List of the Parables of Jesus: A Complete, Sorted Guide

If you went looking for a list of the parables of Jesus, you probably found two kinds of pages. Long charts that dump every reference in a grid with no meaning attached, and short posts that cover the famous five and stop. This page tries to be the one in between. It sorts the parables the way teachers actually teach them, by theme, and gives you a plain one-line meaning and the gospel reference for each.

Jesus told around forty parables, depending on how you count, and they are scattered across Matthew, Mark, and Luke. A parable is a short story drawn from ordinary life, a farmer scattering seed, a woman sweeping for a lost coin, a father watching a road, that carries a spiritual point underneath the everyday surface. He rarely spelled the point out. He handed you the story and let it work on you.

The groupings below are not in the Bible itself. They are the standard buckets that pastors, study Bibles, and commentaries have used for generations: the kingdom of heaven, lost and found, grace and forgiveness, watchfulness and judgment, prayer and persistence, and the cost of following him. A few parables could sit in two buckets at once, and where that happens the note says so. For the parables this site has a full page on, the title links straight to it.

What is a parable?

A parable is a short story that uses an everyday scene to teach a spiritual truth by comparison. Jesus told around forty of them, and most press a single point that catches the listener off guard. Unlike a fable, a parable uses realistic people and situations, farmers, merchants, shepherds, never talking animals, which is part of why they unsettled the people who first heard them.

The disciples once asked Jesus why he taught this way at all. His answer is one of the more startling things he says about his own method.

This is why I speak to them in parables: "Though seeing, they do not see; though hearing, they do not hear or understand."

— Matthew 13:13

A parable, then, does two things at once. It opens the kingdom of God to anyone willing to lean in and wrestle with the story, and it leaves the proud and the dismissive exactly where they were. The full context runs through Matthew 13:10-17, where Jesus quotes Isaiah about ears that hear without understanding. The story is a doorway. Whether you walk through it depends on what you bring.

Parables of the kingdom

The largest group of parables describes the kingdom of heaven, what it is like, how it grows, and what it is worth. Most of them open with the phrase "the kingdom of heaven is like," and most of them surprise the listener with how small, how hidden, or how upside-down that kingdom turns out to be. Matthew gathers a whole string of them into a single teaching session in chapter 13.

• The parable of the sower (Matthew 13:3-23, Mark 4:3-20, Luke 8:4-15). The same word of God falls on four kinds of soil, and only the receptive heart bears a crop. One of the few parables Jesus stops to interpret line by line.
• The parable of the mustard seed (Matthew 13:31-32, Mark 4:30-32, Luke 13:18-19). The smallest of seeds grows into a tree where birds nest. The kingdom starts almost invisibly and ends up sheltering the world.
• The parable of the yeast (Matthew 13:33, Luke 13:20-21). A little yeast works silently through a whole batch of dough. The kingdom spreads quietly from the inside out.
• The parable of the hidden treasure (Matthew 13:44). A man finds treasure buried in a field and sells everything he owns to buy it. The kingdom is worth more than anything you would trade for it.
• The parable of the pearl (Matthew 13:45-46). A merchant finds one perfect pearl and sells all he has to own it. Paired with the hidden treasure, it makes the same point from a buyer who was already searching.
• The parable of the growing seed (Mark 4:26-29). A farmer scatters seed and it grows while he sleeps, he knows not how. The kingdom grows by a power that is not ours to manufacture.
• The parable of the wheat and the weeds (Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43). An enemy sows weeds among the wheat, and the owner waits until harvest to separate them. Good and evil grow side by side until God sorts them out. This one also sits in the judgment group below.
• The parable of the net (Matthew 13:47-50). A net catches every kind of fish, and the good are kept while the bad are thrown out. Another image of the final sorting at the end of the age.

The thread running through all of these is patience. The kingdom does not arrive the way an empire arrives. It is planted, hidden, mixed in, and left to grow, and the harvest comes later than the impatient would like.

Lost and found

Luke 15 holds the three best-loved parables in this whole collection, and they belong together. A Pharisee had complained that Jesus welcomed sinners and ate with them, and Jesus answered with three stories about something lost and the joy of finding it. Read straight through, they build to one of the most moving moments in all of scripture.

• The parable of the lost sheep (Luke 15:3-7, also Matthew 18:12-14). A shepherd leaves ninety-nine sheep to search for one that wandered off, and throws a celebration when he finds it. Heaven rejoices over one sinner who repents.
• The parable of the lost coin (Luke 15:8-10). A woman lights a lamp, sweeps the house, and searches until she finds one lost coin. God's pursuit of the lost is that thorough and that glad.
• The parable of the prodigal son (Luke 15:11-32). A son demands his inheritance, wastes it, and comes home expecting to be a servant, only to be met by a father running down the road. The fullest picture Jesus ever gave of the heart of God toward returning sinners.

Notice the rhythm Luke builds. Something is lost, someone searches, and when it is found there is a party. Each story raises the stakes, from a sheep to a coin to a child, and each ends in the same outburst of joy.

In the same way, I tell you, there is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.

— Luke 15:10

That refrain is the whole point. The Pharisees thought Jesus' welcome of sinners was a scandal. Jesus answered that it is exactly what heaven does.

Grace and forgiveness

A cluster of parables turns on mercy: mercy received from God, and mercy that the forgiven are then expected to extend to others. Several of these were told directly to people who assumed they had earned their standing, and they tend to land hardest on the listener who feels most secure.

• The parable of the unmerciful servant (Matthew 18:21-35). A servant is forgiven an impossible debt, then throttles a fellow servant over a small one. Forgiveness received is meant to flow on, and a heart that hoards it has not understood it.
• The parable of the two debtors (Luke 7:41-43). Two people are forgiven debts of different sizes, and the one forgiven more loves more. Told to a Pharisee while a sinful woman wept at Jesus' feet.
• The parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector (Luke 18:9-14). Two men pray. One lists his merits, the other simply begs for mercy, and it is the second who goes home justified. A warning to everyone confident in their own righteousness.
• The parable of the good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37). A despised foreigner stops for a wounded stranger that the religious had walked past. Mercy, not status, is what it means to love your neighbor.
• The parable of the rich man and Lazarus (Luke 16:19-31). A rich man ignores a beggar at his gate, and the roles are reversed after death. A sober word about wealth, mercy, and the door that does not stay open forever.

The common nerve these stories touch is the assumption that we are the ones owed something. Each parable quietly moves the listener from the seat of the creditor to the seat of the debtor.

Watchfulness and judgment

Toward the end of his ministry Jesus told a series of parables about readiness. The master is away, the bridegroom is delayed, the accounts will be settled, and the question is what you do while you wait. These are the parables that refuse to let faith become passive.

• The parable of the ten virgins (Matthew 25:1-13). Ten bridesmaids wait for the bridegroom, but only five brought enough oil for the delay. Keep watch, because you do not know the day or the hour.
• The parable of the talents (Matthew 25:14-30). A master entrusts his servants with money and returns to settle accounts. We are accountable for what we do with what we have been given.
• The parable of the sheep and the goats (Matthew 25:31-46). The Son of Man separates the nations based on how they treated the hungry, the stranger, and the prisoner. What we did for the least of these, we did for him. (This one is planned but not yet live on the site.)
• The parable of the rich fool (Luke 12:16-21). A man builds bigger barns to hoard a good harvest and dies that very night. Life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.
• The parable of the wedding banquet (Matthew 22:1-14). A king's invited guests refuse to come, so he fills the hall with strangers from the streets. The invitation is wide, but it is not to be treated lightly.

The wheat and the weeds, listed under the kingdom parables above, belongs here too. Its point is the patient delay of judgment until the harvest, when the sorting finally comes.

Prayer and persistence

Two short parables, both in Luke, were told specifically to teach people to keep praying and not lose heart. They work by a kind of argument from the lesser to the greater: if even a reluctant human will eventually respond to persistence, how much more will a loving God.

• The parable of the friend at midnight (Luke 11:5-8). A man bangs on his neighbor's door at midnight for bread, and persistence finally gets him an answer. Keep asking.
• The parable of the persistent widow (Luke 18:1-8). A widow wears down an unjust judge by refusing to give up, and gets her justice. Jesus tells this one so that his followers "should always pray and not give up" (Luke 18:1).

Both parables guard against a quiet form of unbelief, the assumption that God is reluctant or distant. The point is not that God must be nagged, but that the God you are praying to is far kinder than the grudging figures in the stories.

Discipleship and the cost

A final group deals with what it costs to follow Jesus and to build a life on his words. These parables are less about the nature of the kingdom and more about the response it demands from the person who has heard the invitation.

• The parable of the wise and foolish builders (Matthew 7:24-27, Luke 6:47-49). One man builds on rock and one on sand, and the storm reveals the difference. Hearing Jesus' words is not enough. The wise also do them.
• The parable of the great banquet (Luke 14:15-24). A host throws a feast and the invited guests all make excuses, so he brings in the poor and the outsiders. Plenty of people are too busy to come to the table God has set.
• The parable of the workers in the vineyard (Matthew 20:1-16). Workers hired at different hours all receive the same wage, and the early ones grumble. God's generosity is not a wage you can earn, and grace looks unfair to those keeping score.
• The parable of new wine and old wineskins (Matthew 9:16-17, Mark 2:21-22, Luke 5:36-39). New wine bursts old skins. What Jesus brings cannot be poured back into the old religious forms it came to replace.

Read together, these stories keep asking the same uncomfortable question. You have heard the invitation and seen the kingdom described. Now what will you actually build, and what will you give up to follow?

How many parables did Jesus tell?

There is no official count, and that surprises people who expect a clean number. Published lists range from around 30 to over 50, and the figure teachers cite most often is "about 40." The disagreement is not about the Bible. It is about the definition of the word "parable."

The variation comes from a few specific places:

1. Story versus saying. A fully developed narrative like the prodigal son is a parable by anyone's count. A one-line comparison like "you are the salt of the earth" is counted by some lists and not others.
2. Paired parables. The hidden treasure and the pearl make nearly the same point. Some counts treat them as one unit, some as two.
3. Parallel accounts. The same parable often appears in two or three gospels with small differences. Most lists count it once, but a few count each version.
4. Similitudes and metaphors. Short illustrative images, the lamp under a bowl, the patch on a garment, sit on the border between a parable and a figure of speech.

Craig Blomberg, whose book Interpreting the Parables is a standard text in evangelical seminaries, points out that the exact number matters far less than the careful reading of each one. R.C. Sproul and John MacArthur, both widely taught on the parables, likewise treat the count as a footnote rather than the lesson. The honest answer to "how many" is "around forty, and the number depends on what you choose to count."

Further study

The best next step is to read a few of these straight from the source. Matthew 13 gathers the kingdom parables in one place, and you can read it in full at Matthew 13 on Bible Gateway. Then read Luke 15 on Bible Gateway for the three lost-and-found parables in a single sitting, the way Jesus told them.

For careful commentary, Craig Blomberg's Interpreting the Parables is the standard evangelical treatment, and the teaching ministries of R.C. Sproul and John MacArthur both walk through the parables with care and keep the emphasis where Jesus put it. On this site, the deepest places to start are the parable of the prodigal son, where the father runs down the road, the parable of the sower, where Jesus interprets his own story soil by soil, and the parable of the good Samaritan, where mercy comes from the last person anyone expected. From there, follow the theme that caught you, and let the story do its work.

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