Equal Pay

In Mt. 20, Jesus tells the parable of the workers paid equally.
Jesus compares the kingdom of heaven to a landowner that goes out into the market place early in the morning to hire workers for his vineyard. He, and they by accepting his offer agree on the wage for the day. Later in the day, three more times, the landowner returns to the market and hires more men with the promise that "I will pay you whatever is right." They to accept and go. When the day is over he calls the foreman and instructs him to pay the workers, starting with the last hired. The last are paid what the first agreed upon. Seeing this, those called first are now expecting a more generous settlement.

Each of them, however, receives exactly what they agreed upon earlier in the day. They, the first hired, begin to grumble and complain as if to say they deserve more than they had agreed to. The landowner poses this question: "Am I not giving you what you agreed to? Don't I have the right to do what I want to with my money? Or are you envious because I am generous?"

God's generosity and grace is both incomparable and incomprehensible. We do envy, we envy because we don't understand and we want more. We try to take something that was given to us, salvation, and put our rules and parameters around it. We want more because we were first. The whole time we disregard the notion that we really don't have any say in the matter. That's where it gets tricky. We want control, we want to establish the rules for meting out God's grace. We stumble wanting more.

At some point we need to realize that salvation is reward enough. Who God decides to reward is not cause for our concern. We have been blessed through the Son and that is enough. Individually, we need to put aside our preconceived ideas of justice and fairness. It's not a justice issue, it's a grace issue. Justice says you get what you have coming, for us that's eternal separation from God. Grace says I know what you deserve, I chose to give you what you don't deserve. It's not a fairness issue, never was. God is the landowner and He determines the wages.