In the parable of the sower, what kind of soil are you? If you’re not multiplying 30, 60 or 100-fold, then your options are the path, rocks or thorns. This can be discouraging. But let’s take a closer look: what are we multiplying?

A common answer would be fruit (the Greek word translated “crop” in the NIV). The Greek for “fruit” has the same double-meaning as in English. It can be edible fruit, like an orange, or it can be a good result or profit, like a fruitful investment. Your life has to be fruitful. And then if you’re not seeing lots of people saved around you, you can redefine fruit as lots of different things, like the fruit of the Spirit. You can be 30, 60 or 100 times more patient!?

Lucius Columella was a prominent Roman writer on agriculture in the Roman Empire. He lived from the birth of Jesus until the destruction of the temple in 70 AD. In those days they counted how many seeds a single seed could produce as the ultimate measure: “And this is the crowning reward of the husbandman — reaping the harvest of the seed that he has entrusted to the earth.” – Columella Book II chapter 20. Let’s read the parable as he would have….

Then Jesus said to them, “Don’t you understand this parable? How then will you understand any parable? The farmer sows the word. Some people are like seed along the path, where the word is sown. As soon as they hear it, Satan comes and takes away the word that was sown in them. Others, like seed sown on rocky places, hear the word and at once receive it with joy. But since they have no root, they last only a short time. When trouble or persecution comes because of the word, they quickly fall away. Still others, like seed sown among thorns, hear the word; but the worries of this life, the deceitfulness of wealth and the desires for other things come in and choke the word, making it unfruitful. Others, like seed sown on good soil, hear the word, accept it, and produce [fruit]—some thirty, some sixty, some a hundred times what was sown.” – Mark 4:13-20

The farmer scatters seed, and 3 of the 4 types of ground don’t produce anything. The seed that lands in the good soil, however, produces much more seed.

The seed is the message of the kingdom (see Matthew 13:19). In those days, the New Testament hadn’t been written yet, so spreading the seed wasn’t giving people a Bible; it was telling them with your own voice. It was announcing the kingdom of God, and the result is a bunch of people who struggle with it, and one group of people who ends up with much more seed to spread.

That is, they proclaim the gospel 30, 60 or 100 times. And their seed faces the same challenges as the original farmer’s: some people who hear it multiply it and some don’t. Which means it’s not up to us how many people receive what we preach, it’s just up to us to preach it. And if we preach it enough, some of those people will do the same. We’re multiplying seed for people to spread.

If you’ve proclaimed the good news of the kingdom of God to 30, 60 or 100 people, you’re the good soil, regardless of how they responded. If you haven’t, you can! It’s not an abstract or unattainable goal.