Luke 8:11

Is this (estin de auth). Means this. Jesus now proceeds to interpret his own parable. The seed is the word of God (o sporo estin o logo tou qeou). The article with both subject and predicate as here means that they are interchangeable and can be turned round: The word of God is the seed. The phrase "the word of God" does not appear in Matthew and only once in Mark ( Mark 7:13 ) and John ( John 10:35 ), but four times in Luke ( John 5:1 ; John 8:11 John 8:21 ; John 11:28 ) and twelve times in Acts. In Mark 4:14 we have only "the word." In Mark 3:31 we have "the will of God," and in Matthew 12:46 "the will of my Father" where Luke 8:21 has "the word of God." This seems to show that Luke has the subjective genitive here and means the word that comes from God.