JESUS, THE TRUE SEED

We were talking last week about the seed being multiplied,—how we may get many, many seeds from one. But there is something that we did not speak of then, that must take place before this can be done.

Jesus said: “Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone; but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.”

Perhaps some of you are studying botany,—plant life. Here, then, is the very first lesson that you need to learn about the plants. The seed must die before it can be multiplied. It can give birth and life to other plants only by giving up itself, by the sacrifice of its own life.

The new plant that is to spring from the seed is in most seeds only a tiny part of the whole seed. All the rest is for the nourishment of the young plant when it shall awake and spring up. But the seed must die and change before the new plant can spring up and feed upon it.

So you see that the seed really gives up its own life in order to give life. But is it lost? Oh, no: it is multiplied. Many plants, bearing many seeds exactly like it, come from it. If it should not die, but keep its life all to itself, it would, as Jesus said, “Abide alone,” and at last perish and be lost indeed. But by giving its life, it saves and keeps it.

And now, what is the Gospel message that our Heavenly Father has written for us in all this? Do you remember that the very first Gospel promise ever heard by men said something about seed?

When He first promised to give His only begotten Son to save men from the power of Satan, God called Him, the Seed. And many times, when this promise was repeated, Jesus was called by the same name. He is, “the Seed of the woman;” “the Seed of Abraham;” “the Seed of David.” But except the seed “fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone.”

If you had the seed of a very rare and choice plant, would you think it too great a treasure to be sown in the ground? No, the more you valued it, the more anxious you would be to sow it, so that it might not “abide alone,” but that you might get many more like it.

And so God did not keep back “His only begotten Son,” but gave Him freely, so that He should not “abide alone,” but that He might “bring many sons unto glory.”

In the place of the one seed that is put in the ground, we get many seeds exactly like it. In the place of the one Son whom He gave, God the Father will at last, when the harvest shall come and all the seed shall be gathered, get many sons, many children, all in His exact image.

The seed dies that it may give life. Jesus died that He might give life to you that you might feed upon His life, and grow into His image, and so be one of the many children that through His sacrifice He will bring to glory. He died so that He might not “abide alone,” but that you might abide with Him for ever.

The Present Truth – February 16, 1899
E. J. Waggoner

Story in pdf  The Gospel of the Spring. Jesus, the True Seed