Living Up to God's Gift
“For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do” (Eph 2:10)
Khen Lim
Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson, originally published February 26 1986 (Image source: gocomics.com)
In the Parable of the Talents (Mt 25:14-30), Jesus relates how
a master had planned a journey that would take him away for a very long time
but before he set about to depart, he called upon three able servants and
entrusted them with a fairly substantial amount of money in a hope that they
would do something positive with it. This would be when he return in the future
asking for an account from each of them.
In other words, that’s a lot of money. Given
that the master in the parable gave them five, two and one talent respectively,
that adds up to a princely sum of money. If we consider how much income we could
earn in a span of two decades, we would understand the enormity of the scale
here.
The larger picture
The servants with the talents (Image source: lds.org)
While on face value, the parable talks about talents in
monetary terms, Jesus is referring to the word in equivalence to the gifts that
God gives to each of us. The three servants, being entrusted with different
amount of talents, suggests that God gives each and every one of us not just
different gifts but varying amounts as well.
Some people turned out to be
incredibly talented, some others quite so while many of us have enough talent
to do something worthwhile with. We are, in fact, qualifiers of the third type –
the one-talent person whom God has given more than we need to do amazing things
in glory to Him.
Therefore Jesus uses the parable to teach us to be productive
with the gifts that the Father has given us. We are to be useful to Him. We are
to utilise it to bring people to His Kingdom by spreading the Good News. We are
to invest our talents in the right areas so that we can become as resourceful as
possible for Him.
The parable therefore instructs us not to hide our gifts and
not make use of them. It discourages us from being idle with these talents but
instead to put them to excellent use. The parable also tells us the serious
repercussions if and when we fail to make good use of the gifts that God has
given us. These repercussions are explained in horrific detail, which Jesus did
not mince words in driving home how angry the Father would be when we choose to
be unproductive.
When Jesus talks about investment in this parable, He is
referring to our effort in investing our talents in advancing the Kingdom of God. In other words, if we use our
talents to worship Him, to bring unbelievers to Christ, to spend some time
talking to others to share the Good News, to invest in mission work so that
others may succeed in enlarging His Kingdom, then this is the kind of
investment that makes us worthy and useful to the Father.
Failing to honour God
The third servant buries the talent (Image source: lds.org)
Everywhere we look, there are talented people. In the
commercial world, the entertainment industry, in academia, in the fields of medicine
and technology, in the sporting arena and even the church, there is no shortage
of people with awesome capabilities and skills who use them to become super
successful, influential and dominant in what they do. Throughout the centuries,
we have many names of famous people with immortalised reputations because of
their extraordinary talents.
The world has, however, changed over the last century. As sin
enlarges its coverage, more and more talented people are pining to exploit
their gifts not to bring glory to God but to enrich themselves. This
self-aggrandisement is about material wealth and worldly importance. It is
about selfish dominance and a preoccupation with self-worth.
Despite the fact that all such talents come from God, many of
these people credit their achievements back to themselves. They fail to honour
God, yet on the outset, they certainly were productive with their God-given talents
except that they choose to ignore Him and be indifferent to where their gifts
came from.
Seven important clues
Image source: scifi.stackexchange.com
In the parable, Jesus leaves us with important clues about
this investment He talks about. Other than investments, He talks about seven
notable things:
By giving us the gifts, Jesus expects us to be responsible with them (v14). In the
famous superhero comic series, Ben Parker told his young nephew, Peter Parker
(alias Spiderman) pretty much the same thing when he said, “With great power
comes great responsibilities.” These responsibilities mean we are to use the
gifts wisely. We are not to flaunt them because they come from God and we have
no hand in creating them. We are not to waste them but to make the fullest use
of our gifts in a responsible manner.
Jesus views the gifts we are given as something we can use in partnership with Him (vv21,23). In
other words, we don’t have to work alone in harnessing our gifts and producing
results. He will be with us all the way. He will be behind us to encourage us
to proceed. He will be in front of us, shielding us from harm. He will be alongside
us, comforting and strengthening our resolve. It is only be way of partnership that
our gifts can yield the truest and most powerful results.
With the gifts given to us, Jesus considers that we have jobs to do and accomplish with them
(vv21,23). In other words, we are not to be idle with them and neither should
we pretend we don’t have the gifts. We waste a great deal of time, dissuading
ourselves of the talents that God has given us when we should get on with the
job that our gifts are most suited to.
With the gifts we are given come Jesus’ high standards (v24) and in them are His expectations of what we
are to do with them. His demands are that we do the best we can (v26), knowing
that God always gives us enough to get the job done to His pleasure. The famous
Lightbulb Joke may
be humorous to many but it is also a clear illustration that we don’t need a
lot to get things done. Essentially, it is the one-talented people who fleshed
out the stories in the Bible and they lay proof that we don’t have to be ‘jacks
of all trades’ or a human Swiss knife to do amazing things for God.
Jesus lays it out very clearly that by burying the talent in
the ground, the servant was being safe and sound (vv25,28) but then He
considers this an act of criminal proportions. Instead, He wants us to be risk-takers like the servant with the
five talents (v28). This means braving it out for God and to put out our very
best in striving to revere Him. To take risks for God is to pursue the highest
stakes out of sheer desire to honour a holy God.
Jesus makes sure we understand that while He is away to
prepare a place for us in the Father’s Kingdom (Jn 14:2-3), we are not to be
idle but instead, do great and positive things that bring honour to Him (v27). In
other words, He wants us to be
productive in the spiritual realm as well as in bringing real people to
Him.
Productivity in this sense is far larger than mere material wealth, fame
or career success. To Jesus, the most powerful way to be productive is not to think
of the safety net but to let go and free ourselves from the shackles that bind
our senses to our world in bondage.
It is when we are indifferent to the gifts we’re given that angers Jesus (v26). God gives us the
opportunities and we squander them in different ways. Perhaps we don’t care to
know what talents God has given us. Maybe we know but we pretend we don’t so
that we don’t have to ‘volunteer’ and do things. Some of us make full use of their
talents and become materially successful and yet do nothing in church. Some
others ply their skills in church in search of personal fame to advance their
agenda but they do all this within the veneer of worshipping God.
Falling out with God
God takes no pleasure in any of these. It’s not just those who
don’t use the gifts. It’s also those who do use them but in an irresponsible
manner. Using our talents to get somewhere in the world is one thing but when
we do not attribute the gifts back to God or when we deny His existence, He
will understandably be furious (v26). And it’s not terribly difficult to
understand why God would feel this way.
If a father puts all his heart into finding and purchasing the
right gift for his son, he has every right to expect him to be thankful, appreciative
and grateful at the very least. More importantly, it is the father’s desire
that his son makes good use of it to bring honour to him and the family. That means
using the gift to do things that bring joy, pleasure and satisfaction to the
father.
On the other hand, if the son were to shove the gift in the
closet never to see the light of day, if he abuses the gift for his own mortal
advantage, if he uses it and claims all the glory, reserving none for one who
gave the gift, then there is every reason to expect the father would be far more
than just displeased. He’s likelier to be angered by what he knows and he could
vent his fury as a result.
For those who are still in the dark about the importance of honouring
God with the gifts He has entrusted us with, check out the last five verses of
the parable. Here Jesus delivers a serious blow to those of us who take this
too lightly. This is an immensely powerful warning of the forces He can summon to
vanquish those who not just ignore the gifts His Father gave us but use them in
ways He finds disapproving. The words are damning:
Jesus will call us lazy and wicked (v26) and most
unfortunately, He will do far more than just take away our gifts (v28). The
last verse is particularly horrible because the reality for those who ignore
the responsibilities for the gifts is damnation of the worst order in which we
suffer the perpetual indignation of endless pain wrecking our bodies inside and
out.
Three final things to know
Image source: lds.org
To round this out, I believe that to better understand the
real gist of the Parable of the Talents, we must read it while we consider the
following three things:
Know our relationships
Firstly, we must know that the parable offers us a parallel
analogy of our relationship with Jesus. The master in the parable is Jesus and
we are His servants. In my realm of reality, I am most likely to be the servant
blessed with one talent but to understand Jesus’ lesson, I choose not to follow
in the footsteps of the servant in the parable.
It is Jesus who gave us back our lives. Through dying on the
cross, He took on all our sins and in sparing us, He offered us a deal we can’t
go wrong with. His love for us is everlasting and beyond what we can understand.
His brand of love is such that He has infinite patience when we stumble or when
we are obstinate. He is also forgiving when we prove to be selfish, mean and
ruinous. Though no fault of His that we fall, He would still pick us up, dust
us off, clean and comfort us and then heal our wounded heart before He sends us
out.
It is not much that He then asks us to live for Him, to serve
Him dutifully and to offer Him everything we’ve got. He surely doesn’t demand
it but we can easily find it in our hearts to say that He deserves every bit of
us. As our master and we His servants, we must bear the responsibility to use
our gifts to serve Him with all our hearts.
Know Who gave us our talents
Secondly, we need reminding that it is Jesus who gave us the
talents we have. Frank Sinatra was wrong – we couldn’t have done things our
way. Without God and the talents He gave him, Frank wouldn’t be Frank. No one
should lay claim to their own achievements because it was Jesus who entrusted
each of us with the potential to do wonderful things that are meant to honour
Him and not us.
And in all of us, our talents are unique. Though we are all
created in His image, we are still exclusively different from one another and
so our gifts produce different abilities, cover different things and we excel in
different ways. But all the same, each of us is bestowed the opportunity and
potential to serve Him. The problem, however, is that we either don’t think we
can or we just wouldn’t try.
When Jesus gives us the talent, He does so in the exact portions
enough to do wonderful things. We might not think so but God is never wrong. We
don’t need any more than we already have and in what little we think we have, that’s
all it takes to make a mark for Christ. And remember, you may think it’s only a
little talent, that is all Christ needs for Him to work in us.
Therefore, for all the talents that Jesus has given all of us
in church, we will have enough to go around and make things work. We have
enough to cover our bases. You’ll find that there are people who will bring
amazing capabilities to the mix and in the end, don’t be surprised to find that
if God has a purpose to keep any church afloat, it is because He knows we have
what it takes to make things work.
No matter how small the church, if God has kept it alive, it
means we have the people and the means to do so. So the next time you look at
your pastor, look again and you might find a whole lot other people in church
who can actually do other things as well. You may not write well but someone
else can. You may not preach well but you could fit right in for sharing Bible
studies. You may not be a great worship leader but you sure can play the
guitar.
Know how to use your talents
Thirdly, if you’re given a certain talent, know there is a
reason why and Ephesians 2:10 should give us a clue: ‘For we are God’s
workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in
advance for us to do.’
We are all created to serve God by doing good works. God has
made sure that in each of us, we are equipped to do exactly that. The gifts He
has given us will complement the purposes He has in each of us to fulfil. So
the reason for the talents we have is to honour God who is the One who gave
those gifts to us.
Jesus has expectations for what He has given us, which is why
He gets upset and angry when we fail to use our talents and abilities. This
happens when we ignore our gifts, when we misuse or abuse our gifts, when we
belittle our gifts and/or when we deliberately neglect to use our gifts. In any
of these situations, we give God every reason to be furious with us. The
problem with God being this angry is we pay a hefty and very ugly one-way
price.
Never see our talents as anything other than a privilege from
God. It is an incredible opportunity that we would have robbed ourselves if we
didn’t make full use of it. It is also a heinous crime to ignore using our
gifts because it also robs others of experiencing the joy and pleasure of your
talents as well (1 Pt 4:10).
With our talents, God has a route through you in
which He can put us into His greater plan in which He can then partner us.
Without our talents, God will not be able to do any of this and therefore, He
will find us as useless as weeds destined for the furnace of fire. Without our
talents, we also rob God of His chance in using us further.
There is no zero option
Outer darkness, weeping and gnashing of teeth (Image source: jesuswithoutbaggage.wordpress.com)
By now, it is clear that Jesus has left us with talents but
only one option – use them. To put it bluntly, we don’t have a choice. To put
it even more bluntly, use it or else. The story gets very clear but ugly
towards the end of the parable in verses 29-30 (NIV):
29 To those who use well what they are given,
even more will be given, and they will have an abundance. But from those who do
nothing, even what little they have will be taken away. 30 Now
throw this useless servant into outer darkness, where there will be weeping and
gnashing of teeth.’
There is nothing to lose in using our talents. Rather we have everything to lose if we don’t. Our fear
is not in what people have to say about us using our talents. Instead our fear
is how God would respond if we didn’t. We also shouldn’t be afraid of people
expecting us all the time to rely on our talents. The more we use our talents
to bring people to Christ, the more we are investing our lives in the Kingdom
of God. And if we ever fear we might fail when we use our gifts, think about
the real fear when we, instead, fail to
use our gifts.
As God expects of us to carry the weight of our talents around and use
them, consider it a done deal. After all, it’s not worth considering the
alternative.
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