“But he answered and said to one of them, ‘Friend, I am doing you no wrong; did you not agree with me for a denarius? Take what is yours and go, but I wish to give to this last man the same as to you. Is it not lawful for me to do what I wish with what is my own? Or is your eye envious because I am generous?’ So the last shall be first, and the first last'” (Matt 20:13-16).

If we are completely honest, we agree with the complaint of those who worked the entire day and received the same wages as those who had only worked an hour. No doubt, they received exactly what they had agreed upon, but it also feels a bit as though they were taken advantage of. Had they known the outcome, they would have definitely chosen to work for one hour rather than slave away the entire day for the same wages. In Hebrew, we might call them “friers” (suckers).

At the heart of this parable, Yeshua highlights the justice of “fair” and the offensiveness of generosity (i.e., grace). The landowner is being fair to those who worked all day, and scandalously generous to those who worked for only one hour. And in our hearts we cry out, “That’s just not fair!”

But let’s be completely honest. Who of us in our right mind will ever demand God gives us what we deserve (what’s fair) when we stand before him on judgment day?! As those who know the grace of the gospel, we fully identify with the workers who were lavished with grace rather than being treated fairly. And we will ever and always bless God throughout eternity for being such a generous Landowner!

“But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the ages to come He might show the surpassing riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus” (Eph 2:4-7).