Posted by Patrick Moreau on September 1, 2020 in Religion
The Parable Of The Workers In The Vineyard explained? They must have been astounded when they received the same pay as everyone else. Naturally, they’re frustrated. They’ve worked all day long, and the landowner has made these latecomers “equal” to them. This is precisely the situation that the first-century Jews find themselves in. They were God’s chosen people. They’ve served Yahweh for generations. They’ve been blessed, and they’ve been disciplined. They’ve been waiting for a Messiah to come to rescue them from Rome and reestablish them as God’s unique, chosen nation.
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).
Some interpretations of this parable use it as justification for the “deathbed conversion,” where repentance and confirmation of salvation occur directly before death. The workers represent people who convert to Christianity: the early workers are Christians born in the faith, who have spent most of their lives in the church, while the last workers are Christians who convert either on their deathbed or close to Jesus’ second coming. The denarius, then, represents salvation. All those who come to Christ, no matter when, will receive the same gift of salvation.
Jesus’s teaching regularly challenged this idea and never as overtly as in the parable of the workers. For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire workers for his vineyard. He agreed to pay them a denarius for the day and sent them into his vineyard. About nine in the morning he went out and saw others standing in the marketplace doing nothing. He told them, “You also go and work in my vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right.” So they went. He went out again about noon and about three in the afternoon and did the same thing. About five in the afternoon he went out and found still others standing around. He asked them, “Why have you been standing here all day long doing nothing?” Discover additional information on the The Parable Of The Workers In The Vineyard video on YouTube.