Summary
Grace to Serve—Serve to Glorify
The parable of the laborers in the vineyard Matthew 20:1-16 overturns the conventional wisdom that God's favor is earned by the length or quality of our work. A landowner goes out at dawn, at nine, at noon, at three, and again at five o'clock, hiring workers who had been standing idle. At the end of the day, every laborer—whether he bore the scorching heat for twelve hours or worked only one—receives the same daily wage. The early workers grumble. The owner answers: "Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or are you envious because I am generous?"
The detail that matters most is who does the seeking. The landowner is not waiting at his estate for applicants; he goes out into the marketplace looking for workers. So it is with God. By nature we do not seek Him. Paul writes that "there is no one who seeks God" Romans 3:11, and Jesus tells His disciples, "You did not choose me, but I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit" John 15:16. The idle workers picture our condition apart from grace—not industriously waiting, but standing in the inertia of sin. David confessed, "I was born guilty, a sinner when my mother conceived me" Psalm 51:5, and Paul reminds us that we "were by nature children of wrath like everyone else" Ephesians 2:3.
What we deserve as idle sinners is plainly stated: "the wages of sin is death" Romans 6:23. The grumbling laborers complain about fairness, but fairness would be ruinous for us. The only one who never deserved that wage was Jesus, and yet He was stripped, crowned with thorns, mocked, and crucified. "For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God" 2 Corinthians 5:21. Grace is not getting what we deserve; it is receiving Christ's righteousness in place of our sin, and being called into the vineyard at all.
This calling comes through Baptism. There God seals us with His Holy Spirit, claims us, and makes us a new creation. "We are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life" Ephesians 2:10. In the baptismal liturgy, the candle is given after the water and the Word—after forgiveness, salvation, and the Spirit have been bestowed—with the charge, "Let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven" Matthew 5:16. The order matters. Good works do not earn the invitation into the vineyard; they flow from it.
This is also the heart of the Reformation, which was not an innovation but a reclamation of God's full Word—both the Law that exposes our inability to save ourselves and the Gospel that announces salvation by grace alone through Christ alone. Before the Reformation the church too often taught that the idle workers had to labor for their invitation. Scripture teaches the opposite: the invitation is the gift, and the labor follows “Grace to Serve—Serve to Glorify” 10-31-21.
When grumbling rises in us—against God's generosity to latecomers, or against neighbors who seem to receive what we have borne the heat to earn—we sound like Jonah, who fled to Tarshish precisely because he knew the Lord was "a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love" Jonah 4:2, or like Job's friends, who reduced God's dealings to a tit-for-tat ledger. Instead, we count it a blessing that we have already been called, we pray for those still standing idle, and we use the time, treasure, talents, and strength God supplies for the work He has given. We are called by grace and grace alone to serve—and we serve to glorify God and God alone.
Video citations
- “Grace to Serve—Serve to Glorify” 10-31-21 — Open to the gospel of Matthew, we are going to be diving into this parable. We have been going through Jesus' teachings, Jesus' parables for the past four weeks. I said, this is the fourth week. And…