Who is the faithful servant?
Or as Jesus asked the question: Who is the faithful and wise servant?
The faithful servant is the one who is doing what the master has told him to do while he is gone.
In the parable, Jesus says that this servant is watching over the others, feeding them, and making sure that they are receiving their food at the proper time.
What is he not doing?
He is not simply believing that the master exists.
He is not simply waiting for the master to return.
No, he understood what the master said to do and he is carrying out the master’s instructions.
Who then is the faithful and wise servant, whom the master has put in charge of the servants in his household to give them their food at the proper time? It will be good for that servant whose master finds him doing so when he returns. Truly I tell you, he will put him in charge of all his possessions. But suppose that servant is wicked and says to himself, ‘My master is staying away a long time,’ and he then begins to beat his fellow servants and to eat and drink with drunkards. The master of that servant will come on a day when he does not expect him and at an hour he is not aware of. He will cut him to pieces and assign him a place with the hypocrites, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
Matthew 24:45-51
The servant that is, instead, wicked realizes that the master has been away a long time. He becomes lazy. He begins to beat up on the other servants. He begins to spend with people who are not from the house, doing what those other people are doing instead of what he is supposed to be doing as a servant in the master’s house.
We need to pay very close attention to these parables because we in the church may be in danger of this exact situation. This parable should be a warning to each of us who believe. Are we serving the master in the way that he has called us to serve him? Or are we doing what we prefer to do, having substituted our master’s plan for our own?
Have we adopted the ways of the world, enjoying the pleasures of this world instead of serving our master?
Just before telling this parable, Jesus’s disciples had asked Jesus what the sign of his coming would be. Jesus explains to them how the end will work and how the Son of Man – he himself – would come, how he would return to earth.
So Jesus is punctuating this discussion by telling this parable about the master and the servants. He is explaining that he is the master and he will be returning. He expects that his disciples – the servants in this parable – will be at work. He wants them to be doing what he has told them to do.
They shouldn’t just be waiting. They shouldn’t be lazy. They shouldn’t be adopting the ways of the world. They – actually, WE – should be at work for the Lord, remaining faithful to him. Otherwise, destruction will come because we have been unwise and unfaithful.