There weeks’ parable is found in Matthew 20:1 – 16, parable number 34 known as the Workers in the Vineyard. Our entrance into heaven depends on God’s grace, not on our righteous works. In the same way, our reward in heaven will be based on God’s reckoning, not our human calculations. Rewards are indeed meritorious, but they are calculated from God’s perspective.
20 “For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire workers for his vineyard. 2 He agreed to pay them a denarius for the day and sent them into his vineyard.
3 “About nine in the morning he went out and saw others standing in the marketplace doing nothing. 4 He told them, ‘You also go and work in my vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right.’ 5 So they went.
“He went out again about noon and about three in the afternoon and did the same thing. 6 About five in the afternoon he went out and found still others standing around. He asked them, ‘Why have you been standing here all day long doing nothing?’
7 “‘Because no one has hired us,’ they answered.
“He said to them, ‘You also go and work in my vineyard.’
8 “When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his foreman, ‘Call the workers and pay them their wages, beginning with the last ones hired and going on to the first.’
9 “The workers who were hired about five in the afternoon came and each received a denarius. 10 So when those came who were hired first, they expected to receive more. But each one of them also received a denarius. 11 When they received it, they began to grumble against the landowner. 12 ‘These who were hired last worked only one hour,’ they said, ‘and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the work and the heat of the day.’
13 “But he answered one of them, ‘I am not being unfair to you, friend. Didn’t you agree to work for a denarius? 14 Take your pay and go. I want to give the one who was hired last the same as I gave you. 15 Don’t I have the right to do what I want with my own money? Or are you envious because I am generous?’
16 “So the last will be first, and the first will be last.”
As in most of his parables, Jesus was teaching something about the kingdom of heaven, the way things work under the rule of the Messiah-King. Here he introduced the main characters: the landowner (representing God) and the hired laborers (representing believers). The landowner needed men to plant, tend, and harvest his crops.
Early in the morning is important, because time is an important feature of this parable. A typical workday for field workers in the ancient Near East began at approximately 6 A.M. (sunrise) and ended at around 6 P.M. (sunset). The average workday was likely ten-plus hours. The landowner of the parable was scouting for workers before 6 A.M.
The men whom he hired to begin twelve hours of work at 6 A.M. formed the first and most prominent of five groups he would hire throughout the day. They agreed to work for the customary rate of one denarius for a full day’s work, and then they started work in the vineyard.
We should be careful in our attempts to discern who these full-day workers (or any of the other four groups) represent. We may be tempted to think this first group represents those who have been Christians for most of their lives, whereas the later groups are those who come to Christ later in life. Or we might think the full-day workers are those who are especially faithful in their lifetime as a Christian, while the later groups are not so faithful. Such interpretations distract us from Jesus’ main point, that God’s way of compensating for righteous working may differ from what we expect. God’s sense of “fairness” is not the typical self-serving human perspective. He does not compare us to one another but to our fulfillment of our own stewardship.
The landowner needed still more workers, so three hours later (the third hour was 9 A.M.) he went again to the marketplace (where most commercial transactions took place, and where men hoping for work would gather) and found more laborers available. He hired them, promising, I will pay you whatever is right. Because these men would be working only nine hours (three-fourths of a workday), they would have expected three-fourths of a denarius as their wages at the end of the workday.
He did the same thing at noon (the sixth hour) and 3 P.M. (the ninth hour). These groups of workers would be working six hours (a half-day) and three hours (a quarter-day), respectively, and so would have naturally expected proportionately less pay than those who started at 6 A.M.
At 5 P.M. (the eleventh hour), with only one hour of the workday remaining, the landowner hired yet a fifth group of workers, the second most prominent group in Jesus’ parable, because they stood in the greatest contrast with those hired at 6 A.M. These laborers he also sent into the field to work. The point is clear. These “last” workers, for whatever reason, were “last” by normal human performance standards. Jesus was about to challenge normal human reasoning and standards when it comes to kingdom rewards.
The word evening means sunset at 6 P.M., when the workers could no longer see to work. The owner of the vineyard is the landowner of 20:1. The foreman is mentioned only to give a sense of reality to the story, since the landowner himself would not have gone out into the field to call in the workers at the end of the day.
The landowner specifically instructed the foreman to pay the workers in reverse order (beginning with the last ones hired and going on to the first). It is assumed that the pay the foreman gave out was also according to the landowner’s instructions.
The last group hired, those who worked only one hour, were paid first, before the eyes of all the workers hired earlier in the day. To everyone’s astonishment, these one-hour workers were paid a full denarius, twelve times what they would have considered justly earned! The three-hour, six-hour, and nine-hour workers are not mentioned here, but we are to assume that they also received a denarius. Jesus jumped immediately from the one-hour workers to the twelve-hour workers to make obvious the contrast between the two.
The twelve-hour workers were encouraged by what they had observed, assuming the landowner had decided to be disproportionately generous to all the workers. They certainly expected more than one denarius, which, to their disappointment, was exactly what they were paid.
We can identify with their disappointment. They fell victim to the problem of expectations that were higher than reality. They, like so many of us today, had developed a sense of comparison and entitlement. They grumbled to the landowner: You have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the work and the heat of the day. The full-day workers perhaps looked down on the one-hour workers because they had been passed over as unworthy in the early hiring (20:7).
Jesus revealed here the way we as humans think about what is fair and just. When we see rewards handed out in heaven, we are sure to be in for some surprises. Some of the people and ministries that we have deemed insignificant will be celebrated, while many of the more prominent people and their ministries will receive little recognition. It is not Jesus’ purpose here to explain the criteria he uses for such decisions, but only to warn us against false assumptions and expectations.
Jesus made the point that heaven’s rewards are based upon: God’s standards and our faithfulness to our calling in both attitude and action. There will be no negotiating or technicalities to consider.
Christians must avoid using other people as a yardstick for comparison. Only Christ himself is an accurate yardstick, and we all fall short of his “stature.” This underscores our need for God’s grace toward all. We must hold our human thinking in check.
The landowner focused on one of the twelve-hour workers, emphasizing the responsibility of each individual believer to keep his thinking in check. Friend, he addressed the worker, setting a calm, reasonable tone. The landowner then explained that he had been fair to the twelve-hour worker, paying exactly what was right and what they had agreed upon at the beginning of the day.
If not for the people who had worked fewer hours, the twelve-hour workers would have gone home satisfied with exactly the same amount. The landowner urged them to focus on their original agreement, not on the other workers. One denarius was their pay, exactly what they were entitled to, no more, no less.
Jesus drew a contrast between the landowner’s fairness with the twelve-hour workers and his desire for generosity to the one-hour workers. This contrast was drawn not to indicate the landowner was being inconsistent but to emphasize that differing responses were the prerogatives of the landowner. If the landowner had underpaid any of his workers, they would have had reason to accuse him of injustice. But there was no law against overpaying workers. The employer was free to do with his money as he wished. This points out that the Lord is both sovereign and gracious.
Finally, the landowner addressed the root of the problem, their eye was envious because the landowner was generous. Their perspective was wrong.
This parable highlights both the justice and the grace of God. Neither is to be taken for granted. When God chooses to reward or punish according to what is justly due a person, no one has a right to complain. On the one hand, his rewards are “recompense” or “pay back”. On the other hand, the God of Scripture is a God who delights to lavish blessing on his children. But we must be careful not to presume upon his generosity His gifts are not something we deserve; they are given freely at his discretion. If anyone receives the “raw end of the deal” (by our reasoning), it would be God, who gives much more than he “owes.”
Jesus wrapped up the parable with the principle with which he started. So implies that this principle is the point of the parable. If we do not fully understand the justice behind the “last being first” and the “first being last,” we must reserve judgment and thank God for being consistently just and abundantly gracious. We must never consider God unjust.