Flashback Episode — Jealousy in Heaven: Matthew 20:1-16

As I read the gospels, some of the parables that Jesus shares make lots of sense in my mind. When reading, some parables seem to be very self-explanatory. However, other parables leave me with more questions than answers, and I’m left wondering about the parable’s purpose.

The parable we are focusing in on in this episode happens to be one of those parables that appears to make sense on the surface, but after reading it and thinking about it, I am left with more questions than answers, as well as with some things that just don’t make sense in my mind.

This parable can be found in the gospel of Matthew, chapter 20, and we will be reading it from the New International Version of the Bible. Starting in verse 1, Matthew quotes Jesus saying:

¹ “For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire workers for his vineyard. ² He agreed to pay them a denarius for the day and sent them into his vineyard.

³ “About nine in the morning he went out and saw others standing in the marketplace doing nothing. ⁴ He told them, ‘You also go and work in my vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right.’ ⁵ So they went.

“He went out again about noon and about three in the afternoon and did the same thing. ⁶ 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?’

⁷ “‘Because no one has hired us,’ they answered.

“He said to them, ‘You also go and work in my vineyard.’

⁸ “When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his foreman, ‘Call the workers and pay them their wages, beginning with the last ones hired and going on to the first.’

⁹ “The workers who were hired about five in the afternoon came and each received a denarius. ¹⁰ So when those came who were hired first, they expected to receive more. But each one of them also received a denarius. ¹¹ When they received it, they began to grumble against the landowner. ¹² ‘These who were hired last worked only one hour,’ they said, ‘and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the work and the heat of the day.’

¹³ “But he answered one of them, ‘I am not being unfair to you, friend. Didn’t you agree to work for a denarius? ¹⁴ Take your pay and go. I want to give the one who was hired last the same as I gave you. ¹⁵ Don’t I have the right to do what I want with my own money? Or are you envious because I am generous?’

¹⁶ “So the last will be first, and the first will be last.”

When I read this parable, I am amazed by several key ideas. First, I am amazed by the landowner, who chose to pay everyone he hired equally, regardless of the amount of work they were involved with. However, this appears on the surface to be completely unfair. While it is the easiest way to pay an unequal group of workers, it is completely unfair for the reasons that the earliest workers grumbled about. The standard we have placed regarding fairness is that those who worked longer, harder, and/or in worse conditions should receive a greater measure of pay than those who worked shorter, slacked off, and/or in mild conditions.

But let’s step into what this parable could symbolize. Since this is a parable that refers to “The kingdom of heaven”, we can first frame Jesus’ words as describing a parallel with how things happen in God’s kingdom. If we take the context for this parable to refer to a day of work representing a person’s lifespan, and working in the field as serving God, then we can begin to see a picture that says that God has chosen to reward us all equally, regardless of the amount of time we spent working for Him.

Along this train of thought, the only thing that really matters is that we are with God at the end of the workday. This means that while the parable doesn’t describe someone who started working in the morning, but who abandoned their task partway through the day, if there were such a person who God had hired, it is unlikely that deserting worker would receive pay. It would be illogical for an employer to actively seek out someone who left their shift early to pay them – unless the law demands it.

It would be even more illogical for God to search someone out who left working for Him to receive the reward for a full day’s worth of work. While the landowner in this parable is extra generous, it is with everyone who is present at the end of the workday, and what is ignored is the time they began to work.

If we focus in on what the reward could be for a day’s worth of pay, we could logically conclude that this would be eternal life. How this looks in practical purposes is that regardless of when we started working for God, and regardless of what we actually accomplished for Him, simply being present at the end of the workday is the only criteria for receiving the reward.

But here’s where the logic gets tricky. While God is amazingly generous because He rewards all His workers equally with eternal life, eternal life is not a reward that can be split, or rationed. God cannot give someone partial eternal life as a reward. Well I suppose He could say that our hand or heart could live forever, but not the rest of us. However, the hand and heart cannot survive without other key parts of our body, so partial eternal life is about the same as no eternal life when we think about it.

So God is on one hand trapped with His generosity based on what He has chosen to reward His workers with – since it cannot be divided while keeping its value.

This then draws my attention onto another tricky section of logic. If God’s reward cannot be split while keeping its valuable, then why to the workers who were present for the entire day’s shift get jealous? If the reward for a full day’s service to God is eternal life, and God chooses to reward those who served for less time than this, then this is simply an example of God’s generosity. If we really dig into it, none of us can honestly say that we served God every single hour of every single day of every single year of our lives. For everyone who has ever lived, there are times in our past where we did not serve.

This means that we all started our days late, but we are all rewarded equally. When the reward is eternal life, the only fair path for God to take is the one that the landowner took in this parable. The landowner paid everyone the same. It is hard for me to imagine people in heaven being jealous of one another because of the length of time they followed God, but I suppose it could happen.

But regardless of whether we are simply happy to be paid at all, or satisfied with our pay for a day’s work, the big lesson I see in Jesus’ teaching here is that we only feel cheated if we compare ourselves to others. Only when our eyes are focused on someone else can we get jealous. The only way this could happen in heaven between those who are there is if we take our eyes off of Jesus and the reward God gave us and begin to focus on one another instead.

I don’t see this happening in heaven, but the principle is very relevant for our lives today as we live for God. Let’s focus on what God has given to us and choose to ignore what He has chosen to give someone else. If we focus on someone else’s relationship with God, we only set ourselves up for disappointment.

As we come to the end of another podcast episode, here are the challenges I will leave you with:

Seek God first and choose to focus on your own, personal relationship with Him. Pay little or no attention to another person’s spiritual life, because either way we look, it sets us up for challenges. If our relationship is better, we may become prideful, while if our relationship is worse, then we may become jealous.

As we are focusing on our personal relationship with God, we should intentionally pray and study the Bible for ourselves, because only when we focus on strengthening our personal relationship with God will we be less tempted to focus on another person’s spiritual relationship.

And as I end every set of challenges by saying in one way or another, never stop short of, back away from, chicken out of, or be distracted away from where God wants to lead you to in your life with Him!