Matthew 20:9

And when they came that were hired about the eleventh hour, they received every man a shilling.

The representation of eternal life by so small a consideration as a day's wages raises a question and certainly stands opposite from the usual analogies employed by the Lord, such as the hidden treasure, the pearl of great price, and the banquet in the king's house. However, special considerations that required the approach adopted here is discovered in the events and conversations that concluded Matthew 19. The great wealth of the rich young ruler and his inability to give it up to follow Christ, and the subsequent fixation of the apostles' attention on the problem of rewards and sacrifices, and the Saviour's elaboration of the believer's great reward (see on Matthew 19:29) - all these things had contrived to throw the whole problem out of perspective. This parable is a reduction of the whole economy of redemption to such a minute scale that those apostles, accustomed to dealing with small things, would have no difficulty at all grasping the truth. Eternal life, together with all spiritual blessings, is made to correspond to so simple and ordinary a thing as a shilling, a day's pay; and all the sacrifices, labors, and exertions of men to attain eternal life are made to appear as a day's work, or even a very small fraction of a day's work. Suppose that some incredibly wealthy and fabulous city, such as New York, should be sold for fifteen cents, or fifteen dollars! Who could quibble about the price either way? Price simply bears no relationship whatever to the purchase in such supposition. That is exactly what Christ was teaching in this parable. Whatever people do, however long or short their service to God, whatever of sacrifice, blood, or tears, however soon or late they began to serve him, the reward is so fantastically great that the conditions for obtaining it, whether more or less in certain cases, must forever appear utterly and completely insignificant. Nor is the shilling, or penny, a problem in this view. Christ had just elaborated the rewards at the end of the last chapter; and the shilling appears in the parable as the symbol of those rewards simply because that was the usual day's pay in that age. Even so, it is not inappropriate, because a day's wage is the support of life, not only in that age but in every age. Even a geographer knows the device of making a cipher stand for the world itself!