Have you ever worked for someone and not gotten paid? If so, you’d feel cheated, right?
Back when I was a teenager I helped out on a neighbor’s farm. I think the rate was $2 per hour. We hoisted hay bales and stacked them on a wagon, went to the barn, then stacked them it seemed a thousand rows high - all the way up to the roof. When it’s 95 outside, that small area at the peak INSIDE the barn must have been 140. Maybe I’m exaggerating, but it sure felt like 140.
One day, after eight hours, I was given something like twenty-two dollars. I didn’t notice until I got home, and I was VERY happy! I’d gotten a raise!
Well, the next day the family who’d paid me said it was a mistake. That day I worked for three hours before I started earning again. I felt cheated, even though I knew I hadn’t been.
There’s a parable told by Jesus about some guy who owned a vineyard. One morning he hired a group of guys (let’s say for $20 for the day) to harvest grapes. When he realized the harvest wouldn’t be done on time he hired more guys, then some more, and eventually some more men just a couple of hours before quitting time.
At the end of the day he called the workers together to pay them. He gave the last guys, who came late afternoon, a full $20. The rest of the guys were thinking, “BONUS! If they get twenty, we’re gonna get a bunch more.” But when they only got their twenty bucks they were ticked.
The main point of that story is that it doesn’t matter how “late in the game” a person comes to a saving faith in Jesus. We all get to Heaven if we’ve trusted Jesus for fifty years or five seconds. A sub-point is that we cannot earn our way.
Notice that the men hanging around not working were hired by the vineyard owner. Those people didn’t have their own vineyard, so they depended on someone else to hire them. It’s the same way with God.
In order to qualify for a trip to Heaven we have to be picked. We have to go to the town square to show our availability, like the men in the parable, but also notice the vineyard owner hired everyone who was there. He didn’t go wandering around yelling, “Hiring grape pickers!” He went to where people were making themselves available and hired them - all of them.
The people who were there weren’t asked if they had picked grapes before. They didn’t have to show a resume (minimum of six seasons of grape-picking experience) in order to get the job. They were available.
Likewise, YOU don’t have to have a resume with a minimum of eighteen months of church attendance in order to be saved. Just show up, and you’re hired.
If experience was needed, NOBODY would make it to Heaven. If someone could earn it, that would mean some could never qualify. In John 4 Jesus stopped at the well and spoke to a woman He should never have even talked to. Here’s what she had going against her:
1 - Men don’t talk to women.
2 - Jews don’t interact with Samaritans (for various reasons).
3 - She was a social outcast even in her own community.
If anyone could be excluded from the Kingdom of God it would be a Samaritan woman who went out at noon to get water. She couldn’t earn it, but she was available when Jesus came into her life. If someone like that could be saved, a drug-addicted felon on death row can be saved.
The Gospel (see this post for what that means) is for everyone. All you have to do is show up and make yourself available. If someone could flash a resume of good works to justify getting into Heaven, then God would be obligated to save them based on something other than His standards. “I’ve stacked 4,000 bales of hay, so I’m good. That guy over there only stacked 3,999, so he’s out.” Nuh-uh. Doesn’t work that way.
Since you cannot earn your way, you have to rely on Him to get you there. That makes all of us equal - even Samaritan Woman and Death Row Felon.
Are you in the town square, waiting for the vineyard owner? Or are you busy polishing your resume to show off at the Gates of Heaven? That’s worshiping yourself instead of God and it’s idolatry.
If you’re polishing, I can guarantee you’ll be left standing when the unqualified grape picker gets ushered in. You’ll get a lot warmer than stacking hay in the barn.
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