“The possessions of the negligent belong of right to those who will endure toil and danger.” (Demosthenes)

Increase is the fruit of labor, and labor is the fruit of loyalty, and loyalty is the fruit of belief in the kindness of God.

Whoever works will have increase, for work, though it involves risk, by nature eventually produces increase. The faithful servant is not he who has the best fortune in his investments, but who has faithfully worked at them. And in the long run, the investments will always fair the best which have been labored over the most.

If one loves and trusts God, one will labor for him. He will loyally employ the treasures and powers he has been entrusted, for to love is to show love by action. Consider three men: the overseer who is set in charge of a town, the son who is put in charge of a flock, and the tenant who is given a house and grounds. Each is loyal and faithful if he does what is needful—to keep order in the town and see to its maintenance and development, to keep the flocks and let them calf, to maintain the house and grounds. If each lets what is under his charge just “be”, and the master comes to find the town full of unrest, having a negligent overseer, or the flock picked by wolves and diminished, having a negligent shepherd, or the house rotting and overgrown, having a negligent landlord, then who will the lazy servant fool when he makes obeisance? Even if the town is quiet, and the flock of the same number of sheep, and the house unweathered, the servant will be guilty of neglecting the natural potential with which he was entrusted. “What have you done these many years?” the master will ask, and the servant will have no answer but that he pandered about in his own whiles, acting as if he had not been entrusted with anything of value, and that his master’s business was none of his. It is the natural lot of man to labor, to draw the kinetic out of the potential. The man knew, as he betrays by his burbling excuses, that to neglect the potential, to merely sit, was disloyal. Rightly will the master say, “You should have at least put the money in the bank,” or “You should have at least appointed someone else the deputy” so that through natural maintenance, natural increase could have afforded. He has wasted his master’s resources by not caring for them, and by doing so has spoken beyond all his excuses that he does not care for his master either.

What caused this seed of disloyalty and defiant negligence? It had something to do with how the wicked servant saw his master. This is evident from what he says when the master returns: “Master, I knew you to be a hard man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you scattered no seed, and I was afraid and hid your money in the ground.” What does he mean? Jamieson, Fausett, and Brown write, “’The sense is obvious: ‘I knew thou wast one whom it was impossible to serve, one whom nothing would please: exacting what was impracticable, and dissatisfied with what was attainable.’” Gill says that the servant sees his master as “either a covetous man, that is desirous of that which does not belong to him; or an hard master that requires work to be done, and gives neither tools nor matter to work with; like the Egyptian task masters, who demanded the full tale of bricks, but gave no straw.” Benson paraphrases, “And I was afraid — To risk thy money in trade, lest by some accident or other it should be lost, or miscarry under my management, and thou shouldst show me no mercy. Or rather, Lest, if I had improved my talent, I should have had more to answer for.” He is afraid of failure since he sees the master as harsh, and he is resentful of success since he sees his master as selfish and exacting, likely to unfairly repossess any fruits of his labor. As Ellicott says, this belief about his master poisons his ability to faithfully serve him. “[The servant] had never seen in his master either generous love or justice in rewarding,” but saw him as “arbitrary, vindictive, pitiless…and that thought, as it kills love, so it paralyses the energy which depends on love.”

Jesus tells his story on the premise that faith without works is dead; loyalty without investment is not. This is not an ultimatum, a threat, or a command to go work for God; it is simply a fact of life, which we all know if we search our hearts. It is hard not to get caught up in the “faith, or works?” debate, but we all know deep down that they are a unified whole. It is tempting to read this story, or contemplate this fact, and jump to the thought, “I had better go hustle or I’ll be like the wicked servant.” But faithfulness doesn’t start with the act of obedience. It ends up there, yes, but it starts in the heart. The servants’ beliefs cause their fates: the wicked servant’s belief that the master was harsh and unjust made him unwilling to risk his talents, resulting in disloyal sloth, whereas the faithful servants’ belief in the fair and forgiving character of the master frees them to risk the money in trade, resulting in returns, the fruit of labor and evidence of faithfulness.

Before I ask myself, “What am I doing for God?” I ought to ask myself, “How do I feel toward God? How do I believe he feels toward me? Do I trust him? Do I love him like David’s men loved him, loyal to the last?” Out of the confidence that our master is not harsh, but generous in love and faithful in rewarding, and out of a longing for his return, then we feel the surging of potential, the great wide-open life before us, full of beauty, full of people, of adventure to be lived and sacrifice to be made. We feel the deep abiding joy of God that is always beckoning us out of ourselves into the world and others, and we cannot help but go and trade.