NOTES for Mat 25:14-30
Today’s passage includes the parable of the talents, that is, the gold coins that a master, before leaving, entrusts to his servants for safekeeping (vv. 14–15). In those days, however, just as in our own, money could be preserved only by putting it into circulation. Two of the three servants understand this well and act accordingly (vv. 16–17), while the third prefers not to take the risk (v. 18). The result was predictable: two of the three received praise and promotion (vv. 20–23), while the third lost everything (vv. 24–30).
Such a turn of events would be somewhat strange if the issue were the laws of our world, which has not yet been transfigured. Indeed, the servant was given the money for safekeeping, and he managed to return to the master the entire sum entrusted to him. In fact, the master had not required anyone to increase the sum, although he was pleased that his servants proved to be good stewards and found a profitable investment for the money entrusted to them. As a reward, the resourceful servants receive not merely a new and higher position; they become co-owners of their master’s property (vv. 21, 23; “to enter into joy” is not a Greek but a Hebrew expression, and it means something quite material, such as taking part in dividing the spoils after a successful joint hunt or dividing the profit after a successful transaction). The third servant preferred not to take the risk primarily because he considered his master greedy and cruel (v. 24). And that is exactly what the master became for him: he demanded of the distrustful servant what he had not demanded of the others and what the others had offered him of their own accord (vv. 26–27).
From the standpoint of the laws of our world, this logic is strange, to say the least; but different laws and rules operate in the Kingdom. In the Kingdom one cannot preserve anything for oneself, but one can receive everything by multiplying, for the sake of the Kingdom and its Master, what the Master entrusted one to preserve. Here one cannot return His gift to the Master and say, “You are cruel; here is what belongs to you, now leave me alone.” Whoever says this and adopts such a position loses the Kingdom. The principle Jesus has already spoken about more than once operates here: in the Kingdom one can have “life in abundance,” but only if from the very beginning one abandons the thought of one’s own separate and finite life, the thought of tearing a piece from the fullness of the Kingdom and carrying it away. The fullness of the Kingdom can be received, but only in its entirety. And that fullness can be retained only by multiplying and giving it away.