Luke 17:7-10 “Which one of you having a servant tending sheep or plowing will say to him when he comes in from the field, ‘Come at once and sit down to eat’? Instead, will he not tell him, ‘Prepare something for me to eat, get ready, and serve me while I eat and drink; later you can eat and drink?’ Does he thank the servant because he did what was commanded? In the same way, when you have done all that you were commanded, you should say, ‘We are unworthy servants, we’ve only done our duty.’”
Before we dig into this parable too far, understand who it is about. It is about us, not God. It is about the way that we relate to him. It is not intended to describe the way that he treats you or me.
Earlier in his ministry, Jesus painted a very different picture of the way the Lord treats his servants, practically the opposite: “Blessed will be those servants the master finds alert when he comes. Truly I tell you, he will get ready, have them recline at the table, then come and serve them” (Luke 12:37-38). That’s how Jesus lived his own ministry to us, isn’t it. “For even the Son of man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many,” he told the disciples (Mark 10:45). The night before he went to the cross he washed the disciples’ feet as though he were the lowest slave. Here he is teaching us to imitate that kind of humility, not suggesting the Lord will treat us with some kind of cruelty or disrespect.
And the picture Jesus paints is not unfamiliar to us, is it. You have played both roles. You have gone out to eat on a busy night, and the waiter or waitress was overwhelmed. But they came to take your order quickly, and your food came out on time, and the meal was decent. You paid and didn’t say a word because the wait staff did what they were supposed to do. But if they were slow to come to the table, and got the order wrong, maybe you make the extra effort to complain and give them a bad rating online. Sometimes we give praise when things go right, sometimes we don’t, because that’s what they’re supposed to do. But when the experience is bad, we speak up.
At your own job, you have often worked without much recognition. You showed up on time. You did the work you were assigned. You got the project done. Not much was said. It’s nice to get some acknowledgment, but you didn’t storm off and quit, because you were doing what you were supposed to do.
God has told us, “Here is how I want you to live. This is what you can do to serve me. You can give me the praise and worship I deserve. You can love and help the people around you. You can share the gospel with as many as you can. You can practice a little self-control and not indulge every urge you feel, as though you are some kind of animal. You can do this even though the people around you might not appreciate it very much. In fact, they might hate and ridicule you for it. Don’t be surprised. It’s the way they treated me, too, when I came and lived with you. And I died to save them.”
Let’s be honest. None of us does this the way God demands. Even if we did, God wouldn’t owe us anything special. “In the same way, when you have done all that you were commanded, you should say, ‘We are unworthy servants, we’ve only done our duty.’” We have every reason to serve with humility when we do what any decent Christian should do. We have no right to think he owes us something. God doesn’t deal with us on some kind of merit system. In his grace he does treat us better than we deserve, infinitely better, because he loves us and forgives us.
