A parable, Greek parabole, is a similitude or comparison that resembles a real event but must be interpreted to grasp its true meaning. Paradoxically, Christ did not speak in parables to make His meaning clear to His hearers. God has supervised the writing of Scripture so that it cannot be understood without outside help (Matthew 13:9-17; Luke 8:9-10; Isaiah 28:9-13). Even prophets and righteous men of old often did not understand their own messages, and the multitudes did not comprehend Christ's parables. According to Romans 11:32-33, the meaning is veiled from most of mankind until the day God offers them salvation. Until then they remain in unbelief, lest they rebel, refuse to repent, and be destroyed. Only those God calls, a small minority of the weak and humble, can understand. He gives them faith, grace, His Spirit, and teachers (John 6:44-45; 1 Corinthians 1:25-29). Parables, similitudes, and allegories also let the Old Testament serve as type and example for the church, as Paul shows in Galatians 4. Understanding is locked, and the keys are found in Christ and in Scripture's own interpretation of its symbols. By obscuring the mystery of His purpose from the world, God reveals to His elect what they need for salvation.

Parabolic teaching is intended to hide spiritual truths from those God has not given ears to hear. When the disciples asked why Jesus spoke in parables, He answered from Matthew 13 that only those given spiritual hearing and sight understand, in fulfillment of Isaiah's prophecy that people hear without understanding because their hearts are dull. God also ensures that those He has not called at this time do not hear, so that those He wants to hear definitely hear. This ties to Proverbs 20:12: just as God gives physical eyes and ears, He gives spiritual ones through His Spirit, and secret things belong to Him until He reveals them. A parable, like the Hebrew mashal ("to be like"), is a brief narrative or figure with two meanings, a simple surface level and a deeper spiritual one. Many miss the second level, as the disciples did with the leaven of the Pharisees, and the Samaritan woman did with living water. Jesus' teaching was largely parabolic even when it did not take the form of a formal parable, and the Bible defines its own symbols. Those given understanding become responsible for using it, while some who grasp truth for a time fall away, as in the parable of the sower. Because God withholds or grants understanding according to His sovereign purpose, Christians must be careful in judging one another.

Jesus gave parables to hide meaning from those He did not want to understand, not to make it plainer (Matthew 13:10-17). A parable places one thing beside another for comparison, drawing on nature or human circumstances to set forth a spiritual lesson, and the hearer must catch the analogy to be instructed. Understanding requires the Holy Spirit, who gives ears to hear (I Corinthians 2), and the Bible itself supplies the interpretation, since no prophecy is of private interpretation (II Peter 1:19-21). Parables and prophecies share symbols, predictive character, and inspiration by the Holy Spirit, so they are interpreted by the same principles. Because God does not change, the Bible's symbols keep a consistent meaning from Genesis to Revelation, with context narrowing the application; a lion is a powerful ruler, whether it applies to Satan or Christ, and stars are sons. Symbols therefore cannot be given meanings pulled from the air. The parables of Matthew 13 fulfill the prophecy that Jesus would utter things kept secret from the foundation of the world (Matthew 13:34; Psalm 78:2). The first four reveal Satan's hidden plan against the church: attack God's people early, infiltrate the church with disguised agents, and lure it into becoming large and worldly. Paul could say the church is not ignorant of Satan's devices because Jesus had revealed them in these parables.

The purpose of parables often lies in their ability to convict individuals of their own sin. Some are crafted to reveal personal faults, as seen when Nathan uses a parable to make King David recognize the gravity of his sin with Bathsheba. In a similar vein, Jesus Christ employs parables to confront the wrongdoing of His adversaries in a way that is undeniable and irrefutable. These condemnatory parables serve as calls to repentance while also allowing the offenders to judge themselves through their own responses. In the Parable of the Two Sons, Jesus directly challenges the chief priests and elders to question their thoughts and motives, intending for them to convict themselves through reflection on His words. Through such stories, He seeks a reaction akin to David's response to Nathan, urging a turn from sin to obedience.

Parables teach spiritual truth by placing a physical, visible thing beside a spiritual one so that the spiritual can be understood through the physical. A parable is an extended simile, an analogy usually in story form, though it can be as short as a few words. It works because a unity exists between the material and spiritual realms, so that the visible world is a mirror of the invisible. Romans 1:20 states the same principle. Family terms such as Father, Son, children and bride are analogies of this kind, teaching the real closeness of relationships now and in the Kingdom. Usually a parable has one main purpose, to illustrate one main point, and hunting for many meanings risks missing it. Parables also hide meaning. Jesus told them because the mysteries of the Kingdom have been given to His disciples but not to others who see without seeing and hear without understanding. God uses parables to conceal truth from those He has not yet chosen to reveal Himself to (Matthew 13:10-17, 35; I Corinthians 2:7-14). Parables can also be enigmatic to those unfamiliar with the area of life they draw upon, which is why the disciples, as babes in Christ, often needed explanations. Jesus brought this teaching method to its height, and the Father highly recommends it.