Householder made those who had wrought11 only one hour equal to them who had
'borne the burden of the day and the heat?' Yet, however fair their reasoning might
seem, they had no claim in truth or equity, for had they not agreed for one denarius with
him? And it had not even been in the general terms of a day's wages, but they had
made the express bargain of one denarius. They had gone to work with a stipulated
sum as their hire distinctly in view. They now appealed to justice; but from first to last
they had had justice. This as regards the 'so much for so much' principle of claim, law,
work, and pay.
11. I prefer not rendering with Meyer and the R.V. εποιησαν, viz., ωραν, by 'spent,' but
taking the verb as the Hebrew h#( = 'wrought.' And the first labourers could not have
meant, that the last had 'spent,' not 'wrought,' an hour. This were a gratuitous imputation
to them of malevolence and calumny.
But there was yet another aspect than that of mere justice. Those other labourers, who
had felt that, owning to the lateness of their appearance, they had no claim - and, alas!
which of us must not feel how late we have been in coming, and hence how little we can
have wrought - had made no bargain, but trusted to the Master. And as they had
believed, so was it unto them. Not because they made or had any claim - 'I will,
however, to give unto this last, even as unto thee' - the word 'I will' ( θελω) being
emphatically put first to mark 'the good pleasure' of His grace as the ground of action.
Such a Master could not have given less to those who had come when called, trusting
to His goodness, and not in their deserts. The reward was now reckoned, not of work
nor of debt, but of grace.12 In passing we also mark, as against cavillers, the profound
accord between what negative critics would call the 'true Judaic Gospel' of St. Matthew,
and what constitutes the very essence of 'the anti -Judaic teaching' of St. Paul - and we
ask our opponents to reconcile on their theory what can only be explained on the
ground that St. Paul, like St. Matthew, was the true disciple of the true Teacher, Jesus
Christ.
12. Rom. iv. 4-6; xi. 6.
But if all is to be placed on the new ground of grace, with which, indeed, the whole
bearing of the later labourers accords, then (as St. Paul also shows) the labourers who
murmured were guilty either of ignorance in failing to perceive the sovereignty of grace -
that it is within His power to do with His own as He willeth13 - or else of malevolence,
when, instead of with grateful joy, they looked on with an evil eye - and this in proportion
as 'the Householder' was good. But such a state of mind may be equally that of the
Jews,14 a nd of the Gentiles.15 And so, in this illustrative case of the Parable, 'the first
shall be last, and the last first.'16 And in other instances also, though not in all - 'many
shall be last that are first; and first that are last.'17 But He is the God, Sove reign in
grace, in Whose Vineyard there is work to do for all, however limited their time, power,
or opportunity; Whose labourers we are, if His Children; Who, in His desire for the work,
and condescension and patience towards the workers, goeth out into the market-place
even to the eleventh hour, and, with only gentlest rebuke for not having earlier come
thither and thus lost our day in idleness, still, even to the last, bids us come; Who
promises what is right, and gives far more than is due to them who simply trust Him: the