'Doth He thank that servant because he did the things
that were commanded him! I trow not. 10. So likewise
ye, when ye shall have done all those things which are
commanded you, say, We are unprofitable servants: we
have done that which was our duty to do.'
--LUKE xvii. 9-10.
There are two difficulties about these words. One is their apparent
entire want of connection with what precedes--viz., the disciples'
prayer, 'Lord, increase our faith,' and the other is the harshness
and severity of tone which marks them, and the view of the less
attractive side of man's relation to God which is thrown into
prominence in them. He must be a very churlish master who never says
'Thank you,' however faithful his servant's obedience may be. And he
must be a very inconsiderate master, who has only another kind of
duty to lay upon the shoulders of the servant that has come in after
a long day's ploughing and feeding of cattle. Perhaps, however, the
one difficulty clears away the other, and if we keep firm hold of
the thought that the words of my text, and those which are
associated with them, are an answer to the prayer, 'Lord, increase
our faith,' the stern and somewhat repelling characteristics of the
words may somewhat change.
I. So I look, first, at the husk of apparent harshness and severity.
The relation between master and hired servant is not the one that is
in view, but the relation between a master and the slave who is his
property, who has no rights, who has no possessions, whose life and
death and everything connected with him are at the absolute disposal
of his master. It is a foul and wicked relation when existing
between men, and it has been full of cruelty and atrocities. But
Jesus Christ lays His hand upon it, and says, 'That is the relation
between men and God; that is the relation between men and Me.'
And what is involved therein? Absolute authority; so that the slave
is but, as it were, an animated instrument in the hand of the
master, with no will of his own, and no rights and no possessions.
That is not all of our relation to God, blessed be His Name! But
that is _in_ our relation to Him, and the highest title that a
man can have is the title which the Apostles in after days bound
upon their foreheads as a crown of honour--'A slave of Jesus
Christ.'
Then, if that relation is laid as being the basis of all our
connection with God, whatever else there may be also involved, these
two things which in the human relation are ugly and inconsiderate,
and argue a very churlish and selfish nature on the part of the
human master, belong essentially to our relation to God. 'Which of
you, having a servant, ploughing or feeding cattle, will say unto
him ... when he has come from the field, Go (immediately) and sit
down to meat, and will not rather say unto him, Make ready wherewith
I may sup, and gird thyself and serve me, till I have eaten and
drunken: and afterward thou shalt eat and drink?' You will get your
supper by-and-by, but you are here to work, says the master, and
when you have finished one task, that does not involve that you are
to rest; it involves only that you are to take up another. And
however wearisome has been the ploughing amongst the heavy clods all
day long, and tramping up and down the furrows, when you come in you
are to clean yourself up, and get my supper ready, 'and afterward
thou shalt eat and drink.'
As I have said, such a speech would argue a harsh human master, but is
there not a truth which is not harsh in it in reference to us and God?
Duty never ends. The eternal persistence through life of the obligation
to service is what is taught us here, as being inherent in the very
relation between the Lord and Owner of us all and us His slaves.
Moralists and irreligious teachers say grand things about the eternal
sweep of the great law of duty. The Christian thought is the higher
one, 'Thou hast beset me behind and before, and laid Thine hand upon
me,' and wherever I am I am under obligation to serve Thee, and no past
record of work absolves me from the work of the present. From the
cradle to the grave I walk beneath an all-encompassing, overarching
firmament of duty. As long as we draw breath we are bound to the
service of Him whose slaves we are, and whose service is perfect freedom.
Such is the bearing of this apparently repulsive representation of
our text, which is not so repulsive if you come to think about it.
It does not in the least set aside the natural craving for
recreation and relaxation and repose. It does not overlook God's
obligation to keep His slave alive, and in good condition for doing
His work, by bestowing upon him the things that are needful for him,
but it does meet that temptation which comes to us all to take that
rest which circumstances may make manifestly not God's will, and it
says to us, 'Forget the things that are behind, and reach forth unto
the things that are before.' You have done a long day's work with
plough or sheep-crook. The reward for work is more work. Come away
indoors now, and nearer the Master, prepare His table. 'Which of
you, having a servant, will not do so with him?' And that is how He
does with us.
Then, the next thought here, which, as I say, has a harsh exterior,
and a bitter rind, is that one of the slave doing his work, and
never getting so much as 'thank you' for it. But if you lift this
interpretation too, into the higher region of the relation between
God and His slaves down here, a great deal of the harshness drops
away. For what does it come to? Just to this, that no man among us,
by any amount or completeness of obedience to the will of God
establishes claims on God for a reward. You have done your duty--so
much the better for you, but is that any reason why you should be
decorated and honoured for doing it? You have done no more than your
duty. 'So, likewise, ye, when ye have done all things that are
commanded you'--even if that impossible condition were to be
realised--'say we are unprofitable servants'; not in the bad sense
in which the word is sometimes used, but in the accurate sense of
not having brought any profit or advantage, more than was His
before, to the Master whom we have thus served. It is a blessed
thing for a man to call _himself_ an unprofitable servant; it
is an awful thing for the Master to call him one. If _we_ say
'we are unprofitable servants,' we shall be likely to escape the
solemn words from the Lord's lips: 'Take ye away the unprofitable
servant, and cast him into outer darkness.' There are two that may
use the word, Christ the Judge, and man the judged, and if the man
will use it, Christ will not. 'If we judge ourselves we shall not be
judged.'
Now, although, as I have said about the other part of this text,
it is not meant to exhaust our relations to God, or to say the
all-comprehensive word about the relation of obedience to blessedness;
it is meant to say
'Merit lives from man to man,
And not from man, O Lord! to Thee.'
No one can reasonably build upon his own obedience, or his own work,
nor claim as by right, for reward, heaven or other good. So my text
is the anticipation of Paul's teaching about the impossibility of a
man's being saved by his works, and it cuts up by the root, not only
the teaching as to a treasure of 'merits of the saints,' and 'works
of supererogation,' and the like; but it tells us, too, that we must
beware of the germs of that self-complacent way of looking at
ourselves and our own obedience, as if they had anything at all to
do with our buying either the favour of God, or the rewards of the
faithful servant.
II. Now, all that I have been saying may sound very harsh. Let us
take a second step, and try if we can find out the kernel of grace
in the harsh husk.
I hold fast by the one clue that Jesus Christ is here replying to
the Apostle's prayer, 'Lord, increase our faith.' He had been laying
down some very hard regulations for their conduct, and, naturally,
when they felt how difficult it would be to come within a thousand
miles of what He had been bidding them, they turned to Him with that
prayer. It suggests that faith is there, in living operation, or
they would not have prayed to Him for its increase. And how does He
go about the work of increasing it? In two ways, one of which does
not enter into my present subject. First, by showing the disciples
the power of faith, in order to stimulate them to greater effort for
its possession. He promised that they might say to the fig tree, 'Be
thou plucked up and planted in the sea,' and it should obey them.
The second way was by this context of which I am speaking now. How
does it bear upon the Apostles' prayer? What is there in this
teaching about the slave and his master, and the slave's work, and
the incompatibility of the notion of reward with the slave's
service, to help to strengthen faith? There is this that this
teaching beats down every trace of self-confidence, and if we take
it in and live by it, makes us all feel that we stand before God,
whatever have been our deeds of service, with no claims arising
from any virtue or righteousness of our own. We come empty-handed.
If the servant who has done all that is commanded has yet to say, 'I
can ask nothing from Thee, because I have done it, for it was all in
the line of my duty,' what are we to say, who have done so little
that was commanded, and so much that was forbidden?
So, you see, the way to increased faith is not by any magical
communication from Christ, as the Apostles thought, but by taking
into our hearts, and making operative in our lives, the great truth
that in us there is nothing that can make a claim upon God, and that
we must cast ourselves, as deserving nothing, wholly into His
merciful hands, and find ourselves held up by His great unmerited
love. Get the bitter poison root of self-trust out of you, and then
there is some chance of getting the wholesome emotion of absolute
reliance on Him into you. Jesus Christ, if I might use a homely
metaphor, in these words pricks the bladder of self-confidence which
we are apt to use to keep our heads above water. And it is only when
it is pricked, and we, like the Apostle, feel ourselves beginning to
sink, that we fling out a hand to Him, and clutch at His
outstretched hand, and cry, 'Lord, save me, I perish!' One way to
increase our faith is to be rooted and grounded in the assurance
that duty is perennial, and that our own righteousness establishes
no claim whatever upon God.