Doesn’t it make you mad when something is unfair—especially if you are on the receiving end?

Recently I read of a man’s complaint when he applied for a new health insurance policy. The company accepted him but charged a higher rate because of his allergy problems.

The application never asked whether he smoked or how much (never smoked). They didn’t ask if he regularly down a six-pack and then get behind the wheel (don’t drink at all). They never bothered to inquire whether he eat properly and exercise regularly (he does).

So some guy who smokes two packs a day, drives when drunk, eats junk food and never exercises could get the standard rate. But because he had hay fever, he had to pay more. He cried, “UNFAIR!”

We all want to be treated fairly. Most of us figure that if we do our best, God will deal with us fairly on judgment day. But Jesus taught that God does not operate according to our notion of what is fair.

In Matthew 20, Jesus told a story that we need to ponder often. This parable may sound to us as if it described a purely imaginary situation, but that is far from being the case. Apart from the method of payment, the parable describes the kind of thing that frequently happened at certain times in Palestine.

The grape harvest ripened towards the end of September, and then close on its heels the rains came. If the harvest was not ingathered before the rains broke, then it was ruined; and so to get the harvest in was a frantic race against time. Any worker was welcome, even if he could give only an hour to the work..

The pay was perfectly normal; a denarius or a drachma was the normal day’s wage for a working man; and, even allowing for the difference in modern standards and in purchasing power, 4 pence a day was not a wage which left any margin.

The men who were standing in the market-place were not street-corner idlers, lazing away their time. The market-place was the equivalent of the labor exchange. A man came there first thing in the morning, carrying his tools, and waited until someone hired him. The men who stood in the market-place were waiting for work, and the fact that some of them stood on until even five o’clock in the evening is the proof of how desperately they wanted it.

These men were hired laborers; they were the lowest class of workers, and life for them was always desperately precarious. Slaves and servants were regarded as being at least to some extent attached to the family; they were within the group; their fortunes would vary with the fortunes of the family, but they would never be in any imminent danger of starvation in normal times. It was very different with the hired day-laborers. They were not attached to any group; they were entirely at the mercy of chance employment; they were always living on the semi-starvation line.

As we have seen, the pay was 4 pence a day; and, if they were unemployed for one day, the children would go hungry at home, for no man ever saved much out of 4 pence a day. With them, to be unemployed for a day was disaster.

The hours in the parable were the normal Jewish hours. The Jewish day began at sunrise, 6 a.m., and the hours were counted from then until 6 p.m., when officially the next day began. Counting from 6 a.m. therefore, the third hour is 9 a.m., the sixth hour is twelve midday, and the eleventh hour is 5 p.m.

“For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard. After agreeing with the laborers for the usual daily wage, he sent them into his vineyard.”

In this parable, God is the landowner, believers are the laborers, and the vineyard is the kingdom of heaven.

This parable speaks especially to those who feel superior because of heritage or favored position, to those who feel superior because they have spent so much time with Christ, and to new believers so as to reassure them of God’s grace.

The landowner went out early in the morning to find some laborers. The workday went from sunup to sundown, so this “early morning” hour was about six o’clock. These laborers agreed to work for the usual daily wage (usually a denarius).

Bosses and managers should not overlook the fact that laborers had a fair role in the negotiation of wages at the beginning of this story. Owners do not hire workers on a “take it or leave it” basis here. They talk, and as the day’s work begins, both sides are pleased with the terms.

Fair bargaining today means that Christian managers talk with labor at a table where both sides recognize mutual interests, needs, and expectations. When the talk is done, both sides should say, “Good deal, let’s get to work.”

20:3–4 “When he went out about nine o’clock, he saw others standing idle in the marketplace; and he said to them, ‘You also go into the vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right.’ So they went.”

The landowner went out about nine o’clock and hired more workers who were standing idle in the marketplace. (Some versions say “the third hour.” The day was divided from sunrise to sunset into twelve hours, so the third hour would be about nine o’clock in the morning; the eleventh hour, mentioned in 20:6, would be five o’clock in the afternoon.) Why the landowner went out and continued hiring people is not explained and is not essential to the point of Jesus’ parable. Evidently the landowner needed workers. The marketplace was the public square of the city where most of the business was done. Unemployed laborers could stay there waiting for an opportunity to work. If there was a lot of work to do, they might work right up until sunset, but never beyond, for there would be no light in the fields. So each successive group of laborers worked for less time than the group hired previously. The landowner promised to pay this second group of laborers whatever is right—which they probably considered would be the appropriate fraction of the denarius that matched the amount of time they worked.

20:5–7 “When he went out again about noon and about three o’clock, he did the same. And about five o’clock he went out and found others standing around; and he said to them, ‘Why are you standing here idle all day?’ They said to him, ‘Because no one has hired us.’ He said to them, ‘You also go into the vineyard.’ ” The landowner went out and hired three more groups of workers: some at noon, some at three o’clock, and some at five o’clock. Whether these people were idle (which is a later addition) truly because no one had hired them or because they were lazy is an unknown detail and is not important for Jesus’ meaning in this parable. If people didn’t work, they would likely go hungry. So the landowner hired these people as well. They were willing to work, even for that last hour which they thought would not earn them much money at all.

20:8–10 “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.’ ”

At evening (referring to sunset), the workers were called to collect the day’s wages, which was required by Jewish law so that the poor would not go hungry (see Leviticus 19:13; Deuteronomy 24:14–15). The landowner purposely asked that the last ones hired get paid first. This is not a normal reaction; it would have surprised the workers and it surely surprised Jesus’ listeners. So  “when those hired about five o’clock came, each of them received the usual daily wage. Now when the first came, they thought they would receive more; but each of them also received the usual daily wage.”  

When those who worked less time received a full day’s wage, the laborers who had worked throughout the day expected to get paid more than that, even though the daily wage was what they had agreed upon when they were hired (20:2). Certainly those listening to the parable expected the same thing, although all would wonder at the astuteness of a businessman who would pay a full day’s wage to laborers who had worked only an hour.

20:11–12     “When they received it, they began to grumble against the landowner. ‘These men 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.’ ”

Everyone who had been hired during the day received the same—the daily wage. The laborers who had worked all day in the hot sun received what they had agreed upon. They began to grumble against the landowner, not because he hadn’t kept his bargain with them, but because he had been generous to everyone else. They thought it wasn’t fair that those who had worked only one hour received the same amount of pay as (were made equal to) those who had borne the burden of the work and the heat of the day.

20:13–15 “But he replied to one of them, ‘Friend, I am doing you no wrong; did you not agree with me for the usual daily wage? Take what belongs to you and go; I choose to give to this last the same as I give to you.’ ”  While the laborers did not address the landowner with any respectful title, the landowner responded to one of them as friend. He pointed out that he had not done wrong by these laborers who had worked hard all day; he had paid them the agreed amount. Besides, he added, “‘Don’t I have the right to do what I want with my own money? Or are you envious because I am generous?’ ”

Obviously, the landowner could pay whatever he chose as long as he cheated no one—it was his own money. So what was the real problem? The early workers were envious that the landowner had been generous with everyone else. In this parable, Jesus pointed out that salvation is not earned, but given freely only because of God’s great generosity, which goes far beyond our human ideas of what is fair. The message of the parable is that God’s loving mercy accepts the lowest member of society on an equal footing with the elite. This parable may have been addressed in the presence of the religious leaders who “grumbled” because Jesus chose the “lowly” disciples and spent time with those considered unclean and sinful (Luke 15:1–2). Those who come to God—regardless of social strata, age, material wealth, or heritage, and no matter when in life they come—will all be accepted by him on an equal footing. All will receive their inheritance in the kingdom of heaven—no one will get less than what they expect, and some may receive more. Such generosity, such grace, ought to cause all believers great joy—no one should be in the corner grumbling.

It is in one sense a warning to the disciples. It is as if Jesus said to them, “You have received the great privilege of coming into the church and fellowship very early, right at the beginning. In later days others will come in. You must not claim a special honor and a special place because you were Christians before they were. All men, no matter when they come, are equally precious to God.”

There are people who think that, because they have been members of a Church for a long time, the Church practically belongs to them and they can dictate its policy. Such people resent what seems to them the intrusion of new blood or the rise of a new generation with different plans and different ways. In the Christian Church seniority does not necessarily mean honour.

There is an equally definite warning to the Jews. They knew that they were the chosen people, nor would they ever willingly forget that choice. As a consequence they looked down on the Gentiles. Usually they hated and despised them, and hoped for nothing but their destruction. This attitude threatened to be carried forward into the Christian Church. If the Gentiles were to be allowed into the fellowship of the Church at all, they must come in as inferiors.

“In God’s economy,” as someone has said, “there is no such thing as a most favored nation clause.” Christianity knows nothing of the conception of a herrenvolk, a master race. It may well be that we who have been Christian for so long have much to learn from those younger Churches who are late-comers to the fellowship of the faith.

Here also is the generosity of God. These men did not all do the same work; but they did receive the same pay. There are two great lessons here. The first is, as it has been said, “All service ranks the same with God.” It is not the amount of service given, but the love in which it is given which matters.

The second lesson is even greater–all God gives is of grace. We cannot earn what God gives us; we cannot deserve it; what God gives us is given out of the goodness of his heart; what God gives is not pay, but a gift; not a reward, but a grace.

20:16  “So the last will be first, and the first will be last.”

The reversal noted in these words (and in 19:30) points out the differences between this life and life in the kingdom.

• Many people we don’t expect to see in the kingdom will be there.
• The criminal who repented as he was dying (Luke 23:40–43) will be there, along with people who have believed and served God for many years.
• The Jews were promised the kingdom first, but the Gentile believers will share the kingdom along with them.

Just over a century ago, a man named Shamel was the leader of a guerilla group fighting against the Czarist regime in Russia. The unity of his group was threatened by a rash of stealing amongst the members, which included the soldiers’ families. So Shamel imposed a penalty of 100 lashes for anyone caught stealing.

Not long after that, Shamel’s own mother was caught stealing. He didn’t know what to do. He loved his mother and didn’t want her to suffer, but he also knew he had to uphold his law or anarchy and infighting would ruin his army. He shut himself in his tent for three days, agonizing over what to do.

Finally he made up his mind: For the sake of the law and the whole society, his mother must pay the penalty. But before three blows had fallen on her back, Shamel had his real and final solution.

He removed his mother and he himself took her place. The full price had to be paid, but he bore the penalty she deserved. His law stood, but his love prevailed.

Even if you’re a pretty good person, one who has been at work in the vineyard since early morning, you’ve violated God’s holy law. You’ve got sin that must be paid for. Maybe the guy coming in at five in the afternoon has more sin than you. But if God is just, both men’s sin must be paid for.

Either you pay (the merit system), or God pays (the grace system). God’s grace doesn’t seem fair to the self-righteous, but for those who recognize how undeserving they are, it is truly wonderful!