In a comment, Laymond asked,
I have never understood what the point of this parable was.
It is clear that each was given a chore according to their ability, and were rewarded for the work they did. Is your point that we should only be justified by grace, and work should not enter into it? I believe this is one of the many places that says you are wrong.
Laymond,
The worker who arrived first received fair wages for his labors, and he had to work to earn his pay. The worker who arrived late was paid far more than the prevailing hourly rate — the same total as the man who worked the entire day — and the worker who was paid a just amount complained because the Master was more than just to some and merely just to him.
Interpret that as you will with regard to grace, but one clear lesson is that God is just to some and much more than just to others — never less than just but sometimes much more than just. And most of us would cry “not fair” if that happened to us.
Take a contemporary example. Two men are hired for the same job. They have identical qualifications. They both work equally hard. One is paid the prevailing pay for that kind of work. The other man is paid 2x normal. If the man paid 1x normal finds out, he’ll complain that it’s unfair — and I know this to be true from experience.
It’s a natural human reaction. When we see someone getting a more-than-fair deal, we are jealous and cry foul — exactly as Jesus says. His point is that we have no right to complain when God treats someone better than us, so long as we are treated justly.
And that’s easy to accept intellectually, but very hard to accept in fact — whichever side of the ledger you are on. Most people feel guilty when they know they are being over-paid. Most people feel jealous when they realize someone else is overpaid.
And these feelings lead to behaviors. They’re one cause of legalism. If we feel that our salvation is undeserved, we might compensate by trying to earn it. Or we might compensate by teaching that it must be earned — to alleviate our guilt for a gift we don’t deserve. Or we might even deny that we are sure we are saved! A salvation that we don’t deserve seems too good to be true, and so we struggle to accept the reality of it.
Just so, we might just cobble together a bunch of doctrines to try to fit God into our sense of fairness, by making him treat everyone the same.
My thesis is that we can’t really understand God until we’re willing to accept him on his own terms — and that includes accepting that our salvation is not deserved and that those who only receive justice are going to complain and yet only receive justice.
We will respond to this reality, I hope, with compassion for the lost, urging them to receive the same free gift with the greatest of urgency. But the urgency only arises when we stare damnation in the face and recognize that it is just — and it’s going to happen. We are not fighting against injustice but against death and destruction. God’s enemy is not his wrath — but death. The free gift we receive should drive us to evangelize the lost — if we will accept that the lost are lost.
But, frankly, most of us find that thought unbearable (and very difficult), and so we go into denial and rationalization. We pretend that the damned aren’t damned so we don’t feel unbearably guilty over what we’ve received. Or we pretend we’ve somehow earned what we have and so deserve it.
Facing the facts is hard, and for some, requires a radical emotional adjustment. But the result of facing the facts is to be drawn into celebration and praise — and mission.
It’s a difficult tension to live within, and yet it’s where we need to be.
I don’t see what is so unfair about both parties entering into a contractual agreement… It seems that when the first guys went to work that they thought that the wage was a fair wage…The owner, perhaps realizing that he had insufficient labor to get the job done by the end of the day felt compelled to go and try to get somebody else to finish up the work and needed to “encourage” them with additional pay…Those people also felt that it was fair when they agreed to do the work.. Likewise the next group… As far as Grace goes….it was the Owner’s decision to bring ANYBODY into the field…Whatever they did, little or much, the chance to receive anything wasn’t theirs to decide, but the Owner and I for one am eternally grateful that He allowed some of us to come in before it was too late. 🙂
Jay lets look at your moral of the story, and compare with that of Jesus.
Mat 20:1 ¶ For the kingdom of heaven is like unto a man [that is] an householder, which went out early in the morning to hire labourers into his vineyard.
Jay said; “What’s the Kingdom like? Well, some people get what they deserve and no more. Some people get more than what they deserve.”
If we go by your analysis we believe we have to earn salvation. ( we deserve it) I understand where you are coming from, except that it is not consistant with what you have said before. You have said, we only “deserve death” we cannot deserve salvation.
What I have a problem understanding is verse 16, is this not the moral Jesus was teaching.
Mat 20:1 ¶ For the kingdom of heaven is like unto a man [that is] an householder, which went out early in the morning to hire labourers into his vineyard.
Mat 20:16 So the last shall be first, and the first last: for many be called, but few chosen.
“The owner, perhaps realizing that he had insufficient labor to get the job done by the end of the day felt compelled to go and try to get somebody else to finish up the work and needed to “encourage” them with additional pay…”
Price, the story was not about picking grapes, even I know that 🙂
in the mission that god set before the kingdom of Israel. and when the lord entered into to this kingdom,did he not do this mission as god intended with out compromising relations with the father.
Ate with sinners drank with them,sat and talked with those outside the kingdom every and all that he did was the way the true Israelite was intended to behave in the kingdom.
he was the TRUE VINE,NO?
and rejected.
now then, we come to the task of the cross,
when push comes to shove,was our lord faithful the fathers will or did he merit life by law?
🙂
there i think jay is the underling tension, but then i have tunnel vision.
🙂
p.s.
jay what is a hedge fund,
but faith only.
and what in the world is penance.
your guilty and only wear the knees of my pants out
the two great alternatives.
then there is grace through faithfulness,gods work through the cross.
did Jesus deserve salvation.
🙂
I think I agree with Jay on this one. I’d say it a bit differently but it boils down to the same thing. Basically I think we have a warped view of what is fair. We think fairness means we get the same thing as the next guy. Maybe our parents created that idea by trying too hard to treat us and all our siblings the same. We think we’re entitled to certain things just because we exist. But it’s a fallacy to think it has to be that way.
There is a moral imperative that deeds are rewarded and punished in correct proportion. That’s why Jesus had to die on the cross in order for God to forgive us. Payment had to be made for the sins. God couldn’t just give us a pass. The books had to be balanced between us and God. That’s justice, and God is always just.
That’s a much different thing from saying God has to treat each of us alike. He doesn’t. Some of us are rich and some are poor. Some are geniuses and some aren’t. Some have great singing voices, and some, well…. The potter made different vessels for different purposes. It’s his right.
Laymond….duh !! My point was that there is nothing unfair about both parties coming to a mutual agreement…. And, I’ve heard it said many times that if we all got to see all the trouble other people had to put up with in their lives, we’d probably decide to keep our own…
Price, on June 30th, 2011 at 7:44 am Said:
I don’t see what is so unfair about both parties entering into a contractual agreement…
Price I completely agree up to this point, the conjecture is where you loose me 🙂 explaining why a fictional character did a fictional thing. Is just that, fiction. 🙂
Laymond…. Obviously, there is some point to be gleaned from the story or there wouldn’t be a need to tell a story…good grief… I just was elaborating and illustrating the fact that the ones that were griping were doing so without a clear understanding of what the Farmer was up to… Are any of us actually going to complain and question God without having the advantage of being God and knowing what He knows…hardly. Anybody ever commented that you’re a little picky ?? :P)
Jay….it’s really not about being unfair…it’s the fault of the Starry Host and the female temples of Ephesus…:)
Yes, Price they have 🙂
Price,
I don’t think it’s true to Jesus’ parable to hypothesize that the Master “felt compelled to go and try to get somebody else to finish up the work and needed to “encourage” them with additional pay.” Jesus’ point is that they were paid more than they deserved.
And you also have to read the parable in light of First Century economics. In the realm of blue collar work, prices were fixed by tradition and custom. A day’s labor was worth 1 denarius and had been for centuries. A carpenter charged the customary charge regardless of the state of the economy. There were, of course, exceptions, as market forces sometimes overcame the inertia of tradition. But a denarius was one-day’s pay for a laborer.
This is why the Master didn’t have to set a price for those going to work after the beginning of the workday —
To the First Century laborer, “whatever is right” would have sounded like the customary hourly wage. Evidently, the Master considered that a full day’s pay for a partial day’s labor was “right.” “Right” = ??????? (DIKAION), meaning “just” or “righteous.” And that’s interesting, because when applied to God, “righteous” refers to God’s commitment to keep his covenant.
The lesson is about generosity — not the law of supply and demand. And one moral is that God’s rewards will not be limited to what we earn but rather will be defined by his character as a generous God. But another moral is that some who come closer to actually earning their reward will be jealous of those who do less to earn their reward. We see the same lesson in the Parable of the Prodigal Son.
If we weren’t talking about God and the Bible, most people would declare the results unfair — just as Jesus predicted. And most would object to the 5-talent servant who earned 10 receiving one more talent from the one-talent servant as unfair.
And by contemporary usage of the word, it is unfair — but that’s because grace isn’t a system built on fairness. It’s always more than fair.
Jesus concludes the parable with —
The “last” are those who came to work the last.
The “first” is therefore the worker paid a day’s wages for a day’s work.
It’s easy to see how the “last” is first — he got the best deal. And the “first” is last, I suppose, because he got the worst bargain — although it’s an undeniably just bargain.
Thus, the Kingdom turns things upside. It will have workers who receive vastly more than they deserve and it will have workers who are rewarded justly only. That’s the way it is.
And so, you are exactly right that the real lesson is that it’s good to have been called! Better last than not at all. And if you’re in heaven, where are you going to spend your money anyway?!
In other words, the reward for everyone is so much greater than we deserve that comparing rewards is to entirely miss the point. If I win the lottery for $10 trillion and you win another lottery for $100 trillion, I have no business being upset and jealous of you. I have more than enough. We need to lay aside rivalry and scorekeeping and get to work, confident in our reward.
And that is for us Americans a very hard thing to do. We live in a culture of competition and rivalry, of winning by outdoing our competitors. And we see the “church down the road” as competition — and so we’re unhappy if they receive the same reward as we, since we have so much more merit and understand the rules so much better. And Jesus says, “Get over it.”
Alan,
Thanks. That’s two votes going my way.
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Jay…you and Laymond are sooooo picky…LOL
I totally agree with the inappropriate nature of trying to put a human concept of fairness on God…The horribly stated point I was apparently horrible at presenting was that WE most of the time haven’t a clue what God is doing in someone life and certainly can’t with accuracy predict what God is doing..so in order to be “fair” one would have to know exactly what is on each side of the balance…which IMHO can’t be accurately determined… But, even if we could I agree that what’s on my side of the balance is far more than I deserve and perhaps that was the message God gave Paul when He said, “My Grace is sufficient.” He didn’t say fair..