Our life with God, from a natural religiosity viewpoint, is based on self-justification. We think we can buy or justify our redemption through good acts and a good life. We can even feel proud of ourselves when we believe we have done good deeds. With our good deeds, proper life, and supposed personal holiness we think we can force God to love us or force God to do one or another thing that we want. We think that our life with God is based on some sort of a legal contract where we do this or that and God is obligated to respond in certain way. We insert our petty human sense of justice into our relationship with God and then we even want to subjugate God to our sense of justice.
The Christian experience is very different. The story that Jesus tells us today points to a lifestyle that is completely the opposite. A true Christian is like the worker who labors all day in the field and then tired, dirty and sweaty from the day’s labor, returns to the house to work all evening preparing the meal and serving at table. Jesus even says that when all is done, the master has no reason to thank the servant for just doing what was supposed to be done. Here there is no self-justification, no special merits, no special rewards, and no pride – just service.
True Christian life is a process of emptying ourselves of our own self and surrendering ourselves to the will of God. God loves us and shows us that love through the life and action of Jesus. We cannot purchase or barter for that love. The Christian response to that love is to joyfully love God and love others, joyfully serve God and serve others. That is our mission and purpose in life as Christians.
God freely, gratuitously loves us and we gratuitously love and serve God in response with joy. This is mature Christian love as shown to us in the Cross. There is no bargaining, no trading, no pride, no demands, nor petty human justice. It is very easy to let natural religiosity seep into our relationship with God. This tends to produce sadness, depression, complaints, pride, and a sense of abandonment in us. Jesus came to invite us all into a new relationship with God based on the surrendering our life and will to the will of God – that is the Suffering Servant who serves and suffers for all others joyfully without complains.
We are unprofitable servants;
we have done what we were obliged to do.
Image: CANVA CJ Dunn 31 October 2026 AI Generated.