CHAPTER FOUR

THE GENEROUS LANDOWNER

He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all —how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?

ROMANS 8:32

The fact that God deals with His children on the basis of grace without regard to merit or demerit is a staggering concept. It is opposed to almost everything we have been taught about life. We have been generally conditioned to think that if we work hard and “pay our dues” in life, we will be rewarded in proportion to our work. “You do so much, you deserve so much” is a commonly accepted principle in life.

But God’s grace does not operate on a reward-for-works basis. It is much better than that. God is generous beyond all measure or comparison. The Scripture says, “God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son”; and Paul spoke of this as God’s “indescribable gift” (John 3:16; 2 Corinthians 9:15, emphasis added). God’s inexpressible generosity, however, does not stop at saving us; it provides for all our needs and blessings throughout our entire lives. As Paul said in Romans 8:32, “He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all —how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?”

Paul used the argument of the greater to the lesser to teach us God’s generosity. He said if God gave His Son for our salvation (the greater), will He not also give us all blessings (the lesser)? No blessing we will ever receive can possibly compare with the gift of God’s Son to die for us. God demonstrated His gracious generosity to the ultimate at the cross. And Paul based the assurance that we can expect God to meet all our other needs throughout life on the fact that God has already met our greatest need.

Note that Paul said God will graciously or freely give us all things. Just as salvation is given freely to all who trust in Christ, so all blessings are given freely to us, also through faith in Christ. Just as you cannot earn your salvation but must receive it as a gift, so you cannot earn the blessings of God but must receive them also as gifts given through Christ.

A PARABLE OF GRACE

For a number of years I have been drawn to Jesus’ parable of the workers in the vineyard as one of the best illustrations of the grace of God in the life of believers. Though all titles given to this parable consistently refer to the workers, I believe the emphasis of the parable is on the landowner and his generosity to his workers. I would title the parable “The Gracious Landowner.”

To help us learn from this parable, I quote it here in its entirety:

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

About the third hour he went out and saw others standing in the marketplace doing nothing. He told them, “You also go and work in my vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right.” So they went.

He went out again about the sixth hour and the ninth hour and did the same thing. About the eleventh hour he went out and found still others standing around. He asked them, “Why have you been standing here all day long doing nothing?”

“Because no one has hired us,” they answered.

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

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.”

The workers who were hired about the eleventh hour came and each received a denarius. So when those came who were hired first, they expected to receive more. But each one of them also received a denarius. When they received it, they began to grumble against the landowner. “These men 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.”

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

So the last will be first, and the first will be last.

MATTHEW 20:1-16

This parable grew out of Jesus’ encounter with the rich young man, when Jesus told him to sell his possessions, give to the poor, and follow Him (Matthew 19:16-22). Peter, reflecting on all this, said to Jesus, “We have left everything to follow you! What then will there be for us?” (19:27). Like the other Jews of his day, Peter thought he was operating on the basis of merit, and he was already adding up his merit points.

Jesus does not rebuke Peter for his merit mentality. Instead, He assures him there will indeed be a reward for him and the other disciples. Not only that, everyone who has sacrificed for Jesus’ sake will receive “a hundred times as much.” Expressed as a percentage, a hundred times as much is ten thousand percent. In the financial world, an investment that doubles itself in a few years is considered an excellent investment. Yet that is only a hundred percent gain. Jesus promises us not one hundred but ten thousand percent return.

Why does Jesus use such an astonishing amount as ten thousand percent? He is telling us that God’s reward is out of all proportion to our service and sacrifice. He is telling us that in the Kingdom of Heaven God’s reward system is based not on merit but on grace. And grace always gives far more than we have “earned.”

As R. C. H. Lenski wrote,

The generosity and the magnanimity of God are so great that he accepts nothing from us without rewarding it beyond all computation. . . . The vast disproportion existing between our work and God’s reward of it already displays his boundless grace, to say nothing of the gift of salvation which is made before we have even begun to do any work.[11]

The landowner of Jesus’ parable, who obviously represents God, was a very gracious and generous man. From the very beginning he was as concerned for the welfare of the workers as he was for his vineyard. He readily agreed to pay the first workers a day’s wages —a fair amount. In the labor culture of that day, the workers needed the money to buy food for their families. They lived a day-to-day existence. That is why landowners were instructed to pay a hired man “his wages each day before sunset, because he is poor and is counting on it” (Deuteronomy 24:15).

The landowner was not only fair with his workers; he was progressively more generous with each group of workers he hired throughout the day. Each worker, regardless of how long he had worked, received a day’s wages. He received not what he had earned on an hourly basis, but what he needed to sustain his family for a day. The landowner could have paid them only what they had earned, but he chose to pay them according to their need, not according to their work. He paid according to grace, not debt.

The parable focuses particularly on those workers who were hired at the eleventh hour. They were treated extremely generously, each one receiving twelve times what he had earned on a strict hourly basis. Why did the landowner hire these workers at the eleventh hour? Perhaps it was because an extra push was needed to complete the work by the end of the day. More likely, since Jesus was not teaching about Jewish agriculture but about the Kingdom of Heaven, those eleventh-hour workers were hired because they needed to receive a day’s wages. They had been standing all day waiting for someone to hire them so they could earn money to support their families. They needed to work more than the landowner needed their work. He hired them, not because of his need, but because of their need. He represents God in His gracious awareness of our needs and His continuous work to meet them. God calls us to serve Him, not because He needs us, but because we need Him. Then His reward for our service is always out of proportion to our efforts —as Jesus said to Peter, “a hundred times as much” (Matthew 19:29).

GRACIOUS AND GENEROUS

Over and over again the Bible portrays God as gracious and generous, blessing His people freely without regard to their demerits, rather than because of their merits. (I use the word gracious not in its commonly accepted meaning of kindness and courtesy, but in the biblical sense of one disposed to deal with others on the basis of grace.) We see God’s gracious disposition even before the Fall in the Garden of Eden when as yet there were no merits or demerits. The Scripture says, “And the LORD God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground —trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food” (Genesis 2:9).

It wasn’t just the tree of the knowledge of good and evil that was good for food and pleasing to the eye (see 3:6). God didn’t place only one desirable tree in the Garden with a “look but don’t eat” sign hung on it just to tempt Adam and Eve. Rather He placed all kinds of trees in the Garden that were delightful to see and to eat from. I enjoy fresh fruit, and I like to go to the supermarket in the summer when all the peaches, plums, pears, strawberries, and cantaloupes are on display. I am dazzled. I want some of all of them. Think what it must have been like for Adam to have all kinds of trees that not only produced delectable food but were also beautiful to behold. If I am dazzled today, think of what Adam’s reaction must have been.

But God did still more for Adam. God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him” (2:18). God knew Adam needed a companion, and He graciously met that need, because it is His disposition to be generous. God anticipated and provided for every need Adam could possibly have.

Then Adam sinned. What would happen now to the gracious and generous disposition of God? Would God cease to be gracious? Would God say, “I was generous to you, giving you everything you needed, and yet you disobeyed Me. From now on you are on your own. Fend for yourself”? God didn’t say that. Instead He dealt mercifully and graciously with Adam and Eve. Yes, today we are still living with the eternally cataclysmic consequences that came out of the Fall; God did judge Adam as He had said He would. But in the midst of all that, God did one more thing: “The LORD God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them” (3:21). Right in the midst of fulfilling His role as Judge, God took note of Adam and Eve’s need for clothes, and for a little while, He assumed the role of a tailor.

Why, in the midst of all the weighty and eternal issues, did God take time to make clothes for two people who had just flagrantly disobeyed Him, and who through that had brought sin and misery upon the whole human race? God did it because it is His nature to be gracious and to meet our needs without regard to our deserts. Neither Adam’s innocence nor his sin was the cause of God’s grace. God was gracious because it is part of His eternal nature to be so.

GOD DELIGHTS TO DO GOOD

When my first wife —who is now with the Lord —and I were married, we asked that the following Scripture, which we felt God had given us as a promise, be read at our wedding:

They will be my people, and I will be their God. I will give them singleness of heart and action, so that they will always fear me for their own good and the good of their children after them. I will make an everlasting covenant with them: I will never stop doing good to them, and I will inspire them to fear me, so that they will never turn away from me. I will rejoice in doing them good and will assuredly plant them in this land with all my heart and soul.

JEREMIAH 32:38-41

Note the expressions of God’s goodness. He will give us singleness of heart for our own good and the good of our children. He will never stop doing good to us, in fact He will rejoice in doing us good. This sounds appropriate, doesn’t it, for two young people committed to serving God full time?

But this assurance of God’s goodness was not originally given to people who were serving God or who “deserved” His goodness. Instead it was given to a group of people who were described by God as those who “have done nothing but evil in my sight from their youth” (verse 30). These people were in captivity in Babylon because of their sins over many generations.

Just a few chapters before in Jeremiah, God had said to these people:

This is what the LORD says: “When seventy years are completed for Babylon, I will come to you and fulfill my gracious promise to bring you back to this place. For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”

JEREMIAH 29:10-11

The goodness of God is demonstrated in His assurance of plans to prosper them and not to harm them. Note in verse 10 that God refers to His gracious promise, that is, a promise given freely without regard to the fact that they obviously did not deserve it. Here we see a vivid illustration of the truth of Samuel Storms’s statement that grace is no longer grace if God is compelled to withdraw it in the presence of human demerit. If anyone qualified for demerits, surely the Israelites in captivity did. Yet God promised to prosper them, to rejoice in doing them good.

Another insight into God’s gracious disposition is found in the prophecy of Joel. Joel prophesied judgment through a tremendous invasion of locusts that would devour all the trees and plants, resulting in widespread famine in the land. Then Joel looked forward to a day of restoration, a day when the trees would again bear fruit, the threshing floor would again be filled with grain, and the vats would overflow with new wine and oil. In the midst of this prophecy of restoration, God made the following promise:

I will repay you for the years the locusts have eaten —

the great locust and the young locust,

the other locusts and the locust swarm —

my great army that I sent among you.

JOEL 2:25

Consider the amazing generosity of God. He does not limit His promise merely to restoring the land to its former productivity. He says He will repay them for the years the locusts have eaten, years that they themselves forfeited to the judgment of God. God could well have said, “I will restore your land to its former productivity, but it’s too bad about those years you lost. They are gone forever. That is the price you pay for your sin.” He would have been generous just to have restored them, but He went beyond that. He would cause their harvests to be so abundant they would recoup the losses from the years of famine. He says He will repay them, though He obviously owes them nothing.

From time to time I have opportunity to minister individually to people who in some way have really “blown it” in life. For some, it may have been before they became Christians; for others it occurred while they were believers. Usually these people lament their “lost” years, the years when they served sin instead of God, or years that were wasted as Christians.

I try to encourage these people about the grace of God. I cannot promise them God will “repay” those lost years as He did the Israelites, but I can assure them that it is God’s nature to be gracious. I encourage them to pray to this end and to realize, as they pray, that they are coming to a God who does not withhold His grace because of demerits.

THE GOD OF ALL GRACE

God is just and holy. He judges sin and disciplines His children. But He is also “the God of all grace” (1 Peter 5:10). No one knew that better than the apostle Peter. He had a history of “blowing it” even before the night when he denied Jesus. Simon Peter didn’t exactly get started on the right foot with Jesus.

One day Jesus was teaching, and the people were crowding around Him on the shore of a lake. Because of the press of the crowd, Jesus got into Peter’s boat and from it He taught the people. Afterward,

He said to Simon [Peter], “Put out into deep water, and let down the nets for a catch.”

Simon answered, “Master, we’ve worked hard all night and haven’t caught anything. But because you say so, I will let down the nets.”

When they had done so, they caught such a large number of fish that their nets began to break.

LUKE 5:4-6

Can you hear the doubt, skepticism, and reluctance in Peter’s response? In effect he said, “Master, You don’t realize we’ve just fished all night, but if You say so, we’ll do this to humor You.” Not exactly an auspicious beginning of their relationship, is it?

Then there was the day Peter miraculously walked on water only to find himself sinking and having to cry out for help (see Matthew 14:29-30). With their competitive spirits, the other disciples probably watched with envious awe as Peter walked on the water (they even argued on the eve of Christ’s betrayal over which of them was considered to be the greatest [see Luke 22:24]). But their awe no doubt changed to derision as Peter began to sink beneath the waves. I suspect they didn’t let him forget that incident very quickly.

Another time Peter, in loyalty, protested Jesus’ prediction of His coming death, only to be put down with the severe rebuke, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; you do not have in mind the things of God, but the things of men” (Matthew 16:23).

Again, on the night of Christ’s betrayal, Peter rushed to defend his Lord with the sword, only to be rebuked by Him (see John 18:10-11). Then, of course, there is Peter’s oft-retold denial of Jesus coming right on the heels of his vehement protest, “Even if I have to die with you, I will never disown you” (Matthew 26:35). Undoubtedly Peter’s bitter grief at denying his Lord was aggravated by the reminder of his own proud and foolish boast (26:69-75).

It begins to look as if Peter couldn’t do anything right, doesn’t it? Even today he is held up in sermons as the ultimate example of someone who was proud, impetuous, and boastful; someone who, to use a colloquial expression, was always “sticking his foot in his mouth.”

But whom did God select to be the primary spokesman for the apostles on the Day of Pentecost? Who had the privilege of preaching that first sermon when three thousand people were saved? It was Peter, who couldn’t seem to do or say anything right (see Acts 2:14-41). Whom did God choose to be the preacher when He opened wide the door of salvation to the Gentiles? It was Peter at the house of Cornelius (see 10:34-44). Who made the decisive statement at the council of Jerusalem that turned the tide against the Pharisee believers who were demanding that the new Gentile believers be circumcised and obey the law of Moses? It was Peter (see 15:6-11). It seems as if Peter’s failures and foibles are all behind him, doesn’t it? But they are not.

Some time later Peter again “blows it.” At Antioch he compromised himself in fear of the circumcision group and played the hypocrite, thereby gaining a justified public rebuke by the apostle Paul (see Galatians 2:11-14). The man who could do nothing right, who had seemingly become the man who could do no wrong, falls flat on his face again. But the story doesn’t end there. God chooses Peter to be the inspired writer of two books of the New Testament. Is it any wonder Peter refers to God as “the God of all grace” (1 Peter 5:10, emphasis added)? Is it any wonder his last word of instruction is to “grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ” (2 Peter 3:18, emphasis added)?

Peter had personally experienced what Paul described: “But where sin increased, grace increased all the more” (Romans 5:20). The translation “increased all the more” probably does not capture completely the contrast Paul was seeking to convey between the results of sin and the effects of grace. Noted Bible commentators R. C. H. Lenski and John Murray both use the term superabounding to describe the riches of God’s grace as Paul represented it in Romans 5:20.[12] So, a good translation would be, “But where sin abounded, grace superabounded.” Let me illustrate.

A few drops of a dark-colored ink in a glass of water will turn the water dark. But put the glass under a kitchen faucet and turn on the water full force, and the pressure of the water will soon flush out all the dark color, leaving a glass full of clear water. The ink “abounds” in its effect on the water, turning it dark. But the clean water from the faucet “superabounds.” It flows so abundantly and with such force, it erases all the effects of the ink.

That is what Peter experienced. His failures and his sins abounded. There is no question about that. But however much his sin increased, God’s grace increased all the more. It superabounded. God blessed Peter, not in spite of his sins, but without regard to his sins. That’s the way His grace operates. It looks not to our sins or even to our good deeds but only to the merit of Christ.

What’s the point of all this discussion about Peter and his failures and his experience of the grace of God? It is this: Most of us can identify with Peter. Regardless of how outwardly “successful” in the Christian life we may appear to others, in our hearts we know the truth. We know that in one way or another we’re like Peter. We’ve “blown it” and fallen on our spiritual faces too many times. Just like Peter, we need to be convinced in our hearts that God is the God of all grace, that He is going to bless us and use us, not according to our deserts, but as Samuel Storms said, “according to [His] infinite goodness and sovereign purpose.”[13]

ONE BLESSING AFTER ANOTHER

The apostle John wrote that Jesus was “full of grace and truth,” and that “from the fullness of his grace we have all received one blessing after another” (John 1:14, 16). The idea portrayed in verse 16 is analogous to the ocean waves crashing upon the beach. One wave has hardly disappeared before another arrives. They just keep coming from an inexhaustible supply. So it is with the grace of God through Christ. He is full of grace and truth, and it is from His inexhaustible fullness that we receive one blessing after another.

In his commentary on the Gospel of John, William Hendriksen translated verse 16 as follows: “For out of his fulness we have all received grace upon grace.”[14] Notice we did not receive just grace, but grace upon grace. Hendriksen wrote,

The meaning of verse 16 is that believers are constantly receiving grace in the place of grace. One manifestation of the unmerited favor of God in Christ is hardly gone when another arrives; hence grace upon grace. . . .

The concept grace upon grace, an incessant supply of grace, harmonizes better with the idea from his fulness than does the simple term grace. The limitless supply or reservoir indicated by the words his fulness would seem to suggest a limitless outflow: grace upon grace.[15]

EXPERIENCING GOD’S GRACE

Why then do we not experience more of this endless supply of God’s grace? Why do we so often seem to live in spiritual poverty instead of experiencing life to the full as Jesus promised (see John 10:10)? There are several reasons that may or may not apply to a particular believer, but for the purposes of our study on grace, I’d like to look at two that probably apply to most of us.

First is our frequent misperception of God as the divine equivalent of Ebenezer Scrooge; the God who demands the last ounce of work out of His people and then pays them poorly. That may sound like an overstatement of our perception of God, but I believe it is a fairly accurate representation of how many Christians think.

Consider the following words from one of John Newton’s hymns:

Come, my soul, thy suit prepare:

Jesus loves to answer prayer;

He himself has bid thee pray,

Therefore will not say thee nay.

Thou art coming to a King,

Large petitions with thee bring;

For his grace and power are such,

None can ever ask too much.[16]

How many Christians really believe those words? How many of us really believe Jesus loves to answer prayer? How many of us believe His grace and power are such that we can never ask too much? Rather, we tend in the direction of believing God is reluctant to answer prayer and His grace and power aren’t sufficient to fulfill our needs, let alone our requests.

We should not forget that Satan’s very first temptation of mankind was based on questioning the goodness and generosity of God (see Genesis 3:1-5). And his vicious attack on the patriarch Job was designed to cause Job to question God’s goodness so that he would then curse God (see Job 1:6-11). Satan has not changed his strategy today. This perception of God as the reluctant giver comes right from Satan and must be resisted by us if we are to experience the fullness of God’s grace.

I remember from my college days a story my pastor told about an aged former slave. This old man’s former master had died and left him an inheritance of $50,000, an enormous sum in those days. The old man was duly notified of his inheritance and told that the money had been deposited in an account for him at the local bank. After weeks went by, and he had failed to withdraw any of his money, the banker called the man in and again explained to him that he had $50,000 available to him. The old slave —who had no comprehension of how much $50,000 was —asked, “Sir, do you think I can have fifty cents to buy a sack of cornmeal?”

Many believers live like the old slave. Because we do not comprehend the superabundance of God’s grace and generosity, we ask Him for paltry blessings, the fifty-cent variety, when we could be drawing on the abundance of His riches. The apostle Paul told us that God “has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ,” and “[He] will meet all your needs according to his glorious riches in Christ Jesus” (Ephesians 1:3; Philippians 4:19). Within the scope of these two Scriptures, God promises to meet every one of our needs, both spiritual and temporal.

The God who was gracious to Adam and Eve both before and after the Fall, who rejoiced in doing good to the Jewish nation in captivity, who was the “God of all grace” to Peter, is the same gracious and generous God today. Grace is part of the very nature of God, and He cannot change. He is indeed the generous landowner of the parable, continually going to the marketplace of life to find those in need of “a day’s wages” so that He can bring them into His vineyard and then reward them out of all proportion to their labors.

Perhaps the larger reason why we do not experience more of God’s grace is our misconception that, having been saved by grace, we must now, at least to some degree, “pay our own way” and earn God’s blessings in our daily lives. An accepted maxim among people today, “There is no such thing as a free lunch” (which may be true in our society), is carried by us into our relationship with God.

In fact, this misconception that we must pay our own way is more than a mistaken theological notion. It actually springs from the perverse disposition of our hearts —the disposition of pride.

Noted theologian R. C. Sproul wrote,

Perhaps the most difficult task for us to perform is to rely on God’s grace and God’s grace alone for our salvation. It is difficult for our pride to rest on grace. Grace is for other people —for beggars. We don’t want to live by a heavenly welfare system. We want to earn our own way and atone for our own sins. We like to think that we will go to heaven because we deserve to be there.[17]

Although Dr. Sproul was writing on the subject of the grace of God in salvation, the problem of pride he described is applicable to living the Christian life. Not only do we think we must pay our own way, at least to some degree, we subtly insist on paying our own way. As Dr. Sproul said, “Grace is for other people —for beggars,” but not for us.

Let me illustrate from my own experience. After the death of my first wife, Eleanor, God very soon brought into my life another charming and godly lady whom Eleanor and I had known for a number of years. Just over a year after Eleanor’s death, Jane and I were married.

A few months later I began to realize I was experiencing a vague sense of guilt despite confidence that God had guided in our marriage. One day I realized my sense of guilt was due to the feeling that I had not “paid my dues” in long months of grief and loneliness unlike some of my friends who have lost their spouses. I felt I didn’t “deserve” such a tremendous blessing from God so soon after Eleanor’s death. In fact, I discovered I was unconsciously not allowing myself to enjoy the full riches of the blessing God had so obviously given me. I had lapsed into the world’s way of thinking that we somehow must earn God’s blessings through our suffering or sacrifice or hard work.

It can be humbling, sometimes humiliating, to realize we have not paid our own way. Think of the workers in the parable who worked only one hour. How did they feel when they realized they had received as much pay as those who had worked twelve long hours through the heat of the day? Did they feel grateful for the generous gift they had received, or guilty that they had not earned their pay? If they were living by a philosophy of works as we so often do, they would have felt guilty. They would have experienced the gracious generosity of the landowner, but they would not have enjoyed it.

You and I actually experience the grace of God in our lives far more than we realize. But all too often we do not enjoy His grace because we are trying to live by merit, not by grace. In looking for our own goodness by which we hope to earn the blessing of God, we fail to see the superabundance of the goodness and grace of God in our lives.