Stories Jesus Told: A 6-Day Reading Plan Sample

The Parable of the Talents

Jesus’s teaching makes it clear that our lives matter and how we spend our time here on earth matters to God.

The master who’s delivering these talents is extraordinarily wealthy because five talents would be the equivalent of 100 years’ wages for the average person. This man is entrusting these servants with extraordinary amounts of money and gives to each one according to their abilities. He’s not under any obligation to give any of the servants a certain amount, but he gives it to them and goes away. During his absence, one of the servants invested five of his talents and earned five more. Likewise, the man possessing two talents invested his talents and earned two more. But the third man found no joy in serving his master, so he buried his only talent and got nothing in return. Because of the third man’s unwillingness to maximize his only talent, the master took the servant’s only talent and gave it to the man who had ten talents (v. 28).

A close look at the parable reveals the third man’s attitude toward his master impacted how he stewarded his resources. He had no love or reverence for his master, and so he was lazy with the resources his master entrusted to him. Like the servant, how we steward the resources that have been given to us reveals something about our regard for the giver. We are created for good works in Christ (Eph. 2:10). A failure to embrace this is a failure to be faithful.

If our faith is genuine, we will be good stewards of what God has entrusted to us as a way of showing our love to Him. This parable forces us to ask: do we want to be people who live with intentionality motivated by our love for God or be condemned for our laziness?