Faith and Faithfulness

The king ended by saying, "But for these enemies of mine who did not want me to be king over them, bring them here and kill them in my presence." Luke 19 v 27 In this parable of Jesus, we see that there are people who follow Him who lack in faithfulness and do not invest their lives well to serve His purpose and there are people who lack faith and refuse to serve Him. Unlike the story of talents where each servant was given a different number of talents of gold to invest, in this parable all ten servants are given ten minas or a hundred days of wages to keep. The lessons conveyed by the parable is that we should be faithful to the Lord in using whatever He has given us to magnify His name in and through our lives. Faith is needed in non believers in order to serve God while faithfulness is needed in believers to serve God. For all those who are not trusting God and His word, they should weigh all that they are and have in one hand and all that the kingdom of God offers in the other. It is worthwhile to exchange all that one has and is in order to obtain all that God has promised. For the former we cannot keep forever while what the Lord promises we have forever. Christ is the king who does not rule over terrritory but over the hearts and minds of people. The extent to which we submit our thoughts, desires, emotions to the Lord, to that extent we are ruled by Him. The more we yield to Him, the more He increases our yield. Faith and faithfulness are two sides of the same coin. One is not complete without the other. Once we surrender our lives to Jesus, we need to be increasingly and consistently faithful. The servant who did not invest the minna he got from the king did not know the true nature of the king. He disbelieved him, did not want to take any risk and hence, buried the minna so that he can return it to him on his coming back. But the king did not count this as faithfulness. He counted it as a lack of trust and obedience. He counted as faithfulness the actions of the other servant who invested the minna and gave him a ten fold increase on his coming back. Hence, the latter was made a ruler of ten cities. The people who serve Him faithfully are rewarded. The people who rebel and refuse to believe or serve Him lose eternal life.