Unprofitable Servants.

Geerhardus Vos has written:

“…we must observe that there is a fundamental difference between the manner in which Judaism conceived of the principle of reward and Jesus’ conception of the same as regards the necessity with which this principle was believed to operate. Accordingly to the Jews this was a legal necessity; the fulfillment of the law being inherently worthy of and entitled to the reward following it. Hence also there existed between the two a ratio of strict equivalence, so much being given for so much. Jesus plainly taught that between God and man no such commercial relation can exist, not merely because this is impossible on account of man’s sin, but for the deeper reason, that God’s absolute sovereignty precludes it even under the conditions of human rectitude, because God as God is entitled, apart from every contract or stipulation of reward, to all the service or obedience man can render. The disciples are “unprofitable servants,” even after they have done everything required of them, Lk. xvii. 10. They are “unprofitable” not in the sense that their labors are useless, but in the sense that they can do no more for God their owner, than he can naturally expect of them.”

(Vos, Geerhardus, The Teaching of Jesus Concerning the Kingdom of God and the Church, Wipf and Stock Publishers, Eugene, Or., 1998, pp. 121-122.)