the one least aware of bearing it, having long since fallen into the ground and forgotten itself in the dark, content to die and leave the increase to God.

PATIENCE FOR THE HARVEST

And the harvest is not raised the day the seed is buried. Between the sowing and the reaping lies a long hidden season in which nothing seems to happen, when the seed lies in the dark and the ground looks as barren as before, and everything in us wants to dig it up and see whether anything is stirring. But the farmer does not dig up his seed to check on it, for to dig it up is to kill it. Behold, says the apostle, the husbandman waiteth for the precious fruit of the earth, and hath long patience for it. Long patience. The surrender you made and saw no fruit from is not dead. It is buried, and buried is not the same as dead, though from above the ground the two look alike for a long while.

So do not lose heart in the hidden season, and do not dig up your seed. The surrenders that seem to have come to nothing, the deaths to self that produced no visible harvest, the buried hopes that never sprang up on your schedule, leave them in the ground and wait. Hope that is seen, the apostle says, is not hope, for what a man seeth, why doth he yet hope for it? But if we hope for that we see not, then do we with patience wait for it. The whole of the sowing life is lived in that patient hope, seed after seed committed to the dark ground of God’s keeping, and the harvest, in his time and not before it is ripe, is sure.

So look at the seed in your own hand, the ungiven life, the self-protected will, the ambition or comfort or grievance you have kept back from God, held tight for fear of losing it. As long as you clutch it, it abides alone. It will bear nothing. The way to fruit runs down, into the dark ground, through the death of the very thing you are afraid to let fall. Do not be afraid of the burial. What looks like loss is a sowing, and what looks like a grave is a furrow, and the God who raised the one great Seed from the tomb has never yet let a soul fall into the ground for his sake and come up empty. Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone; but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.