Matthew 20:11 Commentary - Dr Peter Masters

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Matthew 20:11

Comments

So the labourers murmur against the lord of the vineyard. This and his answer are at the heart of the parable. ‘By paying them the same,’ they complain, ‘you have treated them as if they had done the same amount of work as us, but in fact they have only worked an hour, and we have been out there all day, working through the hottest part of the day.’ Their minds were focused on receiving a reward for what they had done. Even though Peter is a converted man, this is the way of thinking he is drifting into. ‘We have “borne the heat and burden of the day”; we have suffered more; we have exerted ourselves more; we ought to be paid more’, they complain. This is clearly an arrangement of grace in the mind of the lord of the vineyard. He wants to do good to these workers, and he knows they need to bring home an income to their families, even those who are not inclined to work. Instead of the workers coming to plead for work, he has gone out to urge them to consider their own welfare. It is a situation of grace. Who can murmur at grace? Who can question what is freely given them? The fact that it is given to the undeserving leaves the giver free to decide for himself who he will give it to, without having any constraints placed upon him. If any start to dream that it was not a gift, but something they were owed, they are seeing the whole situation in a distorted way. This is the wrong attitude in Peter that Christ is exposing, and it is the wrong attitude in all who imagine that God owes them anything, or that they are more deserving than others in their capacity to please the Lord. The key point here is the different understanding of these first workers to that of the lord of the vineyard. It is not until now that his intention has become clear to them. He has been planning all along to pay all of his workers the same, regardless of how much work they have done. This is what was in his mind when he first hired them, but they did not realise it.

Application

The Lord has given us life and strength and the ability to serve him. Our service brings him no real profit. How can the creature who has all his needs provided by his Creator give anything real back to the one who made him? We have nothing that we have not received from him, and if so, then our opportunity to serve is itself a gift. All that we do for the Lord, following our conversion, is a debt of gratitude to him for what he has already freely done for us. Any reward that we think we are owed for our service is insignificant compared to the vastly greater gift we have already received for doing no work at all. We came to Christ as lost sinners. We were due to be sentenced to eternal punishment. The law of God was against us and condemned us, yet Christ loved us and was born into our world and took human nature in order to pay the price for our sin. The size of our debt to God is so enormous that the cancellation of it was a benefit incomparably greater than anything we may forfeit in order to serve him.

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Matthew 20:11 Commentary and Bible Study