Labour In Faith

Introduction

In the late-1800’s, people from all over North America sold all they had to buy the supplies and travel to the Yukon on the promise of a rumor that gold could be found, enough gold to make one very wealthy. So many men endured freezing cold nights, wearisome days, and the loss of all their earthly possessions for a promise they believed: that if they panned enough, they would find some rich deposit of gold that would make them rich. Sadly, virtually all of them wouldn’t even find enough gold to support their efforts and would return to their homes in poverty, or else die in the harsh arctic winters.

When a rich young man came to Jesus, he was looking for something much more valuable than all the gold in the world. He wanted eternal life. Jesus directed him to the law, and then showed him the reality of his unbelief. Men can sell everything for a handful of gold, others gave their lives to find the north-west passage to establish a trade route from Britain to Asia in the 18th century, but this man will not give them same things for the promise of eternal life.

Peter, on the other hand, believes that he has done his part. He did leave his possessions behind, meager in comparison to this ruler though they were, and followed Christ. Surely, he and the other disciples were owed something, right?

Well, that’s not the way sacrifice works. That is how wages work. Sacrifice is founded not in a legal agreement of wages for work done, but on the promise of something worth sacrificing for. The gold miners 130 years ago sacrificed for a promise that ended up to be a scam, but the sacrifice that Christ calls you to today is as sure the Name on which they are founded, on the God of Abraham himself.

Peter’s Question Answered and Qualified

We pick up this text in verse 27. In response to Jesus’ teaching on the impossible difficulty of the rich following Jesus, and yet the fact that God’s call makes the impossible happen, Peter replies by drawing attention to the sacrifice he and the other disciples made in following Christ. Here it seems that once again Peter is missing the point, again showing that the transformation of their thinking into the ways of the Kingdom was not yet fully realized. Jesus had just verified the disciple’s conclusion that salvation was impossible due to the covetous nature of the human heart. His conclusion, however, was that all things are possible with God. Now Peter seems to try to negate that point by showing himself and the other disciples to be proof of salvation by human effort. “We have left all to follow you”, with the implication being that they are unlike the rich young man and others, and that surely their service must be rewarded.

Jesus, ever patient with the worldly foolishness of the disciples, a foolishness common to all of us, does affirm that they will indeed be rewarded to a very high degree so as to judge the twelve tribes of Israel in the Kingdom of Heaven. And yet, verse 30 introduces a new element into all of this: “many who are first will be last, and the last will be first.”

In this statement, Jesus knocks over the righteousness by works that the disciples are apparently still operating on. They think of the Kingdom as a place where the mighty righteous saints like themselves, who accomplished the impossible will be greatly exalted, and while they are not wrong regarding their own reward, their way of thinking is incorrect. As we’ve been seeing since chapter 18, the Kingdom of Heaven does not follow human expectation and does not operate the way our human Kingdom’s do.

The First and the Last Illustrated

Jesus illustrates his point in this parable, the labourers in the vineyard. As we see in verse 16, this parable is an inclusio surrounded by the pithy statement of the last being first and the first being last.

What does Jesus mean by this? Much debate has been had over what “the last will be first and the first will be last” actually means. Some think the “first” are the Jews and the “last” are the Gentiles, but that is nowhere in this context. Instead, Jesus is speaking of those in the Kingdom in response to Peter’s comment about leaving everything. The parable Jesus tells here unpacks this concept more clearly.

The elements of the story are not hard to understand. A landowner goes into the marketplace during grape harvest to hire some able-bodied men for a day’s work. At 6 AM, which is when the Jewish day started, a group of men agree to work a 12 hour shift for a denarius, which was a normal day’s pay for labourer’s and soldiers. In verses 3-4 he goes out again three hours later and finds more men. These he hires on the promise that he will give them “whatever is right”, rather than an exact amount. With faith in the fairness of the landowner, these go out to work. This continues throughout the day, with the last group being hired at 5 PM, or the eleventh hour of the day, an hour before the work day was over. When the day is done and the workers line up for their pay, the landowner pays the last to be hired first and gives them a full denarius. This inspires envy in the hearts of the first as they receive their promised money, and they complain in verse 12 that the landowner has done a social wrong to them. They, who have worked all day under the hot sun, are equated with those who worked one hour at sunset in pay. “You have made them equal to us” they say. Their logic is simple: each should be payed according to how much they worked. Since they worked the hardest and the last hires still make a full denarius, they should be paid more. Or at least the last should be paid much less. This is based on a system or works; that their payment should directly reflect their work in relation to the payment of other workers. They have no complaint about the amount per se, they were quite happy to accept it that morning. Their problem is that those who did not earn a full day’s wage received what they did. The language of saying “made them equal” implies a system of merit in their minds, and what they find unjust is that those with less merit are rewarded the same as those with more merit.

We might reword this parable in many ways; perhaps you were told as a new hire at a company that after 5 years you would get a 20% pay raise. After the 5 years, you get the raise but so does a co-worker who started six months ago. Few of us can deny that we would be quite tempted to be upset at this.

The response of the landowner is patient but clear. He calls them “friend” in verse 13, showing that despite their envy he holds no ill will towards them. He points out that he has done them no wrong. They got exactly what they agree upon and so they cannot complain that the pay isn’t enough. Their problem is only in comparing themselves to the other workers. The owner points out that their jealousy and envy is rooted in a disdain for generosity. What is it to them if the landowner pays those who worked one hour a denarius. They could not say they earned it, but that the landowner was generous. In fact, if he wanted, he could give anyone a denarius, or ten, or a hundred, for any reason whatsoever and the first workers could not complain so long as they got the money they agree upon as a wage. What is translated in verse 15 as “do you begrudge my generosity” is literally “is your eye bad that I am good?” In other words, is it really wrong in your eyes that I am a generous and good man who gives people what they do not deserve?

And that is the point. These men are upset because they interpreted things wrongly. The landowner is not saying that those men in one hour did as much as the rest did in 12 hours, he isn’t saying that those men deserved a denarius in the same way that the first workers do. While the first workers are thinking about what they deserve, they miss the kindness and generosity of the landowner on those who had no chance for employment earlier in the day.

What Is the Point?

There are a lot of elements in this parable that people use to draw wrong conclusions; what I mean is, there are plenty of things this story is not teaching. It is not teaching us that heavenly rewards are a wage that is the same as working at a job. We are not God’s employees, we are first slaves and then Sons in Christ. It is also not saying that everything will be ‘even Stephan’ on the last day. Jesus has made it clear elsewhere, and even in his conversation with the rich young man, that treasure in heaven is stored up in degrees. 2 Cor 9:6

2 Corinthians 9:6 ESV

The point is this: whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows bountifully will also reap bountifully.

and so it is also not saying that our Christian lives do not matter, since we are going to be rewarded anyway whether we work hard for the Kingdom or not.

So what is it saying? Remember the beginning, and in verse 16, that the point of this parable is that the “last will be first and the first will be last” and Jesus’ explanation of that. Remember also that Jesus is answering Peter’s question about his reward as a disciple who gave up everything to follow Jesus. With all this in mind, the point of the parable is this: the Kingdom of Heaven deals in grace and not in merit. God is not a God who owes sinners anything, and he does not stand in debt of us. He does bind himself to his promises, but this is different that binding oneself to obligatory payment. In the parable, the men get what they deserve but they are envious that the landowner is generous. Likewise Peter, who left all to follow Jesus, anticipates what his wage might be. What reward he might receive as payment for his sacrifice. Jesus does not deny that he, and all who give up this world for the Kingdom of Heaven, will receive a reward, but his point is that this reward is not a wage but a promise of grace. If you bought a house and then went to a homeless man living in a cardboard box and said “if you give up your box you can have a house”, can that man claim he earned the house you gave him by giving up his box? Neither can we who give up all in this life to follow Jesus claim that we have earned heaven or any other grace, only that we believed the promise and followed through on that belief.

So this parable is meant to reorient Peter’s thinking about grace and heavenly rewards. The point of that parable is that God gives not to those who earn it, but to those on whom he chooses to show his mercy and grace. Salvation, and all the grace that is experienced in it, cannot be earned as a wage, only accepted as a gracious gift from a merciful God.

Why should we work if it is of grace? Because God gives grace to those who believe and love him. Think of it this way, imagine the next day those first workers don’t go to the market that morning. They wait until the 11th hour and then show up, thinking they can only work one hour and get the full denarius. Will the landowner hire them? Absolutely not, because they would be trying to manipulate him into giving them what they do not deserve. So heavenly grace is given, not to those who earn it, but to those who believe God and love him with a love that drives them to work the harvest fields. We do not labour as hired workers, bothers and sisters, but as Sons of the Kingdom in Christ Jesus. The landowner does not pay his Son, but rather the Son enjoys the wealth of the rich harvest when it has come in because he is a Son.

And so my conclusion on the meaning of the parable is this: Christ does not reward our good works and sacrifices for the Kingdom as a wage. Romans 4:4-5

Romans 4:4–5 ESV

Now to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift but as his due. And to the one who does not work but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness,

Instead, Christ rewards those whose work and sacrifice for the Kingdom is driven by faith in God’s promises and love for him in his glory. Do you think the martyrs went to painful deaths for Christ as a way to earn overtime in heavenly rewards? Do you think that missionaries throughout the ages gave their lives preaching the Gospel in dangerous places because of some heavenly paycheck? No, they believed God and, in love, worked in the Spirit to bring about what God had promised; a Kingdom in which they are promised to reign by grace through faith in Jesus Christ. Jesus wants his disciples to see, and in time they would, that the problem with the rich young man was not his unwillingness to work, but his unwillingness to believe. That they would be rewarded, not because they worked, but because they believed that Jesus was the Christ and that faith drove them to follow him.

The call of Christ is not: “come work for me, and one day you will get the wages you earned.” The call of Jesus is this: “come follow me, believe in me, love me, walk with me, die with me, and I will make you mine in glorious resurrection. You will be where I will be, have what I have, and reign with me. Why? Because I love you and I want to give you this. I want to share my rewards for my good works that I earned with you. I will take your curse so you can have my blessing. Are you with me? Are you ready to leave the empty promises of sin, wealth, and pleasure behind and trust that I have something better for you?”

And there will be a differentiation. We will be judged by our works, the Scriptures say, but not on the merit of our works. Rather, our works will indicate the kind of faith we have. To those with little faith, they will receive little in the Kingdom. To those with much faith, they will receive much. To those with any faith at all, what they receive is no wage or payment, but all grace.

Conclusion

So how shall we put this into practice?

First, we must remember that the call of all disciples is one of complete self-surrender to Christ. The challenge of last week should be remembered, that Jesus asks no less of you than he asked of the rich man. God will give no reward to those who will not step out in faith.

But with that being said, know that what you are called to is not a job. Going to church is not like going to work every day so that you earn your paycheck, it is a place to meet God in the midst of his people. Does that prospect excite you? Is that what gets you up on Sunday morning? Do you want it to be what gets you up on Sunday morning? Do you give up the things in this world, not with an eye of longing like Lots wife looking upon Sodom, but in faith knowing that you have something better which God will reward you with. Does the prospect of serving God in a new way excite you because in it you know that you will experience God, that your faith will grow, and that in all of it a generous God will generously give to you in a world to come? Do you see that the Kingdom you work to build is the Kingdom in which you will reign with Christ? It is your inheritance? Remember, a Son is not paid a wage by his Father, instead he enjoys the fruitful harvest alongside his Father as it is brought in; a harvest that exceeds the measly wages of a worker many times over.

All this to say, work hard fellow Christians. Not as a paid labourer, but as a receptor of the grace of God, as a Son of God by adoption in Christ Jesus. As one who, in his endless grace, will inherit Christ’s inheritance because you believe on him who died and was raised for your salvation, and in that faith you are united to him, and through that faith you are working for a harvest that is to come, one which you will share because of the bountiful generosity of God.

So believe, and in believing work so that your faith is a living faith, and in your work believe so that your work is not an empty or self-righteous work. Entrust yourself to God and get up, exercise that faith by doing what you know God has called you too. Give up what you need to give up, follow Christ where you see him walking, serve those he is serving, wait in eager expectation of the good gifts he promises to those who trust him.