This is Part 3 of the 16-part Kingdom of God series, exploring how story, imagination, and formation shape Christian faith and practice.
The Parables Teach Us How to See
There is a modern assumption, an assumption I think we rarely question, that clarity or explanation produces faith. If Jesus wanted people to trust the Kingdom of God, we expect He would have explained it more thoroughly, defined it more carefully, and defended it more directly. We expect truth to arrive as information and transformation to follow understanding.
But Jesus does not teach the Kingdom that way.
He announces that it is “at hand” and then tells stories that feel deliberately resistant to explanation. He speaks of farmers who do not understand how growth happens, of treasure hidden in fields, of fathers who behave in scandalous ways. Even His disciples, those most invested in His teaching, repeatedly ask for clarification and often leave with more questions than answers.
This is a theological decision. Why did Jesus speak in parables when He could have given clear doctrinal explanations? Because the Kingdom of God requires perception before it can be understood. Jesus is revealing reality, and reality of this kind cannot be transferred through propositions alone.
Dallas Willard described the Kingdom of God as “the range of God’s effective will,” the sphere where what God wants done is done. The Kingdom already exists before anyone understands it, believes it, or agrees with it. If that is true, then explanation alone cannot bring someone into the Kingdom. What is required first is a different way of seeing.
Table of Contents
Why Did Jesus Speak in Parables About a Kingdom Already Present?
Jesus’s parables assume that humanity’s core problem is rebellion against God—a rebellion that disorders our loves and clouds our ability to recognize His Kingdom when it is right before us. People live inside God’s reign without recognizing it. They expect the Kingdom to arrive with force, clarity, and spectacle, and so they miss it when it appears without fanfare, embedded in ordinary life.
In Mark 4, Jesus says, “The kingdom of God is as if a man should scatter seed on the ground… The earth produces by itself, first the blade, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear” (Mark 4:26–28, ESV). The farmer participates, but he does not control the outcome. Growth happens apart from his vigilance or understanding.
Jesus offers no explanation for the process. He simply names the reality. God’s reign is active whether the farmer is watching or sleeping. The Kingdom does not depend on human competence, clarity, or control. It advances because God is at work.
Willard argues that this is precisely why Jesus can announce the Kingdom as good news. The news is that God already is in charge, and the call is to learn how to live within what is already true.
Parables function as windows into this reality. They help us recognize that it is already at work beneath the surface of what we take for granted.
Why Story Reaches Us Before Explanation
Jesus chose story on purpose. It reflects a deep understanding of how human beings come to trust what is true. We change our minds mostly because something shifts in what feels plausible, and plausibility is governed by imagination long before it is tested by reason.
Stories do exactly this work. They reshape plausibility. They help something feel true before it can be articulated. This is why Jesus asks listeners to imagine a world where God’s generosity overturns scarcity, where mercy disrupts merit, and where small, hidden things bear eternal weight.
The parable of the treasure hidden in the field illustrates this beautifully. Jesus says, “The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and covered up. Then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field” (Matthew 13:44, ESV).
The Kingdom was present before it was recognized. The decisive moment is the seeing, and the selling comes after. Joy follows perception, and action flows from imagination.
Formation Happens Through Story and Relationship
The parables also reveal that change in a person comes mostly through relationship, with information playing a smaller part. Jesus tells these stories in relational contexts: at tables, on roads, in moments of conflict and curiosity. The stories are embedded in lived experience, and they do their most important work between people, more than between someone and a page.
This aligns closely with what contemporary formation research has made clear. Psychiatrist Curt Thompson repeatedly emphasizes that human beings are shaped by the stories they inhabit in relationship with others. Who we are becoming is formed by what we think and also by what we repeatedly attend to in the presence of those we trust.
Similarly, psychologist Todd Hall’s work on relational spirituality highlights that faith is embodied and communal before it is conceptual. Belief is sustained in environments of safety, presence, and coherence, where people can risk seeing the world differently without fear.
Jesus’s parables create exactly this kind of setting. They leave resolution open and bring listeners into a shared imaginative world and leave room for reflection, resistance, and recognition.
The parable of the prodigal son in Luke 15 is a clear example. Jesus tells it in response to religious leaders who are offended by His table fellowship with sinners. He answers with a story that exposes two competing visions of reality.
The older brother inhabits a world organized around scarcity, merit, and control. The father lives inside a different reality altogether, one shaped by abundance, presence, and joy. Jesus does not tell the listener which character to imitate. He leaves the story open-ended, so each person can notice which vision of the world feels more believable. He leaves room for listeners to recognize themselves in different characters depending on the story they are already living inside.
The Kingdom as an Alternative to Empire
At its core, Jesus’s storytelling reveals a collision between two rival kingdoms. Empire organizes life around fear, power, and self-preservation. The Kingdom organizes life around trust, love, and surrender. This conflict plays out first within the human imagination, in the question of which story we trust to tell us what is true, what is valuable, and what is safe.
Jesus’s parables consistently undermine empire logic. The last are first, the small outlasts the impressive, and the hidden proves more powerful than the visible. These reversals describe reality as it exists under God’s reign.
As Jesus says in Luke 17, “The kingdom of God is not coming in ways that can be observed… for behold, the kingdom of God is in the midst of you” (Luke 17:20–21, ESV). Seeing a Kingdom that ignores empire expectations requires new eyes.
The Church’s Storytelling Calling
If Jesus revealed the Kingdom through story, then the Church’s task includes helping people perceive reality as well as explaining theology. Testimony, faithful presence, creative work, and lived witness all function as modern parables when they draw attention to God’s activity in overlooked places.
This is Kingdom faithfulness. Storytelling forms the imagination so people can recognize what God has been doing all along. It asks for participation and trains attention.
When the Church abandons this calling, other stories rush in to shape imagination, stories of scarcity, self-salvation, and control. Recovering story is about truthfulness.
Learning to See the Kingdom in Leadership and Work
So why did Jesus speak in parables? He wanted us to see. Jesus tells stories because the Kingdom has to be seen, and seeing is a way of being slowly re-formed.
For leaders in the marketplace, this matters deeply. Most leadership failures are failures of attention. We stop noticing which story is shaping our decisions. We begin to lead from urgency, fear, and self-protection and lose trust in God’s active presence within our work. The parables interrupt that drift. They retrain perception before they redirect behavior.
This is especially true for founders, entrepreneurs, executives, and ministry leaders. Profit, growth, and performance create pressure, and God’s reign is still the reality shaping our lives. When leadership is disconnected from formation, success becomes the goal.
FAQ
Why did Jesus teach in parables when He could have given clear explanations?
Because the Kingdom of God requires perception before it can be understood. Parables ask us to see reality differently. Jesus’s method matches His message: the Kingdom is hidden, ordinary, and resistant to the control that explanation offers. A parable gives you a world to enter.
How does imagination shape faith more than information does?
C.S. Lewis observed that belief often begins with a shift in how we perceive reality. Something becomes plausible before it becomes convincing. Imagination governs plausibility. When a story helps someone feel the weight of God’s generosity, it does something a doctrinal statement alone cannot: it makes the Kingdom feel present.
What is the difference between the Kingdom of God and empire?
Empire organizes life around fear, scarcity, power, and control. The Kingdom organizes life around trust, abundance, love, and surrender. This distinction describes two competing visions of reality that shape how people lead, give, communicate, and make decisions. Jesus’s parables expose this drift by consistently reversing empire expectations.
How can churches recover storytelling as formation?
By asking different questions. Not “What content will perform well?” but “What has God been doing that we have not yet named?” Recovering story as formation grounds communication in truth rather than technique. When churches share testimony and bear witness to God’s activity in overlooked places, they function as modern parables.
What are the parables about the kingdom of God meant to teach?
The kingdom parables create an experience of seeing the world from inside the Kingdom’s logic. The growing seed (Mark 4:26-29, ESV), the treasure in the field (Matthew 13:44, ESV), and the prodigal son (Luke 15:11-32, ESV) all bring the listener into a reality.
What does it mean to lead from Kingdom perception?
It means regularly returning to the question Jesus raises through every parable: What is true here? Is the most basic truth about my work scarcity or abundance? Fear or trust? Control or participation? This kind of leadership requires practices and environments that take formation seriously, where leaders can slow down and lead from identity.
Sources (Scripture, ESV)
Mark 4:26–29
Matthew 13:44
Luke 15:11–32
Luke 17:20–21
Previous: Part 2: Biblical Imagination: Why the Stories We Trust Become the World We See
Next: Part 4: Why the Kingdom Hides in the Small Things
At StoryQuest, we help leaders recover a Kingdom-shaped imagination for the work they already do — through story, Scripture, and guided reflection. If you’d like to try that, explore StoryQuest with us.
