With the Understanding Also

1

There Are Minimum Requirements?

When seeking the truth of salvation, people ask many questions, the most popular being the question in the title of this chapter. In a word, the answer is yes.

Minimum Means Minimum

In Luke 17:7–10, Jesus related a “what if” story. “What if” we had a servant who had worked all day. Would we reward that servant for doing his job by telling him to sit and have dinner with us? Or would we expect the servant to continue doing his job by preparing our meal and then eating after we had been served?

Jesus was asking if we would reward someone for simply doing what was required by his job description. The answer is no, we would not reward the servant, nor would he expect us to.

Jesus’ point was that the servant who performs only to the level expected will receive only the pay agreed upon when he was hired. This servant will simply “break even.” He has done his job in a way that we would mark as “satisfactory” on an employee evaluation. The servant has done all that was required in a satisfactory fashion, and nothing more. The boss got a day’s work for a day’s pay.

The King James Version calls this employee “the unprofitable servant.” This is a very accurate wording. In our modern times, the word unprofitable generally indicates that something or someone is losing money. However, the actual definition of the word simply means that whatever it was did not make a profit. The satisfactory servant did not perform above par, but he did perform at par. The servant deserved a day’s pay, but nothing more.

“It’s My Money,” Says Jesus

Jesus “goes you one further” with the parable of the vineyard workers in Matthew 20:1–15. With this parable, Jesus established who decided what a day’s pay was.

Jesus told of the landowner who went out early in the morning, looking for workers for his vineyard. He found some at the “day labor” corner and agreed to pay them a denarius for their work for the day. The landowner obviously felt that he needed more workers, because he went out “in the third hour” to shop in the marketplace and found a few more workers. He told them to go to work and said he’d pay them what was right.

The landowner went out again at the sixth and the ninth hours and repeated his offer to the workers he found at those times. He also went out in the eleventh hour for some reason, and he seemed surprised to find a couple of men still standing around. The landowner asked these men if they’d not worked all day. The men replied that they had not, and when he asked them why, they said, “Because no man hired us.” This is where we get our modern analogy of the “eleventh hour.”

The landowner, being generous and not wanting to see any man go home empty-handed, made the same deal with them that he had made with the men from the earlier times of the day. “I’ll pay you what is right,” he said. These men went to work, because they too did not want to go home empty-handed.

The story ends with the last men getting paid first. We very often repeat what Jesus said: “The first shall be last, and the last shall be first.” However, we rarely speak of what that means. Many people believe this statement means that on the day of judgment the older-in-Christ Christians will be allowed to see the fruits of their labors. I like that idea, myself. However, we now see that it actually means that the first will be indistinguishable from the last.

Jesus told us that even the very last men to come to work were paid the same wage agreed upon by the first workmen. The last men had only worked for an hour but were each paid a denarius, just like the men who had worked all day.

The men hired in the morning grumbled and asked why they had not been paid moreor more accurately, why the latecomers hadn’t been paid less. The first men did not desire more than the agreed-upon wage, but they certainly wanted to be paid more than those who had only worked one hour. The situation seems terribly and typically human.

In Matthew 20:13–15, Jesus said, “But he [the landowner] 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?’”

With this parable, Jesus made the point that there is a reward for all who “work in the vineyard.” More than that, He made it abundantly clear that there is a minimum reward.

The parable of the prodigal son has a place here, but I won’t belabor this point. As we continue through these Bible studies, we’ll see a tremendous overlap of teachings. You may see things that others haven’t. The point is this: “If you seek Him, He will find you.” You’ll see the “fingerprints of God” all over the Bible before you’re through.

Minimum Here, Minimum There: What’s Your Point?

We’ve heard from the lips of Jesus that there is a minimum performance requirement for a minimum reward. What should be equally evident is the fact that if a person does not perform the minimum requirements, that person will not attain even the minimum reward. In terms of the parable, Jesus was saying that the workers had to have worked in the vineyardno matter how longin order to be paid.

We see that God (the landowner), with His loving generosity, sees no differencein terms of rewardbetween Christians who come to salvation early in their lives and those who come at or near the end of their lives.

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See chapter 31, “The Prodigal Son.”