Matthew 20

The parable of the workers in the vineyard is the closest thing in Matthew to a direct challenge to the logic of proportional justice. The workers who have borne the heat of the day have a legitimate grievance by the terms of the market; the owner has not violated his contract. What he has done is act generously with those who came last, and the complaint of the early workers is not about their own wage but about the equality of the late-comers' wage. The owner's question — is your eye evil because I am good? — identifies the grievance as a begrudging of others' good fortune, a resentment of grace extended beyond the expected measure. The parable is not a labor economics lesson; it is the parable of the kingdom's logic of generosity, placed between the rich young man who went away sorrowful (because the cost was too high) and the passion prediction (where the ultimate generosity is about to be named).

The saying at 20:28 — the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many — is one of the most theologically dense statements in the gospel. The ransom (lytron) language draws on the commercial and legal world of slavery and prisoner release, but its theological content is debated: whether the preposition for (anti, in exchange for) implies that the ransom is paid to someone, and if so, to whom, has been the center of atonement theology from the patristic period forward. What is clear in the context is that the saying answers James and John's request for thrones by pointing to the cross as the act that defines greatness in the kingdom. The Son of Man, who at Caesarea Philippi was declared to be the Christ with all authority, is here presented as the one whose greatest exercise of that authority is the giving of his life.