Expert: Tom Schott - 9/23/2005

Question
HI Tom!

That's a passage from the Bible: "Unless a grain of wheat falls to the earth and dies, it remains but a grain of wheat."

How do you understand these words? What Jesus was talking about?

thanks!

Answer
Luke,

  I pretty much understand it as most people do: Jesus is talking about dying to self here. He's saying that unless you purge yourself of selfishness, start living for others and seeing to their needs, you will not bear fruit. The wheat grain has to be completely transformed in the process of producing the grain. It becomes something else entirely: it dies. So too it must be with us.