An announcement today from Channel Three News: Today the President unveiled a plan that he calls "Wage Equalization." Every business in America will be required by law to pay all employees the same wage per hour, regardless of experience, education, position, or any other factors.
Thank heavens, that news announcement is a fake. There is no such Wage Equalization Plan. I doubt that there ever could be, because it would be unfair. If a man has a lot of education appropriate to his job, he should be paid more than a man who has little or none. If a man works very hard, with long hours every week, he should be paid more than a man who works hardly at all. It is also reasonable that a man who has lots of responsibility should be paid more than a man who has none.
Jesus our Lord tells us today a parable in which all workers get exactly equal pay, even though some worked far less. Now, we know that Jesus is the fairest, most loving Man ever, because He is the righteous God. But when we read the parable we think, "That's not fair."
Workers who slaved away all day in the heat should NOT receive the same pay as people who barely worked at all. If you were treated that way on the job, you would be very upset, and so would I. It's not fair.
That is the exact point Jesus is making. The kingdom of heaven is not fair. It does not work by equal business practices. It does not calculate wages based on how hard you have worked. There is one reward in the kingdom: eternal life. Everyone who is in the kingdom receives that reward.
But sometimes there are people who think that they are somehow superior to others in the Church. They may not say it, but some people begin to feel as though they deserve eternal life a little more than others do. They think that they are a little more God-pleasing in their actions than others.
In Jesus' day, such people were called Pharisees. They thought that they deserved the favor of God. They thought that they were morally superior to others. If you watched a Pharisee for a while, you might even agree. They seemed to work harder at being good by following lots of rules. They appeared to be very loving people who helped the poor a lot.
The Pharisees are like the workers who slaved away all day in the hot sun. They were working so hard in the kingdom, so they expected that God would give them more rewards. Surely, the Lord would not give the same rewards they received to the tax collector and the prostitutes and the gentiles.
To our fleshly minds, that kind of thinking makes sense. You work harder, you get extra rewards.
You may know somebody (perhaps it is yourself) whom we might call a saint, who is a nice person, so loving, so caring, always giving to others. Surely that person is a true believer who has eternal life.
You see how easy it is to fall into this kind of thinking. Salvation is not by works at all. Not one tiny bit. Yet it is natural for us to think that the nice people will be in heaven. That's not necessarily true.
In fact, in the parable, there is only one class of people whose future is in doubt. That's the hard workers. They are the grumblers who complain about the Master's wages. In the parable, we are never told that they receive their pay. Perhaps we might imagine that they threw the denarius down in the dust in disgust and walked away furiously. That is certainly a natural human reaction. But it reveals the true problem in the kingdom with those who want to earn their status. They are risking their eternal future.
So some of those who seem to be first in terms of goodness will actually be last, because their righteousness was actually self-righteousness. Hell will be filled with those people saying, "It's not fair. I am a good person. It's not fair."
But Jesus has told us what is the fair wage we deserve. The wages of sin is death, and we are all sinners, including you. You deserve not only earthly, physical death, but also eternal death in hell. You do, I do, everyone does. If there is a fair wage for our actions in this life, then heaven will be empty, except for God and His angels.
But the kingdom of heaven is not fair. You who deserve death receive instead life. For there is another Worker who has done it all for you. You arrive to do your work, but He is already there and says, "I got here early and did everything for you. There's no work left to do."
Christ has done all the work in your place. He did all the work that the Commandments and His vocations demanded. He did the work His Father asked Him to do, which was to suffer the torment for all our sins and die as a sinner, although He was not one. Christ did all this work willingly, without any thought of reward for Himself.
The only reward He earned was you. You were the denarius that He worked for. He slaved away to get you back out of slavery. He died so that you are forever alive.
The work that you do in the vineyard is the good works you do now that you are in the kingdom of God. But you do not earn wages with your hard work. The reward of eternal life, and indeed all gifts from God, are what God has bestowed generously, purely out of grace. Your work has nothing to do with it.
Sola gratia, grace alone, is the lesson of the parable. The Master of the Vineyard is generous. You should receive His gift of eternal life with thankful hearts, and work hard for your neighbor without a thought of reward. You should not grumble, nor complain if your fellow saints seem to do inferior work to you. Why should you care, when you are the privileged saints of God, redeemed by Christ, with eternal life sealed with the Blood of the Lamb.
May the Spirit give you faith to bask in His gracious love. May you enjoy Christ's wondrous sacrifice that has given ultimate blessing even to sinners like you. May you rest in His mighty work at the same time that you work hard for your neighbor.
In the Name of this gracious God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
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