“I was afraid.”

Matthew 25:24-30

“He also who had received the one talent came forward, saying, ‘Master, I knew you to be a hard man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you scattered no seed, so I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the ground. Here you have what is yours.’ But his master answered him, ‘You wicked and slothful servant! You knew that I reap where I have not sowed and gather where I scattered no seed? Then you ought to have invested my money with the bankers, and at my coming I should have received what was my own with interest. So take the talent from him and give it to him who has the ten talents. For to everyone who has will more be given, and he will have an abundance. But from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away. And cast the worthless servant into the outer darkness. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’”

Aaron Orendorff

The opening line of v. 25 creates an interesting twist on what appears to be one of the driving themes of chapters 24-25: fear. “I was afraid,” the “wicked and slothful servant” tells his master: Fear kept me from faithful service. As the third parable in a series of four all of which end with a stark warning involving one form or another of “weeping and gnashing of teeth,” it seems odd for the unfaithful servant to be the one supposedly motivated by fear.

What was it then that the servant feared?

V. 24 explains: “Master, I knew you to be a hard man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you scattered no seed . . .”

What the servant feared was not justice, but injustice. What he feared was the unreasoning harshness of an crooked master, the cruelty of a slave-driver who demands of his servants what is not rightfully his. This is far from the picture Jesus is trying to develop.

It is not therefore fear that miscarried the servant’s work, but a wrong understanding of the master with whom he dealt. Again, Jesus is providing an example of folly set over and against a clear picture of wisdom. The point, therefore, is not changed, merely clarified. Our understanding of God shapes how we fear Him, which in turn shapes how we serve.