CRITICAL NOTES
Luke 17:7. A servant.—I.e., a slave. Feeding cattle.—Rather, “keeping sheep” (R.V.). By and by.—I.e., straightway, immediately. The phrase is to be connected with the words spoken by the master, “Come straightway and sit down to meat.” There is no harshness in the orders given.
Luke 17:8. Till I have eaten, etc.—In Luke 12:37 a different assurance seems to be given. But Christ is here speaking of what we have a right to expect; there He describes the favour He will bestow on faithful servants.
Luke 17:9. Doth he thank.—I.e., does he feel special gratitude because his orders are obeyed? Certainly not,—even if he is in the custom of thanking his servant for acts of obedience, the fact remains, upon which the parable is based, that he feels under no special obligation to him for assiduous labours. I trow not.—These words are omitted in R.V., and are not really needed to complete the passage, since they are implied in the question “Doth he thank?” etc. There is, however, an air of genuineness about them.
Luke 17:10. Unprofitable.—I.e., not useless, but as doing nothing beyond bare duty. It is implied that we are often much more “unprofitable” by reason of our so often failing in duty. “Wretched is he whom the Lord calls an unprofitable servant (Matthew 25:30); blessed is he who calls himself so” (Bengel).
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.— Luke 17:7-10
The Dutiful Servant.—This parable is comparatively unfamiliar to most readers of the New Testament, and that probably for two reasons. It has no setting, no significant and illustrative framework of circumstance, and it has a sterner, a severer, tone than we commonly hear in the parables of our Lord. The view of human life and duty which it presents is not a welcome one. We are compared to a slave—to a slave who has been hard at work all day in his master’s fields, first driving the plough and then tending the cattle. When he returns to the house at sundown, new duties, new toils, await him. Instead of being permitted to rest, or invited to recruit himself after the fatigues of the day, he has to prepare his master’s supper, to gird himself and wait on him. Even when he has discharged these new duties, he gets no thanks for his pains. He has but done his duty. He is only an unprofitable servant. At first the parable seems hard and ungracious, but the more carefully we consider it, the more true to the actual facts of human life do we find it, and the more sorry, therefore, we should be to miss this saying of Christ’s. Has not nature itself its sterner, as well as its more gentle and benignant, aspects—its severity as well as its beneficence, its storms as well as its calms? And human life—is that always smooth and easy? Is it invariably and unbrokenly gracious? Is it a sacred and welcome possession always, and to all men? Are there not myriads to whom it appears a mere succession of ill-rewarded toils, a mere dull round of labour, cheered by no thanks, by no approval, by no applause? And if the Great Teacher were to depict human life fairly, if He was to be a fair and full representative of the God whom we find in nature and in human nature, was it not inevitable that He should portray all the facts and aspects of our life—inevitable, therefore, that He should utter some such words as these? Nay, more; is it not well for us that at times we should dwell on these severer, as well as on the more tender and benignant, aspects of human life and duty? If we are men, and not babes in Christ, the word duty will hardly be less dear to us than the word love. If we are brave we shall hold the title “dutiful servant” to be hardly less honourable than that of “loving and obedient child”—we shall rejoice that the path to heaven is steep and hard to climb, since only by a severe and bracing discipline can we rise to our full stature, and come to our full strength. We need to be roused and stirred by the clarion call of duty, as well as soothed and comforted by the tender breathings of love. And here the call comes to us loud and clear, waxing ever louder as we listen and reflect. “Do your duty, and when you have done it, however laborious and painful it may be, remember that you have only done your duty. If you are tempted to a dainty and effeminate self-pity for the hardships you have borne, or to a dangerous and degrading self-admiration for the achievements you have wrought, let this be your safeguard, that you have done no more than your duty.” The very moment we grow complacent over our work, our work spoils in our hands. Our energies relax. We begin to think of ourselves instead of our work, of the wonders we have achieved instead of the toils which yet lie before us, and of how we may best discharge them. So soon as we begin to complain of our lot and task, to murmur as though our burden were too heavy, or as though we were called to bear it in our own strength, we unfit ourselves for it; our nerves and courage give way; our task looks even more formidable than it is, and we become incapable even of the little which, but for our repugnance and fears, we should be quite competent to do. And then, how bracing is the sense of duty discharged, if only we may indulge in it. And we may indulge in it. Does not Christ Himself teach us to say, “We have done that which it was our duty to do”? He does not account of our duty as we sometimes account of it. All that He demands of us is, that, with such capacities and opportunities as we have, we shall do our best, or at lowest try to do it. Honesty of intention, purity and sincerity of motive, the diligence and cheerfulness with which we address ourselves to His service, count for more with Him than the mere amount of work we get through. He would have us account, as He Himself accounts, that we have done our duty when we have sincerely and earnestly endeavoured to do it. The thin and hard theology which denies all merit to man, is alien to the spirit of Christ. True, He bids us to add to the statement “we have done our duty,” the confession “we are unprofitable servants.” And no doubt the humility of that sentence is as wholesome for us as the grateful and sustaining pride of the other. For what man of a really manly and generous spirit does not feel, even when he has done his best, that he might have done more? And even when he has done his most, as well as his best, what man of a really Christian spirit does not both lament that he could not do more, and gratefully acknowledge that he could not have done so much—that he could have done nothing good—but for the grace and help of God? What does he feel but that nothing is done till all be done? Finally, let us remember that the whole truth cannot be packed into a single sentence, or even into a single parable. Our Lord sometimes enforces one aspect of it, and sometimes another. It does not follow because we very justly call ourselves “unprofitable servants”—i.e., unworthy or unnecessary servants, of whom God stands in no need, and who can do but little for Him—that He will call us unprofitable. On the contrary, if we do that which it was our duty to do, if we but sincerely try to do it, we know that He will call us “good and faithful servants.” And in this very parable it is to be observed that Christ is simply saying how men do act, not how they ought to act; what they do demand of their servants, not what they ought to demand. Even if we suppose the man in the parable, who taxes his servant to the utmost, and takes all he does without thanks, to be a good master, it by no means follows that God will not prove better and kinder than the best of men. He may do, He certainly will do, far more than they do, far more even than they ought to do. The true supplement to this parable of the Dutiful Servant is to be found in the parable of the Kind Master (chap. Luke 12:35-37).—Cox.
SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS ON Luke 17:7-10
Luke 17:7-10. The Parable of Extra Service.—The watchword of Christian ethics is not devoteeism, but devotion; the kingdom first, everything else second, and, when the interest of the holy state demands it, military promptitude in leaving all and repairing to the standard. This idea is essentially the key to the meaning of this difficult parable, which we may call “the parable of extra service.”
I. The service of the kingdom is very exacting.—Involving not only hard toil in the field during the day, but extra duties in the evening, when the tired labourer would gladly rest, having no fixed hours of labour, eight, ten, or twelve, but claiming the right to summon to work at any hour of all the twenty-four, as in the case of soldiers in time of war, or of farm labourers in time of harvest. And the extra service, or overtime duty, is not monkish asceticism, but extraordinary demands in unusual emergencies—calling men, weary from age or from over-exertion, to still further efforts and sacrifices.
II. So the right-minded servant will perform these added tasks without a murmur.—And without a thought that anything great or specially meritorious has been done by him. The temper equal to this is manifestly not that either of the slave, who works as a drudge under compulsion, or of the Pharisee, who sets a high value on his performance. It is the temper of devotion mellowed by the grace of humility.—Bruce.
Humility and Endurance.—The connexion is, “Ye are servants of your Master, and therefore endurance is required of you—faith and trust to endure out your day’s work before you enter into your rest. Your Master will enter into His, but your time has not yet come; and all the service which you can meanwhile do Him is but that which it is your bounden duty to do, seeing that your body, soul, and spirit, are His. The lessons are here taught:
(1) of humility, and
(2) of patient endurance in the service of Christ. There is no denial of the fact that privileges will be bestowed on dutiful servants, but it is distinctly taught that nothing can be expected on the ground of merit.
“Plowing, or feeding cattle.”—The labour of the day is followed by work within the house when the servant returns home. He is his master’s property, and there are no limits to the service he may be called to return but those which his master may choose to set. In like manner the Christian has no power or right to set any limit to the service which is due from him to God,—to mark off any department of his life, or any portion of his time, as belonging solely to himself, within which he may act simply in accordance with his own tastes and wishes.
Luke 17:8. “Afterward.”—Rest and refreshment are not denied, but they follow labour, and are all the sweeter from the sense of having faithfully performed every duty.
Luke 17:9. “Doth he thank?”—He may use the words of courteous acknowledgment of service, but he is not conscious of any extraordinary recompense being merited. And so no human being can accumulate merit in the sight of God and impose upon Him the obligation of rewarding it. But we must remember that higher than the sphere of right is the sphere of love, and that service rendered in a joyous and filial spirit has value before God.
The parable rebukes those who choose the position of servants instead of accepting that of sons—in other words, those who obey God for the sake of reward instead of from a spirit of filial love.
Luke 17:10. “Unprofitable servants.”
I. God has given all, owns all, has a right to all.
II. He ordinarily makes our work easy.
III. There is no such thing as a surplus of merit in man.—Even though a man should perform all his duty, he is destitute of merit before God.—Arnot.
Our Failings render us Much More Unprofitable.—The argument is an à fortiori one: “How much more when ye have failed in so many respects.”—Bengel.
“Unprofitable.”—The word does not here mean “useless.” Had the servant done more than his duty, some merit on that account might have been claimed by him; but when he has merely done his duty, he can make no such claim. He is free of blame, but has nothing to boast of.
Eternal Life a Gift.—In Romans 6:23, we have the true ground on which we look for eternal life set before us—viz., as the gift of God whose servants we are—not the wages, as in the case of sin, whose we are not.—Alford.