Luke 12:42

Jesus has just told his disciples to be like servants waiting for their master to come home from a wedding, dressed for service with their lamps burning, and he has warned them that the Son of man comes at an unexpected hour (Luke 12:35–40). Peter speaks up, as he often does, on behalf of the others. His name, Pétros, means a rock or a piece of rock, and it is the name Jesus gave to Simon. He calls Jesus “Lord”, kýrios, the word for one who is supreme in authority, a master, so his question comes as a request from a servant who wants to understand his Master’s teaching. The small word translated “Then”, dé, is a connective, and it ties the question directly to what Jesus has just said.

A parable, parabolḗ, is a similitude, an earthly story or saying that carries a spiritual truth, and here it means the picture of the watching servants. Peter sets two possibilities side by side. “Us”, hēmâs, is the plain pronoun, and on Peter’s lips it means the disciples who travel with Jesus and will soon carry responsibility among his people. “Or even to all” widens the circle with kaí, the common word for “and”, “also” or “even”. Peter wants to know whether these heavy demands rest on the inner circle alone or on everyone who follows Jesus.

Jesus answers with a second parable, and its answer is that both are true. The call to be ready is for all, and it presses hardest on those who have been given most. Salvation is offered to whoever believes in the Son (John 3:16), and the call to take up the cross daily and follow him is for anyone who would come after him (Luke 9:23). Within that one call, those entrusted with greater knowledge or authority carry a heavier charge, and that is where the passage ends in verse 48.

A steward, oikonómos, is a house-manager. In the wealthy households of that day he was often a trusted slave or a freedman, and he had charge of his master’s property, money and provisions and of the other servants. He acted in the master’s place while the master was away on business or travel, sometimes for a long time. The trust was great and so was the accounting, because a master might come home unannounced, and his return meant a review of how the steward had managed. Proven faithfulness could bring greater responsibility, higher standing and even freedom, while failure brought severe penalties. The word was also used for a treasurer and, as a figure, for a preacher of the gospel, and stewardship stands behind what Paul asks of an overseer in Titus 1:7.

Jesus names two qualities. The faithful steward is trustworthy and loyal, and he can be relied on to do what his master wants day after day. The wise steward has practical good judgment, so that he knows how to manage what is in his hands. Paul says that the thing required of stewards is that they be found faithful (1 Corinthians 4:2).

This steward holds a delegated authority. His lord “shall make” him ruler, so the position is a trust that he received and will answer for. The “household” he rules is therapeía, a word for service or attendance, which here means the body of servants who give that service. His central duty is to give them “their portion of meat”, sitómetron, literally a grain-measure, the measured ration of food each one is due. He is to give it “in due season”, kairós, the set or proper time. In a farming world where the seasons governed supply, that took foresight as well as honesty, because the steward had to see needs coming and have the food ready.

The lord of the parable stands for God, and for Christ who is coming again. The steward stands for his servants, and most directly for those he has placed in charge of others, and the household is his church. The food given at the proper time is the spiritual nourishment, guidance and practical care that God’s people need. Peter, who asked the question, later charges the elders to feed the flock of God and promises them a crown of glory when the chief Shepherd appears (1 Peter 5:2–4). The trust reaches every believer as well, since time, abilities, possessions and influence are all the Master’s goods, and Peter tells each one who has received a gift to use it for others as a good steward of God’s grace (1 Peter 4:10). Matthew records the same parable in Matthew 24:45–51.

Jesus calls this servant “blessed”, makários, which means blessed or happy, and it is the word he uses in the Beatitudes (Matthew 5:3–12). The servant is a doûlos, a slave or bondman, someone who belongs to his master and owes him his whole service. The blessing rests on one condition, that his lord “when he cometh shall find so doing”. “Cometh”, érchomai, speaks of a return that is certain while its time is unknown. “Find”, heurískō, means to discover or come upon, and it tells us that the lord will see for himself what his servant is doing at the moment he arrives. “So doing”, hoútō poiéō, points back to verse 42, to the plain work of running the house and feeding the household as the master wishes.

Readiness for Christ’s return, then, is active, and the servant waits by working. Jesus teaches the same in the parable of the talents (Matthew 25:14–30) and the parable of the pounds, or minas (Luke 19:11–27). He presses the need to be ready in the parable of the ten virgins (Matthew 25:1–13), since the day and the hour are known to the Father alone (Matthew 24:36).

People ask whether this blessing is only a future reward. It includes the lord’s commendation at his return and the promotion of verse 44, and Jesus promises that he comes bringing his reward with him (Revelation 22:12). The Beatitudes use the same word for those who live under God’s rule now, so the faithful servant is already a happy man while he works, with the peace of doing what his Master wants.

The second half of the parable begins inside the servant, who says something “in his heart”. His ruin starts with a thought he allows himself, well before anyone sees a wrong act. “Delayeth” is chronízō, from chrónos, time, and it means to take time, to linger or tarry. The servant has decided that his master’s return is far off. The parable gives this as his own belief about the timing, and that belief is what frees him, in his own mind, from having to answer for what he does. Peter warns of the same thought in the last days, when scoffers ask where the promise of the Lord’s coming is (2 Peter 3:3–4).

Two things follow. First he begins “to beat the menservants and maidens”. The verb is týptō, to strike or cudgel with repeated blows, so this is a beating, and he gives it to men and women alike. Masters and stewards of that day did discipline servants physically, yet violence of this kind, against the very people he was appointed to feed, was a plain abuse of his office. Jesus taught that the one who leads among his people is to be as one who serves (Luke 22:24–27).

Second, he begins “to eat and drink, and to be drunken”. The stores he was to measure out to others he spends on himself, and he loses his self-control with them. Jesus warns his disciples elsewhere that hearts weighed down with excess and drunkenness will be caught unawares by that day (Luke 21:34–36), and Paul says that the grace of God teaches us to live soberly, righteously and godly while we wait (Titus 2:11–12).

So the servant fails in two directions at once. He fails the people under him, whom he oppresses, and he fails the master who trusted him. One wrong belief about the master’s timing has led to cruelty and then to self-indulgence, and the root of it all is that he stopped expecting to give an account. A faithful servant keeps to his master’s will whether the return is near or far.

The servant’s reckoning was wrong. “The lord of that servant will come”, and he comes “in a day when he looketh not for him, and at an hour when he is not aware”. The absence had an end all along, and the man who counted on delay is the one caught unprepared.

Two things are done to him. The lord “will cut him in sunder”, and he “will appoint him his portion with the unbelievers”. “Portion” here is méros, a part or share, and “unbelievers” is ápistos, disbelieving, without faith. The steward who held the highest place in the house is given his share with those who have no faith, which means final separation from the Master’s household and from God’s blessing. Revelation speaks of the same end when it names the unbelieving among those whose part is in the lake of fire (Revelation 21:8). In English the steward was appointed to give out a portion and ends by receiving one, though the Greek words differ: the ration of verse 42 is sitómetron and the share of verse 46 is méros.

This is a warning to anyone who bears the name of Christ’s servant and lives in settled unfaithfulness. How a person treats others and handles what God has entrusted shows the true state of the heart, and God cares deeply how his servants manage what is his.

Jesus now distinguishes between servants who do wrong. The first “knew his lord’s will”. The verb is ginṓskō, to know, perceive or understand, so this servant had been told what was wanted and understood it. Even so he “prepared not himself, neither did according to his will”, which names two failures, a lack of readiness for the master’s coming and a failure to carry out his actual commands. He “shall be beaten with many stripes”. The steward’s blows in verse 45 were týptō, and the punishment here is another verb, dérō, which first meant to flay and so came to mean to scourge or thrash.

The second servant “knew not”, where mḗ is the negative joined to the same verb for knowing, and yet he “did commit things worthy of stripes”. He “shall be beaten with few stripes”. “Few” is olígos, small or few in quantity, and it is set against the “many” of verse 47, polýs, which is also the word behind “much” in the saying that closes the passage.

Jesus’ hearers knew this world well. A master had the right to punish a servant with a beating, and how severe it was depended on how far the servant was to blame, so that a servant who defied clear orders fared worse than one who erred in ignorance. Israel’s own law limited a flogging to forty stripes (Deuteronomy 25:2–3).

For us, knowing the Lord’s will means having the Scriptures, the teaching of the church and the guidance of the Holy Spirit. Through these we know his commands, his call to follow him, his charge to love God and neighbour and his commission to make disciples of all nations. That knowledge is given to be acted on. James tells us to be “doers of the word, and not hearers only” (James 1:22), and he says, “Therefore to him that knoweth to do good, and doeth it not, to him it is sin” (James 4:17). Hebrews warns that for those who sin wilfully after receiving the knowledge of the truth there remains a fearful expectation of judgment (Hebrews 10:26–27), and Paul writes of the same justice when he says that those who have sinned in the law shall be judged by the law (Romans 2:12).

Jesus ends with the rule behind the two sentences, and he gives it in two parallel lines so that it stays in the memory: “For unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall be much required: and to whom men have committed much, of him they will ask the more.” “Given” is dídōmi, the ordinary verb to give, and what is given covers knowledge, spiritual understanding, abilities, opportunities, wealth and positions of influence. “Required” is zētéō and “ask” is aitéō. In the second line “committed” is paratíthēmi, to entrust something as a deposit, which makes it plain that what we hold was placed with us in trust and still belongs to the one who placed it.

Here Peter has his answer. The disciples, who have heard the most, are held to the most. The knowledge of God in Christ, the gospel, the indwelling Spirit and adoption into God’s family (Romans 8:15) are the greatest things anyone has ever been given, so the saying reaches every Christian, and it rests most heavily on those who teach and lead. God looks for fruit (John 15:8), and we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ (2 Corinthians 5:10), where a believer’s stewardship is assessed for reward and commendation while his salvation rests on Christ.

Jesus is both the Lord who will come and the servant who was found doing his Father’s will. He said that he came down from heaven to do the will of him that sent him (John 6:38), and that his meat was to do that will and to finish the work (John 4:34). He obeyed as far as death on the cross, and God has highly exalted him and given him the name above every name (Philippians 2:8–11). The Father gave him the Spirit without measure (John 3:34) and all power in heaven and in earth, and he in turn entrusted his servants with the task of teaching all nations (Matthew 28:18–20). He is the one to whom most was given, and he rendered everything that was required.

He also fed the household. He is the bread of life (John 6:35), the giver of living water (John 4:10–14) and the good shepherd who gives his life for the sheep (John 10:11). Where the wicked steward beat those under him and served himself, the Son of man came to minister and to give his life a ransom for many (Mark 10:45), and he endured the cross for the joy that was set before him (Hebrews 12:2). He is Lord of all (Acts 10:36), and every servant’s work lies open before him, for all things are naked and opened to the eyes of him with whom we have to do (Hebrews 4:13).

The stripes of this passage meet their answer in him as well. He is the suffering servant of Isaiah 53:3–7, wounded for our transgressions, and “with his stripes we are healed”. God sent his Son so that the world through him might be saved (John 3:17), and made him to be sin for us so that we might be made the righteousness of God in him (2 Corinthians 5:21). Those who trust him are saved by grace through faith, as the gift of God (Ephesians 2:8–9), and so the faithfulness he asks of us is the answer of people he has already rescued. For them his coming is a meeting to look forward to. The Lord himself will descend, the dead in Christ will rise, and we shall be with him for ever (1 Thessalonians 4:16–17), in the place he has gone to prepare (John 14:3). The Bible closes with his promise, “Surely I come quickly”, and the church’s reply, “Even so, come, Lord Jesus” (Revelation 22:20).

This passage gives us a way of seeing ordinary life. What we have was put into our hands by a Master who will return, and the days between are the time of our stewardship. That gives weight to plain, repeated duties, because the servant Jesus calls blessed is simply found at his work, giving people what they need when they need it.

It also shows us who God is. He is a just judge, who measures each person by what that person knew and was given, so that his judgments are always fair. He is a generous Master, who answers a servant’s faithfulness with a share in all that he has. And he keeps his word about returning, however long the wait may be.

The passage is honest about the danger in the heart. The wicked steward’s fall began with a private thought about time, and it showed first in how he treated the people under him. Where we hold any authority, in a home, a church or a workplace, the way we use it is part of our answer to Christ. The more of his word we know, the more this saying asks of us, which is a sobering thing for anyone who teaches, and a reason to be glad that the one who asks much is the one who bore the stripes for us.