DOES “GRACE ALONE” MEAN NO WORKING AT ANYTHING?

Prayer: Lord God, heavenly Father, through Your holy Word You have called us into Your vineyard: We beseech You, send Your Holy Spirit into our hearts, that we may labor faithfully in Your vineyard and put our whole and only trust in Your grace, which You have bestowed upon us abundantly through Your Son Jesus Christ, that we might obtain eternal salvation through Him. Amen.

Sermon Text: Matthew 20:1-16 (v. 10-12). But when the first came, they supposed that they would receive more; and they likewise received each a denarius. And when they had received it, they complained against the landowner, saying, ‘These last men have worked only one hour, and you made them equal to us who have borne the burden and the heat of the day.’ ”

Lord, this is Your Word and these are Your words. Guide us by Your truth; Your Word is truth. Amen.

Dear fellow redeemed in Christ, who gives us not the wages of our sin but the wages that He Himself has earned for us:

This story that Jesus told is about wages and working. So it’s something everyone can relate to. You have to be a good worker whom others will want to hire and keep. But we can’t understand why the story ends like it does. What we know of work and wages is about fairness. But this ends so unfairly!

Jesus pictures the kingdom of heaven as a working vineyard. The landowner represents God. He goes out early in the morning, the first hour. They had a 12-hour shift of outside work in the sun ahead of them. He tells them he’ll pay them what’s right; they do have 12 hours’ worth of pay to look forward to. He says the same thing to the workers he calls 2 hours later. Not as many hours, not quite as much pay, but a pretty full day.

He does the same thing three hours later – mid-afternoon – when the first guys have been working for 5 hours. Again three hours later, now getting toward evening. At the 11th hour it’s just one hour of work, what’s that? Not much pay. But he says he’ll pay “whatever is right.”

When the day is over, you know what they’re looking forward to. In today’s wages, say $15 an hour, they were expecting – what? — $180 for all 12 hours. They noticed the ones who came at the end: 1 hour of work, just $15. But word comes back: those guys got $180. They quickly do the math. “Woah, the boss must be paying $180 an hour now! So what do we have coming, let’s see … over $2,000! For one shift! I’m keepin’ this job!” But their excitement comes crashing down; their pay is the same as the late-comers. Then you see anger.

What employer would do this? Where’s the incentive to work hard? Jesus is teaching that His kingdom is a kingdom of grace, undeserved love. That you don’t receive the reward by earning it. In the story no matter how much they worked, the reward was the same, it wasn’t determined by their work.

The only reward we ourselves earn is to be condemned to hell, since the reward of eternal life requires you to be without sin, as the Bible says: “Who-ever shall keep the whole law and yet stumble in one point, he is guilty of all” (Ja 2:10). We encounter this “wages” talk in the book of Romans: “Now to the one who works, the wages are not counted as a gift [grace] but as his due” (Ro 4:4). “Wages” are what you earn; what do our deeds earn? “The wages of sin is death.”

So when it comes to spiritual and eternal things, the Bible teaches clearly that you really shouldn’t want wages. You should want what you don’t earn. Jesus earned it for everyone. He lived a completely sin-free life. He alone earned the reward for keeping God’s Law perfectly. He even took your sin onto Himself, so He also took your wages, He died your death. His perfect life counts for you, so you get the good wages He earned. He gives you His innocence and righteousness, so you get eternal life, the wages for His work. That’s what His kingdom is: not lining up to receive wages for your work.

So isn’t it strange that Jesus describes life in His kingdom of grace with these words, this picture-story, about wages and working?

Of course He understands fallen human nature. He knows what we do with this, how you turn everything into your work. You think it all depends on what you do or don’t do. That God is in control, but think things won’t happen unless you do it. You carry around a burden. You don’t think you’ve done enough, or well enough. Sometimes you think people don’t work as hard or struggle as you do, or sacrifice as much. You’re worn out by worry.

So Jesus here redefines what wages and working are. He takes all the working that earns salvation out of our hands. Our response is: Then what is there to do? Are our works worthless? Does Grace Alone Mean No Working?

If He’s done it all, if there’s nothing for us to do for our salvation, why wouldn’t we be lazy and let Him do all the work? This is how the Roman Catholics accused the first Lutherans. They challenged the idea that you are saved by grace alone. They said it would produce people who don’t do good works, who think since everything is forgiven they can live how they want.

Truthfully that can and does happen. We Lutherans are not right to get sloppy about our lives and lazy in our doing of God’s will. Sometimes people do use grace as an excuse: I like to sin, God likes to forgive, what a good deal.

But actually the teaching of grace alone is the only one that can produce the right kind of working. Apart from faith, why will a person do so-called “good works?” The motive is to avoid being punished, or just out of a slavish sense of duty, or to be noticed or praised, to get credit, or to make up for things, to balance out the sins with good works.

Because you have a sinful nature, you’re often guilty of this too. But by faith in Jesus, through Jesus’ blood, all that you do is purified for Jesus’ sake. Christ made it His work to live a perfect life, perfectly overcome sin, be perfectly patient. When He was done, He strapped Himself to a cross and said: “It is finished!” You look as good to God as you possibly can, because He does not look at your work or upon your sins; instead He looks at Jesus who did it perfectly, to count for you. You can’t improve or add to what He did.

But far from making your working worthless, what this does is to make it worth more! Grace, His undeserved love, takes away all the burden and it takes away all the pressure. It takes away the slavish sense of duty. It gives you a higher motivation and better reason than just avoiding being punished. It removes the desire to be noticed or get praised for what you do. You don’t do these things because you have to. Faith, enables you to do them from love.

This is beautiful to God. He doesn’t throw out your working. He wants it. The Bible says that Christians’ “works do follow them” into eternal life. Your acts of love – proceeding from faith, guided by the Spirit, done out of love for Christ – follow you to heaven, cleansed of all sin. Your acts of unselfish love, turning the other cheek, overlooking and forgiving the hurts and wrongs done to you, do matter. Your taking delight in God’s gifts, hiding your eyes and covering your ears from evil, being willing to be scorned for choosing what’s right and refusing to compromise your faith, these don’t earn your salvation even in part, but they don’t vanish. They follow you to heaven.

It doesn’t just happen. It does take effort. In today’s epistle, Paul pictures life in the church on earth as being an athlete in training, punishing the body, never taking a break. The Bible says, be “diligent to enter His rest” (He 4:11), and “be more diligent to make [it] sure” (2Pe 1:10).

This is working in the vineyard. It’s in struggling with your flesh that you grow in faith. But it isn’t your own doing, but “it is God who works in you to will and to do for His good pleasure” (Eph 2:10, Phi 2:13).

Jesus’ parable actually says how this happens. The going-out at different hours to call workers into the vineyard isn’t just referring to how God calls people at differet times in life – but also it’s how He calls you not once but all the time. There are many times you’ve strayed from Him, sometimes in little ways unnoticed by you, other times in bigger ways. At times you’re idle, not taking care of your faith – but like the landowner in the story never gets tired or calls it a day even at the 11th hour, that’s how God is. Tirelessly He keeps calling you back. Aren’t you thankful for this, and how He pictures it here?

This explains the business about the first and the last. As you struggle with your flesh, and don’t do everything like you want to and should, you learn that you can’t go in front of Him and be “first”by your own doing. Then your sins will condemn you and you’ll be “last,” condemned by them.

But look at Jesus, He’s the one who in truth is the “first,” and became the “last,” condemned and cast out in His death. If you join Him – who is risen for you – as the last, keep Him ahead of you and follow where He leads – to His cross and resurrection – if you’ll think not that you’ve arrived or are in the lead, but have a ways to go in your Christian living, keep striving, and want only to stay close to Him, you’ll find that you are first – uncondemned, being given the “reward” not for what you do but for what He’s done for you. Everyone in His kingdom is first – we are “co-heirs with Christ.”We have lots to do, and heaven will not only be rest from our labors, but it will also be where we keep serving Him, but where it’s not difficult but all joy. Amen!