New Testament: Matt 20.13–15

To read the Bible in a year, read Matthew 20.1–16 on January 29, In the year of our Lord Christ 2021

By Don Ruhl 

With socialism on the rise in the western world, socialists seek to persuade people to accept it, and they even argue that Jesus was a socialist. Has anyone who advances that claim read Matthew 20.1–16, and then still believed that Jesus was a socialist? 

A landowner paid all his workers the same amount of money, although they had worked different amounts of hours. When those who worked the longest came to receive their pay and found that they received only as much as those who had worked fewer hours, they objected. 

However, Jesus quoted approvingly, the landowner as saying, 

“Friend, I am doing you no wrong. Did you not agree with me for a denarius? Take what is yours and go your way. I wish to give to this last man the same as to you. Is it not lawful for me to do what I wish with my own things? Or is your eye evil because I am good?”

– Matthew 20.13–15 

I can guarantee you that no socialist will like what the landowner said. The heart of socialism is envy, greed, and covetousness, none of which the Lord our Creator endorses. 

Be content with what you have, and if the Lord blesses someone next to you, do not envy him, nor covet what he has, for you may have something that he does not. 

Questions: 

• What do you think of socialism? 
• What do you think of younger people who start their jobs making more than you did when you started working? 

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