The Vineyard and Its Tenants

And the Lord does not reject that God. He does not say that the prophets spoke from some god other than his own Father, or out of any other being, but from one and the same Father. Nor does he say that anyone else made the things in the world except his own Father. This is how he speaks in his teaching: “There was a man, the master of a house, and he planted a vineyard, put a fence around it, dug a winepress in it, built a tower, let it out to tenant farmers, and went abroad. When the season for the fruit came near, he sent his servants to the tenants to collect its fruits. And the tenants seized his servants: one they cut to pieces, another they stoned, another they killed. Again he sent other servants, more of them than the first, and they did the same to them. Last of all he sent his only son to them, saying, Perhaps they will respect my son. But when the tenants saw the son, they said among themselves, This is the heir; come, let us kill him, and we will have his inheritance. So they seized him, threw him out of the vineyard, and killed him. When, then, the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?” They said to him, “He will destroy those wicked men miserably, and let out his vineyard to other tenants, who will hand over the fruits to him in their seasons.” And again the Lord says: “Have you never read: The stone the builders rejected has become the head of the corner; this was the Lord’s doing, and it is marvelous in our eyes? So I tell you that the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a nation that produces its fruits.” [a]

By these words he plainly points out to his disciples one and the same master of the house — that is, one God the Father, who made all things by himself. At the same time he shows that the tenant farmers are of different kinds: some stubborn and proud and worthless, murderers of the Lord; others who hand over to him the fruits in their seasons with full obedience. And it is the same master of the house who sends at one time his servants and at another his Son. So the Father from whom the Son was sent to the tenants who killed him is the Father from whom the servants were sent as well. But the Son, since he came from the Father with supreme authority, used to speak like this: “But I say to you.” The servants, coming as from their Lord, spoke the way servants speak, delivering a message; and so they used to say, “Thus says the Lord.”

So the Lord these men preached to unbelievers as Lord is the very one Christ taught to the people who obey him; and the God who called the people of the earlier arrangement is the same God who has received the people of the later one. In other words, the one who at first used a law that brings slavery is the same one who in later times called his people by adoption as sons. For God planted the vineyard of the human race when at the beginning he formed Adam and chose the fathers. He let it out to tenants when he set up the arrangement given through Moses. He put a fence around it — that is, he gave detailed instructions about their worship. He built a tower — that is, he chose Jerusalem. He dug a winepress — that is, he prepared a vessel to hold the prophetic Spirit. And so he sent prophets before the exile to Babylon, and after that event others again, more of them than before, to look for the fruits. This is what he said to them, the Jews: “Thus says the Lord: Make your ways and your doings clean. Carry out just judgment. Look on your brother, each of you, with pity and compassion. Do not oppress the widow or the orphan, the convert or the poor, and let none of you store up evil against his brother in your hearts, and do not love false swearing. Wash yourselves, make yourselves clean, put away evil from your hearts, learn to do good, seek judgment, protect the man who is oppressed, judge for the fatherless, plead for the widow; and come, let us reason together, says the Lord.” And again: “Keep your tongue from evil and your lips from speaking deceit; turn away from evil and do good; seek peace and pursue it.”

In preaching these things the prophets were looking for the fruits of righteousness. But last of all he sent to those unbelievers his own Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, whom the wicked tenants threw out of the vineyard after they had killed him. And so the Lord God handed the vineyard over — no longer fenced around, but thrown open across the whole world — to other tenants, who hand over the fruits in their seasons; and the beautiful chosen tower is raised everywhere too. For the shining church is everywhere now, and everywhere the winepress is dug, because the people who receive the Spirit are everywhere. Since the first tenants rejected the Son of God and threw him out of the vineyard when they killed him, God has justly rejected them and given the fruits of the vineyard’s cultivation to the Gentiles outside it. This agrees with what Jeremiah says: “The Lord has rejected and cast off the nation that does these things, for the sons of Judah have done evil in my sight, says the Lord.” And Jeremiah speaks the same way again: “I set watchmen over you; listen for the sound of the trumpet. And they said, We will not listen. Therefore the nations have heard, and those who feed the flocks among them.” So it is one and the same Father who planted the vineyard, who led the people out, who sent the prophets, who sent his own Son, and who gave the vineyard to those other tenants who hand over the fruits in their season.

And that is why the Lord said to his disciples, to make us good workmen: “Take care for yourselves, and stay awake on every occasion, so that your hearts are never weighed down with overeating and drunkenness and the cares of this life, and that day comes on you without warning; for it will come like a trap on everyone living on the face of the earth.” “So let your belts be fastened and your lamps burning, and be like men waiting for their lord when he comes back from the wedding.” “For as it was in the days of Noah — they ate and drank, they bought and sold, they married and were given in marriage, and they knew nothing until Noah went into the ark, and the flood came and destroyed them all — so it was also in the days of Lot: they ate and drank, they bought and sold, they planted and built, until the day Lot went out of Sodom; it rained fire from heaven and destroyed them all. So it will also be at the coming of the Son of Man.” “Watch, then, for you do not know on what day your Lord will come.”

In these passages he declares one and the same Lord: the one who in the days of Noah brought the flood because of man’s disobedience; who in the days of Lot rained fire from heaven because of how many sinners there were among the Sodomites; and who, because of that same disobedience and sins like it, will bring on the day of judgment at the end of time. On that day, he declares, it will be more bearable for Sodom and Gomorrah than for the town and the house that will not receive the word of his apostles. “And you, Capernaum,” he said, “is it that you will be lifted up to heaven? You will go down to Hades. For if the mighty works that have been done in you had been done in Sodom, it would have remained to this day. I tell you truly, it will be more bearable for Sodom on the day of judgment than for you.”

Since the Son of God is always one and the same, he gives those who believe in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life, while he makes the fruitless fig tree wither on the spot. In the days of Noah he justly brought on the flood to wipe out that utterly infamous race of men then alive, who could bring forth no fruit to God, since the angels who sinned had mingled with them. He acted as he did in order to put a stop to the sins of these men, and at the same time to keep safe the archetype, the form he had given Adam. And it was he who rained fire and sulfur from heaven in the days of Lot on Sodom and Gomorrah, “an example of the righteous judgment of God,” so that everyone might know that “every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.” And it is he who says that it will be more bearable for Sodom at the general judgment than for the people who saw his wonders and did not believe in him or accept his teaching. For just as by his coming he gave a greater privilege to those who believed in him and who do his will, so he also pointed out that those who did not believe in him would have a heavier punishment at the judgment. He deals out equal justice to everyone this way, and will require more from the people to whom he gives more — more, however, not because he reveals the knowledge of some other Father, as I have shown so fully and so often, but because by his coming he has poured out on the human race the greater gift of the Father’s grace.

If what I have said is not enough to convince someone that the prophets were sent from one and the same Father, the Father from whom our Lord was also sent, then let him open the mouth of his heart, call on the Master, Christ Jesus the Lord, and listen to him when he says: “The kingdom of heaven is like a king who made a wedding feast for his son, and he sent out his servants to call the people who had been invited to the wedding.” And when they would not come, he goes on to say: “Again he sent out other servants, saying, Tell the people who were invited, Come, I have prepared my dinner; my oxen and all my fattened animals are killed, and everything is ready; come to the wedding. But they paid no attention and went off, some to their farm, others to their business; and the rest seized his servants, treated some of them shamefully, and killed others. When the king heard it he was angry, and he sent his armies and destroyed those murderers and burned their city. Then he said to his servants, The wedding is indeed ready, but the people who were invited were not worthy. So go out to the highways, and gather in to the wedding as many as you find. And the servants went out and collected together as many as they found, bad and good, and the wedding was furnished with guests. But when the king came in to look at the guests, he saw a man there who did not have a wedding garment on, and he said to him, Friend, how did you get in here without a wedding garment? And the man had nothing to say. Then the king said to his servants, Take him away, hand and foot, and throw him into the darkness outside; there will be weeping and grinding of teeth. For many are called, but few are chosen.”

Now by these words of his the Lord plainly shows all of this. There is one King and Lord, the Father of all — the one he had spoken of before, when he said, “Do not swear by Jerusalem either, for it is the city of the great King” — and from the beginning he had prepared the wedding for his Son, and used to call the men of the earlier arrangement to the wedding feast with the utmost kindness, by means of his servants. And when they would not come, he still invited them by sending out other servants; and even then they did not obey him, but stoned and killed the men who brought them the invitation. So he sent out his armies and destroyed them and burned their city down. But from all the highways — that is, from all the nations — he called guests together to the wedding feast of his Son. He says the same thing through Jeremiah: “I also sent you my servants the prophets, to say, Turn back now, every one of you, from your very evil way, and mend your doings.” And again he says through the same prophet: “I also sent you my servants the prophets, all day long and before the light; yet they did not obey me or turn their ears to me. And you shall speak this word to them: This is a people that does not obey the voice of the Lord and does not accept correction; faith has perished from their mouth.” So the Lord who has called us everywhere through the apostles is the one who called the men of long ago through the prophets, as the Lord’s own words show. And although they preached to various nations, the prophets were not from one God and the apostles from another. They came from one and the same God: some of them announced the Lord, some preached the Father, some foretold the coming of the Son of God, and others declared him already present to the people who were then far off.

He made something else plain as well: that after we are called we ought also to be dressed in works of righteousness, so that the Spirit of God may rest on us. That is the wedding garment, the one the apostle also speaks of: “Not that we want to be unclothed, but clothed over, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by immortality.” But those who have indeed been called to God’s supper and have not received the Holy Spirit, because their conduct is wicked, “will be,” he declares, “thrown into the darkness outside.” So he plainly shows that the very same King who gathered the faithful from every quarter to the wedding of his Son, and who grants them the banquet that cannot decay, is the one who orders that man thrown into the darkness outside who has no wedding garment on — that is, the man who thinks nothing of it. For as in the former covenant “with many of them he was not pleased,” so it is here too: “many are called, but few chosen.” It is not one God who judges and another Father who calls us together to salvation. It is not one who gives eternal light and another who orders the men without a wedding garment sent out into the darkness outside. It is one and the same God, the Father of our Lord, the Father from whom the prophets also had their commission. Out of his boundless kindness he does call the unworthy; but he examines the people he has called, to see whether they have on the garment that is fit and proper for the wedding of his Son, because nothing unfitting or evil pleases him. This agrees with what the Lord said to the man who had been healed: “Look, you have been made well. Sin no more, or something worse may happen to you.” For the one who is good and righteous and pure and without stain will put up with nothing evil or unjust or disgusting in his wedding chamber.

This is the Father of our Lord. By his providence everything holds together, and everything is managed at his command. He gives his free gifts to those who ought to receive them; but as the most righteous one who pays back what is owed, he measures out to the ungrateful and to those who cannot feel his kindness exactly what they deserve, and most deservedly. And so he says, “He sent his armies and destroyed those murderers and burned their city.” He says “his armies” because all men belong to God: “The earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it, the world and all who live in it.” That is why the apostle Paul says in his letter to the Romans: “There is no authority except from God; the authorities that exist have been appointed by God. Whoever resists the authority resists what God has ordained, and those who resist will bring judgment on themselves. For rulers are not a terror to good work but to evil. Do you want to have no fear of the authority? Do what is good, and you will have praise from it, for he is God’s servant to you for good. But if you do what is evil, be afraid; for he does not carry the sword for nothing. He is God’s servant, the avenger for wrath on the man who does evil. So you must be subject, not only because of that wrath but also for conscience’s sake. This is why you pay taxes too; for they are God’s servants, giving their constant attention to this very thing.” Both the Lord, then, and the apostles announce as the one only God the Father the one who gave the law, who sent the prophets, who made all things. And so he says “he sent his armies,” because every man, just because he is a man, is his workmanship, even if he does not know his God. For he gives existence to all of them: he “makes his sun rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the just and the unjust.”

And it is not only from what I have set out already. The Lord also taught one and the same Father by the parable of the two sons, the younger of whom used up what he had by living in luxury with prostitutes. That father would not allow his older son even a young goat; but for the son who had been lost, the younger one, he ordered the fattened calf killed, and gave him the best robe. By the parable of the workers who were sent into the vineyard at different times of the day, too, one and the same God is declared. He called some at the beginning, when the world was first made; others afterwards; others in the time between; others after a long stretch of time; and others again at the end of time. So there are many workers, each in his own generation, but only one master of the house who calls them all together. For there is only one vineyard, since there is also only one righteousness, and one steward, since there is one Spirit of God who arranges everything. And in the same way there is one wage, for they each received a denarius, stamped with the royal image and inscription — the knowledge of the Son of God, which is immortality. And that is why he began by paying the wage to the men taken on last: because in the last times, when the Lord was revealed, he presented himself to everyone as their reward.

Then take the tax collector, who did better in prayer than the Pharisee. It was not because he worshiped a different Father that he had the Lord’s own word for it that he was counted righteous rather than the other man. It was because with great humility, with no boasting and no pride, he made his confession to the same God. The parable of the two sons applies as well — the ones sent into the vineyard, of whom the first said no to his father and afterwards repented, when repentance did him no good, while the other promised to go and gave his father his word at once, and did not go (for “every man is a liar,” and “the wanting is there in him, but he does not find the means to do it”). That parable, I say, points to one and the same Father. Then again the same truth was clearly shown by the parable of the fig tree. The Lord says of it, “Look, for three years now I have been coming to look for fruit on this fig tree, and I find none” — pointing onward, through the prophets, to his own coming, by whom he came from time to time looking for the fruit of righteousness from them and did not find it — and shown too by the fact that, for the reason just given, the fig tree was to be cut down. And without using a parable at all, the Lord said to Jerusalem: “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone the men sent to you, how often I wanted to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you would not! Look, your house is left to you deserted.”

For what was said in the parable, “Look, for three years I have been coming to look for fruit,” and what was said in plain terms, “How often I wanted to gather your children together,” will turn out to be false if we do not understand his coming, the coming the prophets announce — if, in fact, he came to them only once, and then for the first time. But the one who chose the patriarchs and the men who lived under the first covenant is the same Word of God who both visited them through the prophetic Spirit and visited us as well, who have been called together from every quarter by his coming. So, on top of everything already said, he truly declared: “Many will come from the east and from the west and will recline with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven. But the sons of the kingdom will go out into the darkness outside; there will be weeping and grinding of teeth.” If, then, the people who believe in him through the preaching of his apostles across east and west will recline with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven and share the banquet with them, then one and the same God is set out as the one who chose the patriarchs, who also visited the people, and who called the Gentiles.