Grace Or Fairness, The Difference Is Big

​In the book of Matthew, Jesus tells a hard-hitting parable.

Hard-hitting, that is, if you are me....

Jesus tells his followers that the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out to the market place at 6am to hire workers for his his vineyard.

The landowner agreed to pay them a denarius for the entire day's work.

About 9am, the landowner went to the market place once again to see if there were any additional workers. He found some, and agreed to pay them what was right.

He did the same at noon and 3pm - again, asking them to trust they'd receive pay that was fair.

At 5pm, he went out one last time, even though the work day ended at 6pm - only an hour left.

The landowner indeed found people standing around and asked them, "Why have you been standing here all day long doing nothing?"

They said, "Because no one has hired us."

The landowner told them, "Go work in my vineyard."

Shortly after this last group began the work, the work day ended.

The landowner told the foreman to pay the workers their wages, starting with the last ones hired at 5pm.

The workers hired last were paid a denarius for their work. The workers hired first saw this and began imagining just how much they were going to receive. Jackpot, they thought.

Yet, when the time came for them to be paid, they were paid exactly what had been promised to them.

A denarius.

That did NOT go over well. "These who were hired last worked only one hour and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the work and the heat of the day," they said.

The landowner said, "I am not unfair to you, friend. Didn't you agree to work for a denarius?"

So why is this hard hitting to me? Two reasons, really.

One, there are times in my life I can get frustrated and even angry with God when I look around and see others receiving blessings in life that I think I deserve more than them. I get angry at God for not coming through with gifts that God has never promised to deliver.

In an instant, I can turn ungrateful for all that God is doing in my life because he's doing what I think is something more and unfair in someone else's life.

And two, maybe even the more challenging part - God wants me - the guy who worked all day long and got paid the exact same as someone who worked an hour - God wants me to celebrate those folks. Not just accept it.

God wants me to celebrate that the landowner did not give up, not even at the last hour of the day, looking for people who may need a place to work.

Some of us are living challenging lives - including me - because we are grieving the loss of things in life that we should have never expected in the first place. We are building a life on our own expectations and not God's promises.

We are building a life looking for fairness, when God is working from grace. (I mean, are we really going to talk to a God about fairness who allowed his son to be murdered on a cross for us?)

God isn't asking us to get good at figuring out who most deserves to be hired; God is asking us to keep believing there is something in everyone that makes them worthy of being hired.

Could there be more different approaches to life?

And frankly, when it comes to my own personal relationship with God, I am thankful every day he doesn't save his love for the most deserving.....

Thank you God.

For grace.