Get a Job
Matthew 20:5-6
(Continuation of Jesus’ parable of the workers for the vineyard owner) And they went. Again, proceeding around sixth and ninth hour, he (vineyard owner) did just the same way. And around the eleventh proceeding around, he found others standing and said to them, “Why do you stand the who day unemployed?”
Puzzle pieces are starting to form, a larger picture beginning to emerge. John 15:8 Jesus had said, “In this My Father is glorified, that you produce much fruit, becoming my disciples.” Said ‘fruit’ was succinctly identified by Paul’s writing found in Galatians 5:22-23 generous concern, joy, peace, clemency, virtue, goodness, benevolence, faithfulness, and self-restraint.
Glorifying the Father, rather than glorifying the self (through vainglorious attempts - Philippians 2:3 – the very thing Paul warned against), is why God created people. God’s people were always intended to produce spirit-fruit, reflecting His holiness (1 Peter 1:16), separate from the common condition of the world. Producing spirit-fruit first requires partaking of the Divine nature (2 Peter 1:4) to renounce the self (Matthew 16:24), the fleshly nature and its sins of carnality (Galatians 5:19-21). Sins of carnality naturally do not glorify God.
Salvation of belief and baptism is the starting point to begin working for The Vineyard Owner, not the place to stop and start standing around. The final words of Jesus (Matthew 28:19-20) specifically states that keeping strict His commands after the watery funeral is how one trains as His disciple. Business in the vineyard brings God in closer proximity, subsequently, working out salvation in fear and trembling (Philippian 2:12), thus becoming wiser, because the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom (Proverbs 1:9).
The holy spirit provides the gymnasium (gymnadzo) in which to train these vineyard workers, which ends up looking like some sort of suffering or conflict. Paul took suffering to a new level, shifting its bad rap into something required to produce perseverance and character (Romans 5:3-5). The former, stale, stand-arounds become confident (2 Corinthians 5:6-7) in their new walk, and everyone knows that the one who claims to dwell in Him is indebted to walk just as He walked (1 John 2:6). Keeping the eye on the prize (Philippians 3:14), which is successfully glorifying the Father, is the only way to achieve this servant-suffering (Isaiah 52:13), cross-raising (Luke 9:23), fruit-producing lifestyle, which results in the imitation of Jesus (what vineyard workers do). The puzzle begins to take clearer shape.
Jesus glorified the Father with His sacrifice on the cross – Not My will but Yours (Luke 22:42); Jesus, in turn, set the same bar for success, the requirement of His vineyard workers to trade in personal comfort for personal sacrifice. The journey like this one, to the center of Christ’s Humility (Philippians 2:8) is nearly impossible without friends to sustain one another’s charge (Galatians 6:2), helping each other to run the race (1 Corinthians 9:24). Encouragement, and a lot of it, is the only way to endure the knife-cutting, sword-stabbing pain of heart-circumcision (Hebrews 4:12).
Critical, emergency surgery of the spirit is required to remove the flesh-nature, allowing the Divine nature to do what it was intended to do - work the vineyard and keep strict Jesus’ Twenty Commands to produce His spirit-fruit. Cutting off unwanted flesh of pride and ego loosens the feet, allowing freedom to walk just as Jesus walked, the freedom for which Christ set us free (Galatians 5:1).
No longer standing around and unemployed, training as a disciple is a three-year contract. After that, producing fruit is a full-time gig.
