So when Jesus referred to treasure he meant our eternities with God? Interesting.
A good way to get an answer is to study the parable of the vineyard.
Matthew 18:15“If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone. If he listens toyou, you have gained your brother.
Matthew 21:
33“Listen to another parable. There was a landowner who PLANTED A VINEYARD AND PUT A WALL AROUND IT AND DUG A WINE PRESS IN IT, AND BUILT A TOWER, and rented it out to vine-growers and went on a journey.
34“When the harvest time approached, he sent his slaves to the vine-growers to receive his produce.
35“The vine-growers took his slaves and beat one, and killed another, and stoned a third.
36“Again he sent another group of slaves larger than the first; and they did the same thing to them.
37“But afterward he sent his son to them, saying, ‘They will respect my son.’
38“But when the vine-growers saw the son, they said among themselves, ‘This is the heir; come, let us kill him and seize his inheritance.’
39“They took him, and threw him out of the vineyard and killed him.
40“Therefore when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those vine-growers?”
41They said to Him, “He will bring those wretches to a wretched end, and will rent out the vineyard to other vine-growers who will pay him the proceeds at the proper seasons.”
42Jesus said to them, “Did you never read in the Scriptures,
‘THE STONE WHICH THE BUILDERS REJECTED,
THIS BECAME THE CHIEF CORNER stone;
THIS CAME ABOUT FROM THE LORD,
AND IT IS MARVELOUS IN OUR EYES’?
43“Therefore I say to you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people, producing the fruit of it.
44“And he who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces; but on whomever it falls, it will scatter him like dust.”
45When the chief priests and the Pharisees heard His parables, they understood that He was speaking about them.
46When they sought to seize Him, they feared the people, because they considered Him to be a prophet.
In the parable of the landowner, the latter expected to get a harvest. The vineyard is the Sinaitic Covenant, the tenants were Israelites and the way it worked was like this: the tenants would observe the law, God would bless Israel, the surrounding nations would see the miraculous blessings coming from living unselfish lives, and they would turn to follow God.
However, Israel never observed the important parts of the law, loved money, lived selfishly, and proselytised, and gained followers for Judaism, which only followed halakhah*, the minor points of the law, and made disciples who were bigger sons of satan then they themselves, and together they made God’s House into a den of thieves. God sent prophets to receive His harvest, but they were all attacked, and denied the fruit God had sent them to collect.
When God sent His Son, He was also attacked and killed. So God cut off Israel by abolishing the Sinaitic Covenant and gave His blessing to those who had been loyal to His Son, by making a Sonship Covenant with them. Those who were loyal to His Son would be adopted as His co-heirs, and the fruit that God received would also be the fruit they received.
Now we can see the difference between the wages that Israel received as hired hands was avoiding God’s wrath and prospering in their own Land, material blessings for being followers of God, by observing both minor and important parts of the law, as all the prophets until even John the Baptist taught, whilst the gifts that those in Christ received were souls, crowns, brothers who had become followers of God after seeing the great works that God did through His followers after they received the Holy Spirit.
Hired hands received only earthly blessings, whilst co-heirs receive a share in Christ. Family is different from employee.
Luke 19:
11While they were listening to these things, Jesus went on to tell a parable, because He was near Jerusalem, and they supposed that the kingdom of God was going to appear immediately.
12So He said, “A nobleman went to a distant country to receive a kingdom for himself, and then return.
13“And he called ten of his slaves, and gave them ten minas and said to them, ‘Do business with this until I come back.’
14“But his citizens hated him and sent a delegation after him, saying, ‘We do not want this man to reign over us.’
15“When he returned, after receiving the kingdom, he ordered that these slaves, to whom he had given the money, be called to him so that he might know what business they had done.
16“The first appeared, saying, ‘Master, your mina has made ten minas more.’
17“And he said to him, ‘Well done, good slave, because you have been faithful in a very little thing, you are to be in authority over ten cities.’
18“The second came, saying, ‘Your mina, master, has made five minas.’
19“And he said to him also, ‘And you are to be over five cities.’
20“Another came, saying, ‘Master, here is your mina, which I kept put away in a handkerchief;
21for I was afraid of you, because you are an exacting man; you take up what you did not lay down and reap what you did not sow.’
22“He said to him, ‘By your own words I will judge you, you worthless slave. Did you know that I am an exacting man, taking up what I did not lay down and reaping what I did not sow?
23‘Then why did you not put my money in the bank, and having come, I would have collected it with interest?’
24“Then he said to the bystanders, ‘Take the mina away from him and give it to the one who has the ten minas.’
25“And they said to him, ‘Master, he has ten minas already.’
26“I tell you that to everyone who has, more shall be given, but from the one who does not have, even what he does have shall be taken away.
27“But these enemies of mine, who did not want me to reign over them, bring them here and slay them in my presence.”
*
4QMMT and Paul: Justification, ‘Works,’ and Eschatology
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Of course, in the case of one who had not practiced these ‘works’ before, starting to do so might be a sign of the beginning of one’s membership. But the language of C31 is not about entry into the community, but about being demonstrated to be within it. In the terminology made famous by E. P. Sanders, the works of Torah here are about ‘staying in’, not ‘getting in’; they are not designed as ways of entering the covenant, but as ways of being confirmed as members of it. ‘Works of the law’ function here, in other words, within the broader covenantal and eschatological scheme which has been set out, They cannot be abstracted from it either into a more generalized system of timeless halakhah or into a wider ‘legalism’ to which Paul’s doctrine of justification, in its traditional Reformation sense, could then be opposed. The halakhic precepts included in MMT are by no means exhaustive. They are, it seems, intended to clear up disputed points within a much larger assumed scheme. The writer did not suppose that anyone who kept only the somewhat recondite precepts listed here, and ignored the rest of Torah, would be counted a true Jew. These are indeed ‘some’ of the precepts of Torah, implying a much longer and fuller potential list.33 Why these ones were to be highlighted is a matter of continuing historical speculation concerning [118] the identity and context of the author and the recipients. What is clear is that they were regarded as the key differentia of the sect.34 The ‘works’ commended in MMT, then, are designed to mark out God’s true people in the present time, the time when the final fulfillment of Deuteronomy has begun but is not yet concluded. They are designed (C30) ‘so that you may rejoice at the end of time, finding these words of ours to be true’. These extra-biblical commands will thus enable the sect to anticipate the verdict of the last day, when it will be clearly revealed that those who follow this particular halakhah are indeed the true, renewed people of God. (3) This brings us to the key comparison between MMT and Paul. Paul, arguably, held a version of the same covenantal and eschatological scheme of thought as MMT; but, in his scheme, the place taken by ‘works of Torah’ in MMT was taken by ‘faith’. Paul, like MMT, believed (a) in a coming ‘last day’ when all would be revealed, and (b) that the verdict of that last day could be anticipated in the present when someone displayed the appropriate marks of covenant membership. For him, though, the appropriate marks were not ‘works’, either of the biblical Torah or of post-biblical halakhah, but faith: more specifically, faith in the God who raised Jesus from the dead
