We Are Unworthy Servants

I want to talk about a very well-known parable, the parable of the unprofitable servants. According to the parable I want to explore, we are all unprofitable servants. But there is also a clarification: although we are unprofitable servants, God treats us as cherished friends, special friends, and that is what our meditation will be about.

Let me first read this parable. It is found in the Gospel of Luke, chapter 17, verses 7 through 10, and it goes like this: “Which of you, having a servant who plows or tends livestock, says to him when he returns from the field, ‘Come at once and sit down at the table’? Does he not rather say to him, ‘Prepare my supper, gird yourself and serve me until I have eaten and drunk, and after that, you may eat and drink’? Does he thank the servant because he did what he was commanded? I think not.”

“Likewise you”—this is the conclusion of the parable—“likewise you, when you have done all that you were commanded, say: ‘We are unprofitable servants, for we have done what we ought to have done.’” What an interesting parable.

This parable, as we were saying, speaks to us about the absolute lordship of God, the fact that God has complete sovereignty over our lives. It also speaks to us about what the believer’s attitude should be before the absolute lordship of God: our attitude should be one of total surrender and submission to the will of God. This should characterize our lives.

Jesus uses a parable in this passage, but he also uses what is known in the art of rhetoric—that is, the art of speaking well—as hyperbole. Hyperbole is an exaggeration of something; it is an illustration or an image that exaggerates a truth the teacher or speaker wants to convey to the audience. By exaggerating it and magnifying it beyond what is natural, the speaker makes it more evident, more obvious, more understandable. It is like when someone says, for example, “I’m starving to death.” The person is not literally dying of hunger, but is using an expression that dramatizes and makes very clear the idea that this person is very hungry, right? That is the idea of hyperbole.

And in this parable we have elements of exaggeration to illustrate a very profound spiritual principle. I am reading from some notes I have here because I want to be very systematic in the teaching I want to develop for you. In fact, this parable of the unprofitable servant is very much like the parable of the widow and the unjust judge. You will remember this parable of the Lord about a widow who needs justice in a legal situation she is facing.

And this woman comes before a judge who is indifferent, unjust and negligent. She comes before the judge, and the judge cannot be bothered to attend to her and simply dismisses her. And this woman persistently comes before the judge time and again, demanding that he give her justice.

And the Lord’s parable says that, at a certain point, the judge, now exasperated by this woman’s persistence—her continually coming before him so that he will give her justice—decides, in order to get her out of his way and be rid of her, finally to grant her request and give her justice, so that she will stop exasperating and bothering him.

And the Lord Jesus Christ says: Well, if this unjust man gave justice to this woman who came persistently, how much more will your heavenly Father attend to your petitions, since He is just, right?

So the injustice of that judge, portrayed insistently and in exaggerated fashion, serves, by contrast, to illustrate the Father’s willingness to attend to the prayers of His children. When we come before God and bring our petitions again and again, the Bible says that the Lord will attend to them.

And, by the way, this is a very important teaching here, right? When we pray, we have to do so continually before the Lord; we have to bring our petitions to the Father again and again. Ultimately, we do not know why it is sometimes necessary to bring a petition before the Lord persistently, but the Word of the Lord tells us that we have to knock, seek, be diligent and bring our petitions before God continually until we receive an answer. But that is a separate point. The point is that the Lord often uses exaggerated images in His parables to help us understand something.

And in this parable of the unprofitable servant we have this image of a lord, a master, who treats his servant harshly and demandingly. But that attitude of the master is designed by the Lord Jesus Christ to illustrate, rather, the attitude of the Heavenly Father, which in one sense differs from that of the master depicted here. This man treats a servant who deserves nothing with exaggerated harshness, as though the servant were a complete nobody in terms of his significance as a human being.

There is also something this can teach us about the fact that, before the presence of God, before His greatness, before His might, before all that we owe Him, we are really nothing, although God treats us and sees us differently; in God’s eyes we do matter greatly. But the parable seeks to establish a reality here, right? Ultimately, when we see what we truly are compared with the greatness and lordship of God, we really should not think we are such a big deal, or demand anything of God, or expect anything from Him, because He is everything and He has all power.

And that attitude of humility, of recognizing our true condition, is very important in the Christian life. In that attitude lies the greatest thing we can have for our Christian life and for our life of prayer before the Lord: total humility, total recognition of what we are before the greatness of God. Very important. And in our next message we will continue developing this idea. I hope you will stay in touch with us, because it will be a great blessing in your lives. God bless you, and until our next meditation.