The Rich Ruler. Peril of Riches. Reward of Sacrifice. Parable of the Laborers in the Vineyard.

  ^a 26 And Jesus ^b looking upon them saith,

{^c 27 But he said,} ^b With men this is impossible, but not with God: for all things are possible with God. ^c The things which are impossible with men aree possible with God.

  ^a 27 Then answered Peter

  ^c 28 And ^b began to say unto him, {^a and said unto him,} ^b Lo, we have left all, {^c our own,} ^b and have followed thee. ^a what then shall we have?

[The negative conduct of the rich man reminded the disciples of their own positive conduct when confronted with a similar crisis ( Luke 5:11 ), and the "all" which they had left was by no means contemptible, though perhaps none of them could have been said to have held great possessions. The mention of treasure in heaven, therefore, set Peter to wondering what manner of return would be made to them to compensate them for their sacrifice.]

  ^c 28 And ^b began to say unto him, {^a and said unto him,} ^b Lo, we have left all, {^c our own,} ^b and have followed thee. ^a what then shall we have?

  28 And Jesus said unto them, Verily I say unto you, that ye who have followed me, in the regeneration when the Son of man shall sit on the throne of his glory, ye also shall sit upon twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel. [By the term "regeneration," Jesus in this case means the period in which the process of regenerating men would be in progress; i. e., the period of the mediatorial reign. After his ascension Jesus sat upon his throne ( Acts 2:33-35 ; Hebrews 1:13 ; Matthew 25:31 ; 1 Corinthians 15:24-28 ). And on the day of Pentecost next following, he began this process of regeneration. Having enthroned himself, Jesus enthroned the apostles also, not as kings but as judges, having jurisdiction over all questions of faith and practice in the earthly kingdom. During their personal ministry, they judged in person; and since then they judge through their writings. True, we have written communications from only a part of them, but judgments pronounced by one of a bench of judges with the known approval of all, are the judgments of the entire bench. Moreover, the judges in the church of Christ--the true Israel--and not over the literal twelve tribes of Jacob. And again, the twelve who then heard Jesus speak were not all enthroned, Judas having fallen from his position before the day of enthronement, and Matthias and Paul were afterwards added to the group. Jesus here causes the number of the judges to correspond to the number of the tribes, to indicate that there will be a sufficiency of judgment commensurate to the need.]

  29 And every one {^b There is no man that} ^a hath left houses, {^b house,} ^c or wife, or brethren, ^b or sisters, or mother, or father, ^c or parents, ^b or children, or lands, for my sake, {^a my name's sake,} ^b and for the gospel's sake, ^c for the kingdom of God's sake,

  30 who shall not receive manifold more in this time, and in the world to come eternal life.

  ^b 30 but he shall receive an hundredfold now in this time, houses, and brethren, and sisters, and mothers, and children, and lands, with persecutions; and in the world to come ^a shall inherit eternal life.

[The rewards of Christian self-denial are here divided into two parts--the temporal and the eternal. The earthly joys--the rewards "in this time"--shall outweigh the sacrifices made for the kingdom. The return, of course, will not be in kind, houses for house, and fathers for father, etc., but spiritual relationships and blessings which compensate abundantly for whatever has been resigned ( Matthew 12:49 ; 1 Timothy 4:8 ). But these joys shall be mingled with the bitterness of persecution, for no pleasure is perfected in this world, but only in the inheritance which lies beyond-- 1 Peter 1:4 .]

  30 who shall not receive manifold more in this time, and in the world to come eternal life.

  ^b 30 but he shall receive an hundredfold now in this time, houses, and brethren, and sisters, and mothers, and children, and lands, with persecutions; and in the world to come ^a shall inherit eternal life.

  30 But many shall be last that are first; and first that are last.

  ^b 31 But many that are first shall be last; and the last first.

[The promise of large recompense which Jesus had just given was apt to tempt some to labor not for love, but for the rewards which might be reaped thereby. Jesus corrects this spirit by the statement, and the parable that follows which illustrates it, and which ends with the same sentiment. See verse 16 below.]

  ^b 31 But many that are first shall be last; and the last first.

  ^a 1 For the kingdom of heaven is like unto a man that was who went out early in the morning to hire laborers. [He rose early, because the working day began with the rising of the sun.]

  2 And when he had agreed with the laborers for a shilling a daytfg.cgi?section=T#">Section he sent them into his vineyard.

  3 And he went out about the third hour

[The Jews divided the time between sunrise and sunset into twelve hours, so that the first hour would be about six o'clock, the third about nine, the sixth noon, the ninth about three, and the twelfth about six. As the length of the days differed, the lengths of the hours differed. The longest day in Palestine is fourteen hours and twelve minutes; the shortest, nine hours and forty-eight minutes; so it would follow that an hour on the longest day would be seventy-one minutes; and on the shortest it would be only forty-nine minutes. None of the hours, therefore, would correspond exactly to ours except the sixth or noon hour], and saw others standing in the marketplace idle;

  4 and to them he said, Go ye also into the vineyard, and whatsoever is right I will give you. And they went their way.

  5 Again he went out about the sixth and ninth hour, and did likewise.

  6 And about the eleventh hour he went out, and found others standing; and he saith unto them, Why stand ye here all the day idle?

  7 They say unto him, Because no man hath hired us. He saith unto them, Go ye also into the vineyard.

  8 And when even was come

[the time of settlement-- Leviticus 19:13 ; Deuteronomy 24:15 ], the lord of the vineyard saith unto his steward [his overseer], Call the laborers, and pay them their hire, beginning from the last unto the first. [Thus following the order indicated by verse 30 above. The lord paid the last first that he might make conspicuous the fact that these received as much wages as those who had labored all day.]

  3 And he went out about the third hour

  4 and to them he said, Go ye also into the vineyard, and whatsoever is right I will give you. And they went their way.

  5 Again he went out about the sixth and ninth hour, and did likewise.

  6 And about the eleventh hour he went out, and found others standing; and he saith unto them, Why stand ye here all the day idle?

  7 They say unto him, Because no man hath hired us. He saith unto them, Go ye also into the vineyard.

  8 And when even was come

  9 And when they came that were hired about the eleventh hour, they received every man a shilling.

  10 And when the first came, they supposed that they would receive more

[seeing the lord's liberality to those who had worked only one hour, they expected that they would be recipients of a like liberality proportioned to their hours of service]; and they likewise received every man a shilling.

  11 And when they received it, they murmured against the householder,

  12 saying, These last have spent but one hour, and thou hast made them equal unto us, which have borne the burden of the day and the sorching heat.

  13 But he answered and said to one of them

[the answer given to one is taken as an example of what he said to them all], Friend, I do thee no wrong: didst not thou agree with me for a shilling?

  14 Take up that which is thine, and go thy way

[do not stop to argue]; it is my will to give unto this last, even as unto thee.

  15 Is it not lawful for me to do what I will with mine own? Is thine eye evil, because I am good?

[The evil eye is a synonym for jealousy. It originated with the malicious leer with which jealousy regards its object ( Mark 7:22 ; 1 Samuel 18:9 ; Proverbs 23:6-8 ; 28:22 ; Deuteronomy 15:9 ). The lord had done no wrong to those who had labored longest, for he had paid them what they had bargained for and earned. If he chose to be generous with those whose misfortune had prevented them from being hired earlier in the day, no one had any just cause to murmur.]

  10 And when the first came, they supposed that they would receive more

  11 And when they received it, they murmured against the householder,

  12 saying, These last have spent but one hour, and thou hast made them equal unto us, which have borne the burden of the day and the sorching heat.

  13 But he answered and said to one of them

  14 Take up that which is thine, and go thy way

  15 Is it not lawful for me to do what I will with mine own? Is thine eye evil, because I am good?

  16 So the last shall be first, and the first last [The meaning of this parable has often been misunderstood by those who fail to note the maxim with which Jesus begins and ends it. This maxim acts as a safeguard in the interpretation of it; the parable also in turn guards against misunderstanding the maxim. The maxim can not be applied to Judas; for, though he then stood high in honor and afterwards fell into disgrace, yet he stands outside the pale of the maxim as interpreted by the parable, for in the parable both the first and the last were received and rewarded by their master, while Judas was rejected of Christ and received no reward. The term "last," therefore, must be applied to those who were included among the accepted laborers, and not those who were excluded from that class. eternal life. The vineyard represents the Lord's field of work in the world. The evening is the close of the Christian dispensation, and the coming of Christ to judgment. The parable as it unfolds and develops suggests that in no case was the reward earned by the inherent merits and toil of the laborers, but was rather bestowed because of a desire on the part of the householder to that effect, just as eternal life is bestowed, not by merit, but by covenant grace ( Romans 2:6 Romans 2:7 ; 4:3-5 ; 5:16-21 ). The main object of the parable is to show that longer labor does not necessarily, as the apostles and others might think, establish a claim to higher reward. Degrees of difference there no doubt will be, but they form no account in the general covenant of grace in which the one great gift is offered to us all. As the gift can be no less than eternal life, there must of necessity be a difference in the ratio of service which is rendered for it, since it will be bestowed on the octogenarian and the child, upon Paul who made good the confession of his faith through years of toil, and the dying thief who passed to his reward while his voice of confession was, as it were, still ringing in the ears of those who heard it ( 1 Corinthians 15:8-11 ; 2 Timothy 4:6-9 ). The murmuring and envy of those who had labored longest is merely part of the parabolic drapery, introduced to bring out the answer of the householder, and to make plain the point to be illustrated. There will be no envy among those who inherit eternal life. By thus speaking of the envy, however, and showing how ineffectual it was, Jesus warns us to be prepared not to cherish it. The parable is not intended to teach that the characters of men will be exactly similar in the world to come. Paul will not be Peter, nor will Martin Luther be identical with Hugh Latimer and John Knox. God may award eternal life to the character which we are forming, but we should be careful what kind of character we bring to receive the gift. The lesson is that works are valued qualitatively and not quantitatively. Nor may the parable be rightly used to encourage hope in death-bed repentance. It certainly does teach that, however little the labor which a man does in be really in the vineyard; that is, if he be really a child of God. But whether a man who repents on his death-bed actually becomes a child of God is a different question, and is not touched by the parable. Certainly the eleventh-hour laborer who had stood idle all day only because no man had hired him, and who came into the vineyard as soon as he was called, can not represent the man who has been called by the gospel every hour of his life, but has rejected every call until his sun has sunk so low that he knows he can do but little work when he comes. In order to represent this class of sinners, the eleventh-hour men should have been invited early in the morning, and should have replied, "No, it is too early; we will not go now." Then they should have been invited at the third, the sixth, and the ninth hours, and should have made some equally frivolous excuse each time, then, finally, at the eleventh hour, they should have said, "Well, as you pay a man just the same for an hour's work as for a day's work, and as we are very anxious to get your money, we believe we will now go." Had they acted thus, it is not likely that they would have found the vineyard gates open to them at all. Yet such is the sharp practice which some men attempt in dealing with God.]