The Unprofitable Servants
Read the parable
- Luke 17:7-10 Primary account
Context
The apostles had just asked, "Increase our faith", and Jesus had answered that faith like a grain of mustard seed uproots trees. He then asked which of them, having a servant plowing or keeping sheep, would tell him on coming in from the field, "Go and sit down to meat". A smallholder's single servant worked the field by day and then prepared and served the master's supper before eating his own — ordinary, uncontroversial arrangements in that world, which Jesus uses without endorsing them as social ideal.
Meaning
The parable punctures any notion that obedience puts God in our debt. When the servant has done everything commanded, he has only done his duty; God owes no wages for service that was already owed. "So likewise ye, when ye shall have done all those things which are commanded you, say, We are unprofitable servants". The saying guards the heart of grace: God's favor is never earned by performance, and true service is rendered in humility rather than for leverage — even as other parables (like the watchful servants) show God, in sheer grace, delighting to honor his servants anyway.
Go deeper
Two free lessons walk through the parables as a whole: The Parables of Jesus and Interpreting the Parables.