Theopedia

Parable of the talents

“His master said to him, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master.’”

— Matthew 25:23 (ESV)

Definition

The parable of the talents (Matt. 25:14-30) is Jesus’s story of a master who, departing on a journey, entrusts three servants with sums of money, “each according to his ability” (Matt. 25:15), then returns to settle accounts. The two servants who trade their sums and double them are commended as “good and faithful” and given greater responsibility (Matt. 25:21, 23); the third, who out of fear buries his single talent in the ground, is condemned as “wicked and slothful” and cast into “the outer darkness” (Matt. 25:26, 30).

Biblical Basis

Matthew places the parable within the Olivet Discourse, between the parable of the ten virgins and the parable of the sheep and the goats (Matt. 25:1-46). A man “going on a journey… called his servants and entrusted to them his property,” giving five talents to one servant, two to another, and one to a third, “each according to his ability,” before departing (Matt. 25:14-15). The servants given five and two talents “went at once and traded,” doubling what they had been given (Matt. 25:16-17); the servant given one talent “went and dug in the ground and hid his master’s money” (Matt. 25:18).

“After a long time” the master returns to settle accounts (Matt. 25:19). The first two servants report having doubled their sums, and each receives the identical commendation: “Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master” (Matt. 25:21, 23). The third servant returns only what he was given, explaining that he knew his master to be “a hard man, reaping where you did not sow,” and so “I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the ground” (Matt. 25:24-25). The master answers, “You wicked and slothful servant!” (Matt. 25:26), takes the talent from him and gives it to the servant with ten, citing the principle that “to everyone who has will more be given… but from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away” (Matt. 25:28-29), then casts him “into the outer darkness,” where “there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth” (Matt. 25:30).

A parallel parable, the parable of the minas, appears at Luke 19:12-27: ten servants each receive one mina, and each is judged on his use of it when the nobleman-king returns from receiving his kingdom. John Gill reads the two as describing “the same time” under different figures.1

Confessional Witness

The confession’s chapter “Of Good Works” states the principle this parable dramatizes: good works “are the fruits and evidences of a true and lively faith,” through which believers “manifest their thankfulness… and glorify God, whose workmanship they are.”2 Because that ability “is not at all of themselves, but wholly from the Spirit of Christ,” believers “are not hereupon to grow negligent, as if they were not bound to perform any duty… but they ought to be diligent in stirring up the grace of God that is in them”3, the same diligence the parable’s first two servants show and the same charge its third servant fails.

Doctrinal Significance

Jamie Dunlop reads the parable’s turn as being about faith, not raw effort. The first two servants receive the identical commendation despite unequal results, which rules out a moralistic “try hard and God will be pleased” reading.4 What condemns the third servant is not that he produced too little but what his excuse reveals about him. Believing his master to be “a hard man,” he was “hedging his bets because he didn’t have faith in the master,” prepared to come out fine whether the master returned or not.5 On this reading, “his choices show that his faith was only in himself,” and the parable rewards trust in the master shown through action, not industriousness valued for its own sake.5

Thomas Watson applies the same text more broadly, to the stewardship of time itself: “Time is a Talent to trade with, both in our Particular and General Calling. The slothful Person hides his Talent in the Earth, he doth no good, his Time is not lived but lost.”6 Elsewhere he applies Matt. 25:26 to a servant’s ordinary duty of diligence in his calling: “The loytering Servant is a kind of Thief… The slothful Servant is called a Wicked Servant, Matth. 25.26.”7

Opposing Views

Gill: talents as gifts of ministry given at the ascension

John Gill reads the “talents” narrowly, as gifts of ministry Christ distributes to officers within his church at his ascension: the parable describes Christ “giving gifts to men, upon his ascension to heaven, and since; to some more, and others less, of which they make a different improvement,” with the reckoning coming “when he personally appears.”1 Elsewhere he states this reading follows from his wider case that all three parables closing the Olivet Discourse concern people already inside “the kingdom of heaven, or gospel church state,” naming “ministers of the word” specifically as in view when the servants are “reckoned with by the Lord at his coming.”8

The wider tradition: talents as every believer’s entrusted resources

The more common reading treats the “talents” as any resource, ability, or opportunity God entrusts to any believer, not ministry gifts to church officers specifically. Dunlop applies the parable directly to a congregation’s money, describing the servants as representing believers generally and the talents as “large sums of money” any of them might be given to steward.4 Watson’s two applications work the same way, treating a Christian’s time and a servant’s ordinary household diligence as “talents” in the parable’s sense without restricting the term to ecclesial office.6

Objections and Responses

Does the graduated reward for the first two servants (“faithful over a little; I will set you over much”) teach that eternal reward is earned by successful effort, against justification by faith alone? The confession holds that good works are never the ground of a believer’s acceptance, only its fruit: they are “the fruits and evidences of a true and lively faith,”2 made possible only because ability “is not at all of themselves, but wholly from the Spirit of Christ.”3 Aaron O’Kelley’s survey of the wider Reformed debate over judgment “according to works” reports the standard answer in contemporary terms: such works are significant for believers “only… in so far as they result in rewards that are not essentially related to justification.”9 On this account, the first two servants’ reward publicly recognizes a faithfulness already produced by grace, rather than purchasing standing with the master.

Does the third servant’s loss of even what he had, and his being cast out, show that a true believer can finally fall from grace, against the perseverance of the saints? The confession states that those “whom God hath accepted in the beloved, effectually called and sanctified by his Spirit… can neither totally nor finally fall from the state of grace.”10 The parable itself supplies the same answer from within its own narrative: the third servant’s excuse shows he never trusted the master to begin with, hedging between two masters rather than believing the one he served.5 His loss is not a believer’s forfeited standing but the exposure of an unbelief that had been there under a servant’s title all along.

Related Doctrines

References

  1. John Gill, A Body of Doctrinal Divinity; or, A System of Evangelical Truths, Deduced from the Sacred Scriptures, 2 vols. (London: Printed for the Author, and Sold by George Keith, 1769), book 7, chap. 5, “Of the Second Coming of Christ, and His Personal Appearance.” ↩ ↩2

  2. The Second London Baptist Confession of Faith (1677/1689), chap. 16, “Of Good Works,” para. 2. ↩ ↩2

  3. The Second London Baptist Confession of Faith (1677/1689), chap. 16, para. 3. ↩ ↩2

  4. Jamie Dunlop, Budgeting for a Healthy Church: Aligning Finances with Biblical Priorities for Ministry (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2019), chap. 1, “Why Does God Care About Your Church Budget?,” 24. ↩ ↩2

  5. Dunlop, Budgeting for a Healthy Church, 25. ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  6. Thomas Watson, A Body of Practical Divinity: Consisting of Above One Hundred and Seventy-Six Sermons on the Lesser Catechism (London: Thomas Parkhurst, 1692), 334. ↩ ↩2

  7. Watson, Body of Practical Divinity, 352. ↩

  8. John Gill, A Body of Doctrinal Divinity; or, A System of Evangelical Truths, Deduced from the Sacred Scriptures, 2 vols. (London: Printed for the Author, and Sold by George Keith, 1769), book 7, chap. 9, “Of the Last and General Judgment.” ↩

  9. Aaron Thomas O’Kelley, “Conclusion,” in “A Historical-Theological Critique of the New Perspective on Paul” (PhD diss., The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2010), 159-207, at 200. ↩

  10. The Second London Baptist Confession of Faith (1677/1689), chap. 17, “Of the Perseverance of the Saints,” para. 1. ↩