Luke 17:10 - Coke's Commentary on the Holy Bible

Unprofitable servants:— 'Αχρειοι, mean, and inconsiderable, who cannot pretend to have merit in any thing. It deserves remarking, that our Saviour applies this,—not to the servants in the parable, but to his disciples,—to all men: for it cannot, I conceive, in strictness be said, that he is an unprofitable servant to his earthly master, who does all things whatsoever his master commands; but of men, as the servants of God, it may very justly be said. The Hebrew word שׁפל shepel, which the LXX render by the word αχρειος, 2 Samuel 6:22 seems truly to express the meaning of this place:—base, vile, inconsiderable, humble. "We are but unprofitable servants," says venerable Bede; "servants, because bought with a price, unprofitable because our service cannot profit the Lord, or because we are not worthy of the future glory: therefore this is the perfection of faith in men, if, all precepts being fulfilled to the utmost of their power, they acknowledge themselves imperfect." Dr. Waterland, in a sermon on the subject, explaining the phrase, observes, that, upon the whole, when any, even the best of fallen men, profess themselves to be unprofitable servants of God, they may reasonably be supposed to mean, that they are creatures who can make no beneficial returns, no proper requitals, to their Creator; that they are mortal creatures, who neither can nor will do any thing without the aids of divine grace: and further, that they are also sinners, who, instead of meriting a reward, or claiming it as a debt, cannot so much as claim from any right in themselves impunity in God's sight, but must be content to sue to him, in the humble petitionary form, for reward, for grace, and even or impunity; referring all to God's mercy and goodness, and that also purchased for them by the alone merits of Jesus Christ.