New Testament : The Parable Of The Workers In The Vineyard? 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.
The master of the house would seem to be God and the vineyard is the place where those servants who have been called to work for the master as laborers will enter into the work. The laborers are those who have been called and saved by God. They enter into the work or their calling by God under the guidance of the master, which is Jesus Christ. In another place in the Scriptures, Jesus uses this symbolism of believers being used by God to labor for the Lord as in Matthew 9:37-38 where He says “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.”
But what if the parable was not about salvation but about the gospel? The workers in the parable likely worked and lived day to day, as evidenced by the fact that the owner continually found unemployed workers throughout the day. The one work day depicted in the parable can be interpreted to culminate in death and salvation or to mark the beginning of a new, secure life in Christ; both interpretations work. The first workers were lucky – they found work quickly, with a man who promised them the standard wage for common laborers. On the other hand, imagine what it would be like to be one of the last workers, having fruitlessly waited anxiously all day for some work so that you could feed your family. Then, a landowner offers you work and you go, glad to have at least a chance to earn some money.
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?” See additional info on the The Parable Of The Workers In The Vineyard video on YouTube.