But if that evil bondman should say in his heart, My lord delays to come,
Jesus has just described a servant left in charge of the household. The master came back and found him faithful. Now He turns the picture over. This time the trouble starts with no visible act at all. It starts with what a servant tells himself about when his master is coming. (The writers below quote an older wording, "my lord delays his coming." The ESV reads "My master is delayed.")
The Lord calls him evil before he has done anything visible. What condemns him is a thought he keeps to himself.
If there is a "faithful, wise, and blessed servant," there is also "an evil servant." That servant "says in his heart, My lord delays his coming." Mark this. The thought about the delay of the coming starts in the heart of the wicked servant.
The servant never says his master will not return. He simply stops treating the return as something that could happen now.
"If that servant says in his heart, My lord delays his coming" — this is pretty much the position of the professing church. It is not that people say, He will not come. They simply do not look for Him as something present.
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Behind the delay is something he wants. The thought suited him.
The servant's heart, it turned out, did not want his Lord to return. So he made up his mind that Christ was not coming soon. He did not love His appearing. Why should he? How could he? A quick coming might have cut across some of his plans and projects. He therefore said in his heart, "My Lord delays His coming." But it was a false heart, caught by a device of Satan.
Two things follow, and they pull in opposite directions. He is harsh with those inside the house and comfortable with those outside it.
There you have the great danger of the professed servants of Christ in this world. First, he wrongs his fellow servants by seizing a high-handed authority. Authority is right where a man uses it in obedience to Christ... But here it is man's will. The servant takes the place of the Master and begins to beat his fellow servants. Second, along with that, he keeps bad company with the world. It does not say that he is drunk himself, but there is association with the world... Where the thought of the Lord is gone, ministry loses its true character.
This is more than one man's private failure. Mackintosh points to what it has produced on a large scale.
We need not say how terribly this has been shown in the history of Christendom. True ministry flows from the risen and glorified Head in the heavens. It builds up the body, blesses souls, and makes the household prosper. Instead of that, we have a false clerical authority, arbitrary rule, a lording it over God's people, a grasping after this world's wealth and power, ease for the flesh, self-indulgence, and personal advancement.
The issue is not that he holds mistaken views about prophecy. It is what his heart wants, which then shapes what he believes.
The man is clearly a hypocrite. This is no case of simple ignorance about prophetic teaching. It is what his heart says, whether his views on prophecy are right or wrong... He keeps company with people who live loosely. He is perhaps worse than his company, because of the profession he makes... We easily persuade ourselves of what we want to be true.
Kelly draws a careful line here. Wrong ideas about the timing of the return are not by themselves this sin.
This is far more than wrong thoughts about the coming of the Lord, which some believers might hold without this Scripture applying to them... What the Lord judges is not a mistake or a doctrinal blunder. It is the state of the heart — content that Christ should stay away. If we want something great, something men admire, how can we say, "Come"?
The damage did not stop with one servant.
Putting off this blessed event brought in all kinds of evil. We may even say that losing it was the ruin of the church in its earthly relations here below. For what is the sign of the evil servant? He says, "My lord delays his coming." That is what brought him "to beat his fellow servants, and to eat and drink with drunkards."
- Heart — It starts in his heart, before he lifts a hand or a cup.
- Delay — He never denies the return. He just stops expecting it soon.
- Wish — He does not want it. His Lord's coming would spoil his own plans.
- Damage — With the Master pushed off, the servant takes the throne: harsh at home, at ease with the world.
- Ruin — Commentators trace the church's decline to that one private thought. The cure is to look for Him today.
and begin to beat his fellow-bondmen, and eat and drink with the drunken;
The servant in this parable has just told himself that his master is in no hurry, and this verse shows the result. Why does a fading hope lead to cruelty inside the house and loose company outside it?
The two acts in this verse are not where the trouble starts. One writer asks what was inside the man first.
What is the poison in his wrongdoing? What marked him as "that evil servant"? His conduct shows two fatal stains: he beats his fellow servants, and he eats and drinks with drunkards. He lifts himself up in pride over those whom the Lord has placed on the same level as himself. He also joins himself to the world and shares its life. But what marked the looseness and waywardness of his soul? What was inside him led to these outbreaks of evil, for evil never begins in outward conduct of any kind. The mischief is always inside first.
It is not a mistake in his theology. It is a matter of what he wants.
This is not an intellectual system: "the evil servant says in his heart, My lord delays his coming." His own will was part of it. The result was that the will of the flesh showed itself.
The faithful servant of verse 45 was set over the household to give them food at the proper time. This servant holds the same post and uses the same hand for the opposite purpose.
The effect is shown in lording it over the fellow servants (hierarchical or clerical assumption in Christ's absence), beating instead of feeding, and dealings and fellowship with the world, eating and drinking with the drunken.
The verse names one sin toward those in the house and one toward those outside it. Both follow from forgetting the Master.
There you have the great danger of the professed servants of Christ in this world. First, wronging the fellow servants by taking an arbitrary place. Authority is right when it is used in obedience to Christ... But here it is man's will, where the servant takes the place of the Master, and begins to beat his fellow servants. Second, along with that, he has evil dealings with the world. It does not say that he is drunk himself, but he keeps company with the world... Where the thought of the Lord is gone, ministry loses its true character. There will be oppression toward those inside, and evil dealings with those outside.
The verse never calls the servant a drunkard. It says he keeps their company, and one writer weighs what that company means for a man who claims to serve Christ.
He seizes authority over his fellow servants for himself, and joins himself to people who live loosely. It does not say that he becomes a drunkard, but a man is known by the company he keeps. He is perhaps worse than the company he keeps, because of the claim he makes for himself.
The two acts come in an order, and one writer sets this verse beside a similar failure elsewhere in Scripture.
In both cases alike, they lose all sense of God's claims and of the nature of their position, and evil conduct toward their brothers follows. The comparison goes further. The next thing the evil servant does is "to eat and drink with drunkards," and in the other case we have union with "the daughter of a foreign god." Both are alliance with the world. And this is always the moral order: first, relationships with God ignored, then with our brothers, and finally association with the world.
This is more than a warning to one servant. One writer sees the same two evils in the history of Christendom, the world of people who call themselves Christian.
We need not say how dreadfully this has been acted out in the history of Christendom. True ministry flows from the risen and glorified Head in the heavens. It builds up the body, blesses souls, and keeps the household thriving. Instead of that, we have a false clerical authority, arbitrary rule, a lording it over God's heritage, a grasping after this world's wealth and power, bodily ease, self-indulgence, and personal advancement.
Some argue that expecting Christ at any moment makes people careless about how they live. One writer answers from this verse that the opposite is true.
It was the evil servant who gave up the blessed hope who became lawless. He said in his heart, "My lord delays his coming." Then he ill-treated his fellow servants, and he also ate and drank with drunkards. Such conduct plainly broke the law of faithfulness and decency in his master's house.
- Heart first. Evil never begins in outward conduct. What the servant said to himself in verse 48 produced both crimes in this verse.
- Will, not error. The servant does not deny the Lord's return. He pushes it off because he wants to, and his own will then takes over.
- Inward tyranny, outward worldliness. He oppresses those inside the house and takes his pleasure with those outside. The verse never calls him a drunkard, only a man who keeps their company.
- The order never varies. God's claims ignored, then brothers wronged, then the world embraced. Writers see that same order across the history of Christendom.
the lord of that bondman shall come in a day when he does not expect it, and in an hour he knows not of,
This verse falls on a servant who told himself there was still time. Commentators ask why the master's arrival takes him by surprise, and what had already happened in his heart.
The ruin starts with a private calculation, not a public denial. One writer traces it to what the servant prefers to believe.
On what does his ruin depend? "In his heart" the evil servant says, "My lord delays." This refers to what is deep and real — the heart's indifference to the coming of the Master. He believes what he likes, and what he likes is that the Lord should delay His coming.
This postponement is hard to spot. Nobody argues against the return at all.
"But if that servant says in his heart, My lord delays his coming" — this is pretty much the position of the professing church. It is not that men say, He will not come. They do not look for Him as a present thing. It is one in the place of a servant who says, "My Lord delays," and then his Lord comes when he does not expect Him.
One writer ties the lost expectation to the sudden arrival. Giving up the hope does not slow the Lord down.
How sad the soul's state where Christ's coming is unwelcome, and the servant does what his heart likes! In this way the hope loses its separating power, and loses its attraction to Him who is coming and to His word. Violence follows towards his fellow servants, who become annoying to him, while the world and its pleasures become pleasant company. Can any words sketch more vividly the practical ruin of Christendom, whose first symptom was the heart's plea, My Lord delays His coming? This will not hold His coming back. It will only hasten His unexpected arrival. He will punish the servant's disloyalty and give him his portion with the faithless, despite all his boasting in Christian privileges.
A few verses earlier the same master comes and finds a servant at work. The difference lies in how each servant meets that arrival.
We must not confuse the coming in verse 46 with the coming in verse 50. The faithful and wise servant is living in the expectation of his Lord's return. He does all his service in view of that moment, and he longs for it. To the evil servant, the coming is an event both unexpected and unwanted.
Nothing in the sentence lets him step out of the role he took. He called Him "my lord," and the Lord deals with him on that footing.
Here the Lord treats the servant as a servant, but as an evil one, a hypocrite. He considers himself so too. He says "My Lord" — he is so dealt with — the Lord of that servant. What a lesson for the professing church, and particularly for its hierarchical part! What makes this more striking is that the Lord treats him as the same servant in position. The other servant will be set over all his Lord's goods.
The judgment tells you what this servant was, not only what he did.
Verses 50-51 show that the "evil servant" here is not a man failing badly yet true underneath. He is a man who is completely false. His Lord will judge him and appoint him his portion with the hypocrites because he is a hypocrite. He is banished under judgment to his own company.
The unknown hour shapes how a servant works today.
In this way the coming of Christ is a double motive to faithfulness. It encourages the faithful, and it warns the careless servant. The first will say with joyful expectation, "My Lord is at hand, and so I must seek to be diligent before He comes." The second, if he thinks at all, will say, "What will my Lord say if He finds me, at His coming, both careless and unfaithful?"
- Heart — The collapse begins with a sentence said inside, never preached out loud. The servant stops looking for his Lord as a present thing.
- Hope — Once the hope loses its separating power, the world turns into pleasant company. Fellow servants turn into an annoyance.
- Hour — He set his own clock, so the master arrives on a day and an hour he never allowed for. Dropping the hope does not delay the coming.
- Place — The Lord judges him in the very position he claimed. He said "my lord," and the Lord holds him to it.
- Exposure — The coming does not catch a true man on a bad day. It unmasks a false one and gives him the company he belonged to.