40
UNPROFITABLE SERVANTS (1)But which of you, having a servant plowing or feeding cattle, will say unto him by and by, when he is come from the field, Go 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? Doth he thank that servant because he did the things that were commanded him? I trow [think] not. 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 17:7-10).
A servant works hard all day. He then comes in from the field. What does his master owe him for his day of service? Nothing yet. The servant's work day is not over. Now it is time for the servant to prepare the evening meal for the master, and serve it. Only then is he entitled to his own meal. Even then, he is not entitled to any special thanks. He has merely performed his duty.
Jesus made it clear that God owes men no special thanks for their labors on His behalf. The cosmic Master is owed everything that men bring to Him as tokens of their appreciation. Men have not done enough. Men cannot do enough. Everything that men do well for God is their minimum duty. And still, they owe more.
Man Begins in Debt From the beginning, every man is in God's debt. God has provided us with more than we deserve. He has given us life. We deserve death. "But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die" (Gen. 2:17). As the covenantal heirs of disinherited Adam, we are all dead men walking. "But we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags; and we all do fade as a leaf; and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away" (Isa. 64:6).
Man is put in his proper place by the gospel. Man is identified as being in need of grace, which has come only through Jesus Christ. Until covenant-breaking man knows what he is in the eyes of God, he cannot understand who he is. Man is an unprofitable servant. All men except one are net consumers of God's resources. They are unprofitable. There has been only one exception in history: Jesus Christ. He turned a profit. Through His pre-resurrection life and death, He transferred this profit back to God on behalf of mankind. God therefore extends to all men unearned blessings. This is God's common grace.(2) God extends eternal life to some people. This is God's special grace: "For therefore we both labour and suffer reproach, because we trust in the living God, who is the Saviour of all men, specially of those that believe" (I Tim. 4:10).
God should not be expected to serve man. Man is expected to serve God. The master should not have to wait for the servant to finish his meal before enjoying his. But God's special grace has reversed this expected social order. Men will see this great reversal on judgment day. "Blessed are those servants, whom the lord when he cometh shall find watching: verily I say unto you, that he shall gird himself, and make them to sit down to meat, and will come forth and serve them" (Luke 12:37).(3)
The master owns all of the assets that are used by the servant to produce an income. Without these assets, the servant would starve. The servant should be grateful to the master for having provided him with life-sustaining capital. He should know that he is in debt to the master.
The servant was hired or purchased by the master to perform daily tasks for the master. The fact that he completes these tasks is not a cause for public rejoicing by the master. This is not some great achievement on the part of the servant. How much less cause for the master's rejoicing would be the completion of only part of these tasks, e.g., field work without serving an evening meal.
Paul also used the analogy of the unprofitable servant. "As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one: There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God. They are all gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable; there is none that doeth good, no, not one" (Rom. 3:10-12). All men face condemnation: "For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God" (Rom. 3:23). No man is washed clean by the good works that he performs on God's behalf. Our half-completed works do not impress God. Where is the master's meal? What are we doing, sitting down to eat while the master goes hungry? Who do we think we are? More to the point, who do we think the master is? Just another slave who has also not completed his tasks and is equally under condemnation?
Had Adam not sinned, thereby undermining his dominion efforts, he would have been profitable to God. God had given Him life, weed-free land, authority over the animals, knowledge, and a wife to help him. God was also prepared to give him children, who would have extended the division of labor, making Adam's work more productive. The day that Adam rebelled was the day that God's rate of return on Adam moved into the loss column. Adam did not possess any resources independently; he could not make up the difference to God, even if he had autonomously chosen to do so.
What is the rational response to an asset that is producing losses? Sell it, if possible; or melt it down for scrap, if there is no secondary market. If necessary, throw it away. The longer that you use an asset that is producing losses, the more you will lose from your capital base. You cannot "make it up on volume" if it costs you three ounces of gold to bring in two ounces. The more the number of transactions, the larger your losses. Six thousand years of Adam's heirs, all of them performing at varying rates of loss, would not only not "make up the original loss"; such a continued operation of the "business" would compound the losses. This is why God told Adam that on the day of rebellion, he would surely die. The old investing rule must be honored: cut your losses, and let your profits run.
Did God fail to honor this rule? No; He honored it completely. Then why did He allow Adam and Adam's race to multiply His losses? Because God had a way of getting Adam and some of his heirs back into the "expected rate of return" category. He had a way to compensate Himself for the losses incurred as a result of Adam's poor performance. Once this payment was made, this would return His servants to the profit column.
The compensating balance was paid by Jesus Christ. Jesus was a profitable servant in God's estimation. "And lo a voice from heaven, saying, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased" (Matt. 3:17). Thus, through a substitution of Christ's death for the death of Adam and his heirs, God has allowed a transfer of capital to all of these heirs (I Tim. 4:10). All men are placed in positions of servitude; some of them become profitable.
How is this possible? Because God has erased the red ink of loss from the lives of the redeemed. He has cancelled their debts. "He hath not dealt with us after our sins; nor rewarded us according to our iniquities. For as the heaven is high above the earth, so great is his mercy toward them that fear him. As far as the east is from the west, so far hath he removed our transgressions from us. Like as a father pitieth his children, so the LORD pitieth them that fear him. For he knoweth our frame; he remembereth that we are dust" (Ps. 103:10-14). By removing their liabilities, Christ placed His people into the net profit column.
Are Covenant-Keepers Profitable Servants? Jesus was still criticizing the Pharisees. They believed that they were profitable servants who were still meeting their obligations to God. Jesus subsequently ridiculed this idea in the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector. "The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, God, I thank thee, that I am not as other men are, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this publican. I fast twice in the week, I give tithes of all that I possess. And the publican, standing afar off, would not lift up so much as his eyes unto heaven, but smote upon his breast, saying, God be merciful to me a sinner. I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other: for every one that exalteth himself shall be abased; and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted" (Luke 18:11-14). The Pharisees did not understand how deeply in arrears they were on their debt payments to God. They did not understand how much in need they were of a kinsman redeemer (Lev. 25:47-50) who would settle their account with God.
Jesus was not criticizing the performance of His own servants. He was telling His listeners that if they trusted in the spiritual capital delivered to them by their father Adam, they were nothing short of bankrupt. Nothing they could do would ever settle this account. They were too far in debt. On the other hand, they could get their personal accounts into a positive position if they operated in terms of the profit statement that would soon be delivered to them by the second Adam, Jesus Christ. They would no longer be in a fiscal hole financially if they would present Christ's profit statement to God. Their own efforts would become positive because their debts would be paid in full.
Without this gracious transfer of capital, men cannot earn enough to meet the interest payments on the debt they already owe. Their debts will get ever-larger, just as Satan's debt builds relentlessly. Satan has never bothered to pay off his debt. He suffers from no illusions regarding his permanent debt position. He knows that he will be declared bankrupt at the end of time. He will be thrown into debtor's prison (Matt. 18:34). "Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels" (Matt. 25:41). In contrast to Satan, most covenant-breaking men do have illusions of solvency. These good intentions of eventual repayment by rebellious men are hopeless but nonetheless real.
So, covenant-keepers are profitable servants today because they operate with an eternal profit and loss statement given by grace through their faith in Christ as their kinsman redeemer. Despite their losses from time to time, through their mismanagement of funds or unexpected reversals of fortune, covenant-keepers are not called on by God to make up these losses. Their losses will not be counted against them on judgment day. At worst, they will come before the judge with a "zero balance" in their accounts (I Cor. 3:15). They will not be in the debt column. Christ has paid their debts forever.
This should reduce our fear of failure. We need not bury our talents in the ground because we fear our Master, We can speculate -- not speculate wildly, but do our best to predict the future and invest in terms of our foresight. We can take risks and bear uncertainty in order to build a better world.(4) Meanwhile, covenant-breakers will be tempted to gamble their wealth on the turn of a card or the throw of the dice in games rigged against them statistically. This world is "rigged" in favor of God's law and those who, through God's empowering grace, operate in terms of His law. It is rigged against Satan and his followers, but they play on, as professional gamblers play on, knowing they will go bankrupt if they play the game long enough. Their end is clear, and so is ours. They do not know how far in the hole they will be when their time is up. We do not know how many talents we will have in our portfolio when our accounts are called by God, but we know this much: we will not be in the hole. Exercising dominion is not gambling, and gambling is not exercising dominion.
Satan's Portfolio God expects a positive rate of return on His investments. He expects the world subdued to His glory by His servants. This was His plan from the beginning. Satan's efforts involved economics: turning potentially profitable servants into loss-producing assets in God's portfolio. Satan realized that God was determined to see the earth subdued by mankind, and as a rebel, Satan sought to thwart the plans of his Enemy. Satan is an envy-driven destroyer, the one who sows tares in God's field, in an attempt to ruin the harvest (Matt. 13:24-30; 36-43). He seeks to reduce the value of God's portfolio to zero, if possible, or better yet, to a debt position. Satan would be delighted to haul God into bankruptcy court -- with Satan as the judge, jury, and enforcer.
But God is not in debt. He does not use borrowed money to "leverage" his efforts in order to produce a fast profit. Because of the death of His son, God will receive a positive rate of return on His total portfolio, Genesis 3:6 to Revelation 20:13.
Because of Adam's transfer of allegiance to Satan at the Fall, Satan has become the administrator of that portion of God's portfolio that is now producing losses. He is the ultimate unprofitable servant. His work force is made up of unprofitable servants. He possesses only borrowed assets, which he is allowed to invest during his period of borrowed time. Satan is the debtor who will be hauled by God into bankruptcy court on judgment day. He is the archetype of all indebted servants who cannot pay their masters when the accounts come due (Matt. 18:23-35).
Conclusion Men without God's special grace are unprofitable servants. They begin life in debt to God, and they can never catch up apart from God's special grace. God cancels the debts of His people by transferring payment from Christ's account. They can therefore produce a positive return in history, both individually and corporately. But without this debt cancellation, men are inescapably in a loss position before God. They remain unprofitable.
The covenant-keeper should examine his own efforts and be persuaded that he is unprofitable on his own account. This should remind him that he owes to Christ alone his legal status as a profitable servant.
Footnotes:
1. Much of this chapter appeared first in Gary North, "Unprofitable Servants," Biblical Economics Today, VI (Feb./March 1983).
2. Gary North, Dominion and Common Grace: The Biblical Basis of Progress (Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 1987).
3. Chapter 26, above.
4. On the difference between risk and uncertainty, see Frank H. Knight, Risk, Uncertainty and Profit (New York: Harper Torchbooks, [1921] 1965).
If you are interested in receiving Dr. North's FREE monthly e-mail newsletter send an e-mail to:
If this book helps you gain a new understanding of the Bible, please consider sending a small donation to the Institute for Christian Economics, P.O. Box 8000, Tyler, TX 75711. You may also want to buy a printed version of this book, if it is still in print. Contact ICE to find out.