God’s 'unfair' generosity… and how it transforms ours

God’s generosity can sometimes seem so unfair! 

The parable of the vineyard labourers in Matthew 20:1-16 is hard to swallow in my opinion. 

In it, Jesus tells the story of a vineyard owner who roams the streets for workmen to hire as day labourers. The man goes out at 9am, then midday, then 3pm, and again at 5pm, agrees a wage with each labourer, and proceeds to pay them the agreed wage at the end of the workday. So far so reasonable.

But then we’re made to understand that each worker is being paid the same amount, regardless of how many hours they have worked. In fairness terms, I completely stand with the disgruntled guy who started at 9am. 

The landowner, however, makes an uncomfortably valid point when he asks “Friend, I am doing you no injustice. Did you not agree with me for a denarius [a day’s wage]?” Viewed from that perch, the workers really don’t have a case for grumbling. What they were paid was what they’d agreed at the start of their shift. 

So, how do we reconcile these seemingly contradictory truths? 

The generous landowner

I believe the key to understanding what Jesus is getting at with this story can be found in Matthew 20:15:

“Am I not lawfully permitted to do what I choose with what is mine? Or is your eye envious because I am generous?” (AMP)

There are three significant truths we need to come to terms with in these two sentences. 

1. God can do whatever he wants, because He owns the land. He created it, He is King over it and He’s merely given it to us to steward. We are not owners. Neither are we the protagonists of His story, so to make it about us is misguided and will almost surely lead to disappointment. 

2. We must not allow envy to inform our perspective. It is very tempting to look at this parable through the lens of economic fairness. As an hourly-paid employee, I would never go along with being paid the same amount as someone who’s worked fewer hours. But God is not committed to my cause, He’s committed to His – and He will put whoever wherever using whatever as He sees fit. It’s not about my labour, it’s about the vineyard. My envy is unproductive and only harms me.

3. God is generous. The very nature of generosity is that it cannot be controlled and measured to fit exact specifications or expectations. It’s lavish, it’s messy and it doesn’t observe limitations and boundaries. But this is also what makes generosity – and for that matter, grace  – so profoundly impactful and necessary. Without it, we’d all be dead in the water.

It's about the vineyard, not the labour

My husband, William, was looking at this parable recently and asked me a question I’d never considered before. He said: “The workers are grumbling about their wages, but no one is talking about the grapes they’ve just harvested or the wine those grapes will produce. Why is that?!”

Yeah, why is that? 

The first thing Jesus says about this story is that it’s about the Kingdom of God. 

“For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire workers for his vineyard.” Matthew 20:1

Jesus uses the imagery of a vineyard, grapes and wine several times throughout the Gospels: ‘I am the vine, you are the branches’ (John 15); the parable of the wicked tenants (Matthew 21); the miracle of water turning into wine (John 2); ‘You shall know them by their fruit’ (Matthew 7); his blood symbolised by wine during the Last Supper (Mark 14). 

If a vineyard is symbolic for God’s kingdom, then the wine it produces must symbolise the abundant life in that kingdom. Why, then, are we grumbling about labour practices when the grapes are the point?

We know from Paul that the Kingdom = righteousness, peace and joy (Romans 14:17). All of the parables that Jesus tells about the kingdom speak to a radically new way of relating to things, institutions and one another. Essentially, the Kingdom of God is about renewed patterns of relationship that restore us back to the Garden of Eden, His original plan for human flourishing. The one we rejected. 

Let’s get excited about the grapes!

God is first and foremost committed to His purposes, not ours. He loves us enough to trust us with the work, and He loves us as an affectionate father loves his children and plans the best outcome for them. But we are not the point of the story. However much we want to be paid for our efforts to see His kingdom come and His will be done, the wages are not the point and neither are the labour conditions, because there is no scarcity nor exploitation in God’s Kingdom. 

Everything we need to live an abundant life we already have in Him. When we give our lives to the Lord, we gain access to supernatural heavenly resources. The work is easy and the burden is light (Matthew 11:30). Whether we’ve lived for God all our lives or we’re late to the party, the same abundance is available and freely given. 

The Father’s generosity is unfair, it’s undeserved – but oh how blessed we are that it is. 

Let’s shift our attention to the new wine that He desires to give us and get excited about the grapes!