New Testament 256

Rembrandt, Laborers in Vineyard — Rembrandt, “Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard” (1637)
(Click on the image to enlarge it.)

Compare Matthew 19:30; Mark 10:31; Luke 13:30

It’s common to dismiss or mock deathbed conversions.

I certainly understand why this should be so. Such “conversions” must, I assume, commonly be rather cynical, insincere, self-interested, and ultimately vain attempts at fooling the Supreme Being. The time for sinning having run out, and eternity staring the sinner starkly in the face, the dying miscreant attempts to get into the divine good favor at the last possible moment, having missed no occasion for wrongdoing but, now, seeing no really promising alternative.

I get it.

But, it seems to me, a sincere conversion — whatever its timing — would still be a sincere conversion, and as worthwhile and meritorious on a deathbed as anywhere else.

Authenticity is everything in this matter.

Likewise, the person who becomes a faithful disciple late in life, even very late in life, will receive the same rewards as somebody who was a disciple from an early age. And those who serve faithfully but die in their early twenties will suffer no disadvantage in the eternities compared to those who serve faithfully into their tenth decade.

God isn’t merely just. He’s merciful.

For which we can and should all be very grateful.

“Use every man after his desert,” says Shakespeare’s Hamlet, “and who should ’scape whipping?” (Hamlet, II.ii.)

Or, in modern English, “ If you pay everyone what he deserves, would anyone ever escape a whipping?”