Patrick Moreau August 27, 2020

The Parable Of The Workers In The Vineyard? 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.” The workers who were hired about five in the afternoon came and each received a denarius. So when those came who were hired first, they expected to receive more. But each one of them also received a denarius. When they received it, they began to grumble against the landowner. “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” (Matthew 20:8–12).

Jesus often uses parables to reveal what the kingdom of heaven is like. He portrays how one enters the kingdom and who the different characters are. In this Parable of the Laborers or Workers in the Vineyard, there are things that He tells the disciples and us about the grace of God and that God is always more than fair. Here is a discussion on this parable and what Jesus means in giving it.

There is also another angle in this parable. When vineyard laborers enter into the harvest, they are entering into a vineyard looking for those who bear fruit which Jesus says that those who are the children of God will be the only ones bearing fruit, showing those who are truly saved and those who are not (John 15). Jesus says in fact “You will recognize them by their fruits” (Matt 7:16).

But such an interpretation raises more questions. Are we free to knowingly live a life of sin, as long as we make that last confession before death? The parable seems to support an odd loophole to salvation, that getting into heaven is decided by a technicality of whether your sins have been forgiven rather than that you love God and want to spend eternity with Him.

Jesus spent a great deal of His ministry announcing the coming of God’s kingdom and overcoming first-century presumptions by teaching people to recognize that kingdom. And a lot of His parables focused on communicating valuable truths about this kingdom. One misunderstanding that Jesus needed to clarify was the idea that the Jews held a special insider relationship with God. From the very beginning, God told Abraham that all the nations of the world would be blessed through his offspring (Genesis 22:18), but as far as the Israelites were concerned, these other nations would never be as blessed as they were. Discover additional info with the The Parable Of The Workers In The Vineyard video on YouTube.