Peter asked what the disciples would get for leaving everything. Jesus answered with a vineyard, a day's wage and a line that turns every ranking upside down, starting now.
The last shall be first meaning comes from Jesus' own words in Matthew 19:30 and 20:16, where He tells His disciples that many who are first will be last, and the last first. In the Kingdom of God, standing is a gift of grace, not a wage earned by seniority, status or hours put in.
In that generation it meant the insiders who assumed their place, the religious leaders, were being passed by while tax collectors, sinners and Gentiles walked in. It describes how the Kingdom works today, not a ranking handed out later in heaven.
You may have heard this preached as a promotion plan: take the low seat now and God will move you to the head table in the afterlife. That reading is common and it is wrong. Jesus told a story where everyone got the same pay. Grace does not flip the order someday. It makes the order meaningless now.
The saying lands right after a rich man walks away from Jesus sad, because he had great possessions. We looked at him closely in who the rich young ruler was.
Jesus then says a camel gets through the eye of a needle more easily than a rich man enters the Kingdom, a line we unpacked in the camel through the eye of a needle. The disciples are stunned. In their world wealth looked like God's approval.
Then Peter does the math.
“See, we have left everything and followed you. What then will we have?”
Matthew 19:27 · ESVIt is an honest question, and Jesus does not scold him. He answers generously: thrones for the twelve, a hundredfold for everyone who left house or family for His sake. Then, before Peter can start keeping a ledger, He adds a warning and tells a story to explain it.
The saying shows up in three Gospels, and every time it confronts people who think they have earned the front of the line.
Right after Peter's question. The ones who left everything are warned not to turn sacrifice into seniority.
The closing line of the vineyard workers. The saying frames the parable on both ends, so the story is its explanation.
After the promise of a hundredfold, which Mark says comes with persecutions. The reward is real, and it is not a bonus scheme.
A different day entirely. People come from east, west, north and south to sit at the table while those who assumed a seat are left outside.
A landowner goes out early to hire workers. Day laborers waited in the marketplace to be picked. The Law told employers to pay a hired worker before sunset, because he was poor and counted on it (Deuteronomy 24:15). A day without work meant a night without food.
The first crew agrees to a denarius, the ordinary wage for a day's labor. A fair deal, freely made.
He finds more men standing idle and sends them in with no number named, only a promise to pay whatever is right.
He keeps going back. He cares about who is left standing.
An hour before quitting time, men are still there. Why? Because no one wanted them. He sends them in too.
The foreman pays the one hour crew first, and they get a full denarius. The early crew, watching, expects more. They get exactly what they agreed to, and they are furious.
Enter the Bible, the Luther Seminary resource, sums up the story well: the landowner “surprisingly pays the last hired with the same wage as those hired first”. That word surprisingly is the whole parable. Nobody in the crowd saw it coming.
Notice the order of payment. Paid first, the early crew would have gone home happy and never known. He pays the last first on purpose, in front of everyone.
Nobody in this story was underpaid. The only thing the early workers lost was the feeling of being ahead.
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Manage My Giving"Each of you should give what you have decided in your heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver."2 Corinthians 9:7
The complaint in verse 12 is worth reading slowly, because most of us have said it.
“These last worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the day and the scorching heat.”
Matthew 20:12 · ESVThey are not angry about their pay. They are angry about equality. The heat and the hours were supposed to buy them a higher place, and the owner refused to sell it.
“Or do you begrudge my generosity?” The footnote gives the literal Greek: “Or is your eye bad because I am good?”
A bad or evil eye was a Jewish way of describing a stingy, envious heart. Jesus uses the same pairing of words in Matthew 6:23.
The owner calls the grumbler friend in verse 13. Only Matthew uses this address, for this worker, for the guest without a wedding garment in 22:12, and for Judas in 26:50.
That is the real diagnosis. The problem is not in the owner's wallet but in the worker's eye. Grace offends people who keep score.
I put in more, so I am owed more, and my standing with God reflects my record. Latecomers should get less, or at least wait at the back.
Everyone at the table was invited by a generous owner. The denarius is enough for the day for all of them. Nobody's gift shrinks when someone else receives it.
This is where the difference between grace and mercy helps. Mercy meets the need of the man with no work. Grace gives him a full day's pay he did not earn. We laid the two side by side in the difference between grace and mercy, and this parable shows both at once.
One caution in both directions. The parable is not a labor policy, and it does not call effort worthless. Nor is God careless with fairness. He kept His word to every worker and was simply free to be good beyond it.
In Matthew 20, what did the early workers actually complain about?
They received the denarius they agreed to. Their objection in verse 12 is that the one hour workers were made equal to them. The owner answers that he did them no wrong and asks whether their eye is bad because he is good.
Jesus' first hearers did not hear a general truth about humility. They heard something about the people in front of them. Israel's leaders, in their own view, had been in the vineyard since dawn, with the temple, the Law and the seats of honor. And Jesus kept welcoming people no one had hired.
“The tax collectors and the prostitutes go into the kingdom of God before you,” Jesus told the chief priests and elders in Matthew 21:31. Before you. The last are going in first.
Luke 13:29 pictures people coming from east and west, north and south, to recline at the table. In that same generation the gospel crossed into the nations, and Gentiles were brought near, equal heirs with no second class seats.
Hired at the last possible hour, he heard Jesus promise him paradise that same day. Read more in the thief on the cross.
Right after the parable, the mother of James and John asks for their sons to sit at Jesus' right and left. The lesson was not yet learned by the people closest to Him.
Being first was never the sin. Paul says the gospel came to the Jew first, and the first disciples were Jewish. The sin was treating first as better, and resenting the owner's generosity toward the late arrivals. The older brother in the prodigal son has the same problem and the same father pleading with him to come in.
Our position at Sound of Heaven is that the last shall be first describes the Kingdom of God as it is right now, not a future ranking in heaven. Jesus spoke it to a specific generation in which the leaders who assumed the front of the line were passed by and outsiders, Jew and Gentile alike, walked in by grace. That covenant transition happened in the first century, and the door it opened is still open.
We reject the reading that turns this verse into a heavenly seating chart where the humble get upgraded later. There is no later promotion in this parable. Everyone got the same denarius at the same sunset.
We also reject the opposite error, which treats the saying as a rule that poor people are automatically in and rich people automatically out. The rich man was invited too. The issue is where your trust sits, not what your bank account says. Grace levels everyone, in both directions.
Because the Kingdom is present, this saying shapes how a church and a believer live on a Tuesday afternoon.
It starts with how we see ourselves. The first beatitude says the Kingdom already belongs to people with empty hands, which we worked through in blessed are the poor in spirit. Nobody walks into the vineyard holding a receipt.
It changes how we lead. Jesus said whoever wants to be first must be servant of all, and then He went to the cross. In a church that takes this seriously, the long timer does not outrank the newcomer, and the person who met Jesus last week has the same full standing as the founding members. We explored that posture in humility in the Bible.
And it corrects some popular folklore.
You hear it said that since latecomers get the same pay, a person can put God off and slip in at the end. The men at the eleventh hour were not stalling. Nobody had hired them. Grace is not a plan to delay grace.
The owner kept going back to the marketplace. The point is the persistence of His invitation, not a strategy for when to answer it. If you hear Him calling today, today is the day.
Some read this parable and think, I wasted years. Hear the owner's voice. You get the full denarius. You are not a second class believer.
Others have borne the heat of the day for a long time and feel quietly passed over when newcomers are celebrated. That feeling is human, and the owner does not throw the grumbler out. He calls him friend. Your years with God were never a debt He owes you. They were time spent with Him in the vineyard, and that was the gift.
If either of those is heavy for you right now, send us a prayer request and someone will pray with you.
In a Kingdom that runs on grace, nobody is ahead and nobody is behind. The only way to lose the joy of it is to keep counting.
Take away the ledger and this parable is a portrait of God as Jesus revealed Him. He goes looking for the people nobody picked. He pays in full. He answers the resentful with the word friend. And the one telling the story would soon take the lowest place of all, so that the last could come in.
That is the Kingdom Jesus established in that generation, and we live in it now. The question is not whether you got there early enough. It is whether you will let the owner be good to you and to the person next to you.
For related reading, see many are called but few are chosen, God's grace, who the Gentiles are today and what the Kingdom of God is. And if you are on Long Island, come stand with us in the vineyard.
The last shall be first means grace, not seniority, decides your place in the Kingdom, which is why the outsiders of Jesus' generation walked in beside the insiders and why the door is open to you right now.
Send your questions or a prayer request, and someone at Sound of Heaven will walk through it with you.
It is Jesus' saying in Matthew 19:30 and 20:16, also in Mark 10:31 and Luke 13:30, that many who are first will be last and the last first. He explained it with the parable of the vineyard workers, where everyone receives the same day's wage. It means standing in the Kingdom of God is a gift of grace, not a reward for seniority or status, and it describes the Kingdom now, not a future ranking.
In Matthew 20:1 to 16 a landowner hires workers at dawn for a denarius, the usual day's wage, then keeps hiring through the day until an hour before sunset. At evening he pays the last hired first, and he gives every worker a full denarius. The early workers complain that the latecomers were made equal to them. The story shows that God's Kingdom runs on grace, not on wages earned.
In the setting of Jesus' ministry, the first were those who assumed they had the front of the line, especially Israel's religious leaders, who had the temple, the Law and the seats of honor. The last were tax collectors, sinners, the poor and eventually the Gentiles, people no one had picked. In that generation the outsiders walked into the Kingdom beside the insiders. Being first was not the sin. Resenting God's generosity toward the late arrivals was.
No. That reading turns the saying into a promotion plan, where the humble get upgraded later. The parable Jesus used to explain it points the other way. Every worker got the same denarius at the same sunset, and the only thing the early workers lost was the feeling of being ahead. Jesus was describing how the Kingdom works now, where grace makes the ranking itself meaningless.
Nobody in the story was cheated. The early workers agreed to a denarius and received it. The owner kept his word to everyone and then chose to be generous beyond it. What feels unfair is the equality, and Jesus calls that a bad eye. It also does not teach that people can put God off until the end. The eleventh hour workers were not stalling. No one had hired them until the owner came back for them.