Luke 19:20-27

Of the other seven servants there is no mention; they fall either into the category of the preceding, or into that of the following. The ground on which the latter explains his inactivity is not a mere pretext. His language is too plain-spoken not to be sincere. He is a believer who has not found the state of grace offered by Jesus so brilliant as he hoped, a legal Christian, who has not tasted grace, and knows nothing of the gospel but its severe morality. It seems to him that the Lord gives very little to exact so much. With such a feeling, the least possible only will be done. God should be satisfied with us if we abstain from doing ill, from squandering our talent. Such would have been the language of a Judas dissatisfied with the poverty of Christ's spiritual kingdom. In Matthew, the unfaithful servant is offended not at the insufficiency of the master's gifts in general, but at the inferiority of those given to himself, in comparison with those of his associates. This is a Judas embittered at the sight of the higher position assigned to Peter or John.

The master's answer (Luke 19:22) is an argumentum ad hominem: The more thou knowest that I am austere, the more shouldest thou have endeavoured to satisfy me! The Christian who lacks the sweet experience of grace ought to be the most anxious of labourers. The fear of doing ill is no reason for doing nothing, especially when there are means of action, the use of which covers our entire responsibility. What does Jesus mean by the banker? Could it be those Christian associations to which every believer may entrust the resources which he cannot use himself? It seems to us that Jesus by this image would rather represent the divine omnipotence of which we may avail ourselves by prayer, without thereby exposing the cause of Christ to any risk. Of him who has not worked the Lord will ask, Hast thou at least prayed?

The dispensation of glory changes in the case of such a servant into an eternity of loss and shame. The holy works which he might have wrought here below, along with the powers by which he might have accomplished them, are committed to the servant who has shown himself the most active. This or that pagan population, for example, which might have been evangelized by the young Christian who remained on the earth the slave of selfish ease, shall be committed in the future dispensation to the devoted missionary who has used his powers here below in the service of Jesus.

At Luke 19:26, the same form of address as at Luke 12:41-42. The Lord continues as if no observation had been interposed, replying all the while, nevertheless, to the objection which has been started. There is a law, in virtue of which every grace actively appropriated increases our receptivity for higher graces, while all grace rejected diminishes our aptitude for receiving new graces. From this law of moral life it follows, that gradually all graces must be concentrated in faithful workers, and be withdrawn from negligent servants. Chap. Luke 8:18, Jesus said, That which he seemeth to have; here he says, That he hath. The two expressions are true. We have a grace which is bestowed on us; but if we do not assimilate it actively, we do not really possess it; we imagine we have it.

Ver. 27 (comp. Luke 19:14) represents the Messiah's reckoning with the Jewish people, as Luke 19:15-26 represent His reckoning with the Church. Πλήν, only: “After judging the servants, there remains only one thing.” This punishment of the Jews includes, along with the destruction of Jerusalem, the state of rejection in which they are plunged till the Lord's return.

The ruling idea of this parable in Luke is therefore that of a time of probation between the departure and the return of the Lord, necessary to prepare the sentence which shall fix the position of every one in the state of things following the Parousia. Hence follows the impossibility of that immediate appearing of the kingdom of God which filled the minds of the crowd now accompanying Jesus to Jerusalem. Luke's parable thus forms, as Holtzmann acknowledges, a complete whole; and whatever the same learned critic may say, it must be confessed that the introduction, Luke 19:11, indicates its true bearing, a fact confirming the idea that this introduction belonged to Luke's sources, and proceeded from accurate tradition.

The relation between this parable and that of the talents in Matthew is difficult to determine. Strauss has alleged that Luke's was a combination of that of the husbandmen (Luke 20) and that of the talents (Matthew 25). But the internal harmony of Luke's description, which Holtzmann acknowledges, does not admit of this supposition. Meyer regards it as a re-handling of the parable of the talents in Matthew. The action is undoubtedly similar, but, as we have seen, the thought is radically different. The aim of Matthew's parable seems to be to encourage those who have received less, by promising them the same approbation from the Master if they are equally faithful, and by putting them on their guard against the temptation of making their inferiority a motive to spiritual indifference, and a pretext for idleness. We have seen that the idea of the parable in Luke is quite different. It must therefore be admitted that there were two parables uttered, but that their images were borrowed from very similar fields of life. The analogy between the two descriptions may perhaps have caused the importation of some details from the one into the other (e.g., the dialogue between the master and the unfaithful servant).

Here we have reached the end of that journey, the account of which begins Luke 9:51. Jesus first traversed the countries lying south from the old scene of His activity, then the border regions of Samaria and Galilee, finally Peraea; He has thus come to the gates of Jerusalem. From the moral point of view, His work also has reached a new stage. On the one hand, the enthusiasm of the people is at its height, and all believing Galilee, the nucleus of His future Church in Israel, accompanies Him to form His retinue when He shall make His kingly entry into His capital; on the other, He has completely broken with the pharisaic party, and His separation from the nation as such, swayed by the pharisaic spirit, is consummated. He must die; for to let Him live would, on the part of the Sanhedrim, be to abdicate.

We have not followed step by step Keim's criticism on this last part of the journey. It is the masterpiece of arbitrariness. Whatever does not square with the proportions of Jesus as settled before-hand by the learned critic, is eliminated for one reason or another. Those reasons are found without difficulty when sought. After John, Luke is the most abused. For Matthew's two blind men he substitutes one, because he thinks right to reproduce the other in the form of the person of Zaccheus. Timeus (the impure) becomes Zaccheus (the pure), the impure pure! Mark replaces the second by Timeus, the father (also blind) of Bartimeus! Keim here reaches the height of Volkmar.

The blindness is overcome by the power of enthusiasm which was reigning at the moment, and which, by exalting the force of the vital nervous fluid, reopens the closed eyes temporarily or lastingly! Luke invents, in the despised person of Zaccheus, a counterpart to proud Jerusalem, which knows not the day of her visitation (Luke 19:42). It is true that this last expression of Jesus, as well as His tears over Jerusalem, with which it is connected, is invented, as much as the history of Zaccheus. The two counterparts are imaginary!