The Parable of the Two Sons: On the Scandal of Changed Minds

There is something gloriously uncomfortable about the parable of the two sons that ought to make every respectable church-goer squirm just a bit in the pew. Christ, with His characteristic habit of making simple stories terribly complicated and complicated doctrines wonderfully simple, tells of a father who asks his two sons to work in the vineyard. The first son refuses outright a flat "No, I will not" but later changes his mind and does the work anyway. The second son replies with all the proper words "Yes, sir, I will go" and then promptly does nothing at all. The question Christ poses is straightforward enough: which son did the will of his father? But the answer, like most answers Christ provides, turns out to be rather more revolutionary than we might wish.

The modern world, which prides itself on consistency and despises what it calls hypocrisy, would much prefer a third son one who says yes and means it, who promises and performs, whose words and deeds align with clockwork precision. But Christ offers us no such comfortable option. He gives us only these two flawed specimens of humanity: the honest rebel and the lying conformist. And then, in what must have seemed to His hearers like sheer perversity, He declares that the honest rebel has done better. This is the sort of judgment that makes Pharisees nervous and sinners hopeful, which is precisely why Christ kept making it.

Consider first the son who said "No." There is something almost refreshing about his bluntness, his refusal to dress up his rebellion in polite language. He does not say, "I'll think about it," or "Perhaps later," or any of those thousand evasions we use to avoid admitting our unwillingness. He simply refuses. It is as honest as a slammed door, as clear as a shout. The modern Christian, trained in the art of spiritual politeness, might find this shocking. Yet there is a kind of integrity in his refusal that will prove, paradoxically, to be the soil in which obedience can grow.

For what happens next is crucial: he changes his mind. The Greek word here is metamelomai, which carries the sense of regret, of a fundamental shift in thinking. This is not the mere fickleness of a changeable disposition but something deeper a genuine reversal of will. He said no, but his no became yes. His refusal became obedience. His rebellion transformed into service. And all of this happened, we must note, without any change in his outward reputation. Those who heard his initial refusal might never have known about his eventual obedience. He did not post about it on social media (had it existed in first-century Judea) or seek recognition for his changed mind. He simply went and worked.

Here we stumble upon the first paradox of this parable, which is that obedience is not the same as compliance. The second son was perfectly compliant he said all the right words, gave all the proper responses, made all the expected noises. But he was not obedient, for obedience is not finally about words at all. It is about the movement of the will toward the will of another. It is about the actual working in the actual vineyard, not the verbal agreement to work there someday. Compliance is cheap; obedience costs everything.

The second son is, in many ways, more dangerous than the first precisely because he is more respectable. He has mastered the art of religious language. He knows how to sound dutiful. He can say "Yes, sir" with just the right tone of filial respect. If there were a prize for sounding like a good son, he would win it handily. But the vineyard remains unworked, and all his fine words amount to nothing more than a pleasant-sounding lie. This is the sort of thing that Christ reserves His harshest criticisms for not the obvious rebels but the respectable liars, not the transparent sinners but the whitewashed tombs.

And here we must pause to consider a rather uncomfortable truth: most of us, if we are honest, have been both sons at different times. We have all refused God outright in moments of clarity about our own selfishness. But we have also and perhaps more often said yes with our lips while our hearts and our hands remained committed to entirely different projects. We have mastered the vocabulary of faith while avoiding its actual demands. We know how to sound committed without actually changing our schedules, our budgets, our priorities, our lives.

The parable becomes even more pointed when we remember its original context. Christ tells this story to the chief priests and elders the religious authorities, the respectable guardians of orthodoxy. And He makes it perfectly clear who He means by each son. The tax collectors and prostitutes, He says those obvious rebels who said "No" to God's law are entering the kingdom ahead of the religious leaders. Not because their initial rebellion was good, but because they heard John the Baptist and believed. They changed their minds. They repented. They went and worked in the vineyard.

This is the scandal that sits at the heart of Christianity, the thing that makes it perpetually offensive to the respectable: changed minds matter more than consistent opinions, genuine repentance matters more than flawless history, and actual obedience even belated obedience matters more than prompt promises. The kingdom of God is populated not by those who never sinned but by those who, having sinned, changed their minds about it. Not by those who said the right words but by those who, eventually, did the right things.

But we must be careful here not to romanticize the first son's initial refusal. Christ is not praising disobedience; He is praising the transformation that follows it. The point is not that saying "No" to God is somehow better than saying "Yes." The point is that a "No" that becomes a "Yes" through genuine repentance is better than a "Yes" that remains forever hollow and unchanged. The first son's virtue lies not in his refusal but in his regret, not in his initial rebellion but in his eventual repentance.

And this brings us to the deepest paradox of all, which is that Christianity has always been a religion for people who have changed their minds. Peter denied Christ three times and became the rock upon which the Church was built. Paul persecuted Christians and became the apostle to the Gentiles. Augustine lived in sin and became the greatest theologian of the Western Church. The gospel is, from beginning to end, a story about people who said "No" to God and then, by grace, found themselves saying "Yes" instead.

The modern world, with its obsession with authenticity and consistency, cannot quite comprehend this. We want people to be one thing or another, to stick to their positions, to remain true to their original commitments. We call changing one's mind "flip-flopping" and treat it as a character flaw rather than a sign of growth. We prefer the second son's false consistency to the first son's honest transformation. But Christ keeps insisting on the opposite valuation. He keeps suggesting that changing our minds is not a weakness but a necessity, not a failure but the very thing we must do to enter His kingdom.

For in the end, the question is not whether we have always been obedient. We haven't. It is not whether we have always said the right things. We haven't. The question is simply this: Will we change our minds? Will we repent? Will we go, even now, even after our refusal, and work in the vineyard? Will we allow our "No" to become "Yes" through the miracle of divine grace working in stubborn human wills?

The father in the parable asks for work, not words. He wants sons who labor, not sons who merely promise. And the great hope of this story the thing that ought to make us all breathe easier is that it is never too late to change our minds. The vineyard remains open. The work continues. And the Father stands ready to receive not those who have always been perfect but those who, having been imperfect, have somehow found the grace to begin again.

This is the scandal and the glory of the gospel in miniature: that God prefers honest rebels who repent to dishonest conformists who never do. That He would rather have our belated obedience than our prompt promises. That He cares less about the words we say than the work we eventually do. And that, wonder of wonders, He keeps calling us to the vineyard even after we have said "No," even after we have wasted time, even after we have been the second son far more often than the first.

The parable ends with a question, as so many of Christ's stories do. Which son did the will of his father? But beneath that question lies another, more personal one: Which son will we be today? Will we be the son who says yes and does nothing, comfortable in our religious vocabulary and unchanged in our lives? Or will we be the son who, having said no, finds the grace to change his mind and go to work? The choice, as always, is ours. The vineyard, as always, awaits.

-The Seeker's Quill