We Have Only Done Our Duty (17:7–10)
The figure in this parable is not a hired laborer who has put in his hours and earned his wage. He is a δοῦλος (doulos), a slave, very likely the only one a small farmer owned, who works the field by day and the kitchen by night. The whole picture turns on a question with an obvious answer. When the servant comes in from plowing, does the master tell him to come and recline at the table (17:7)? No. He tells him to put on an apron and serve supper, and to eat only afterward (17:8). The servant has done what he was bound to do, and by doing his tasks, he puts the master under no obligation.
Jesus presses the comparison onto his disciples. The slave’s labor establishes no claim on the master, and neither does ours on God.
“Does he thank the servant because he did what was commanded?” (17:9).
The expected answer is no. This lands hardest on the assumption that it is built to expose, the assumption that obedience accrues to our account, that the hours we have logged in prayer, service, and study place God in our debt. The parable answers that the account does not exist. We are servants in a household we did not build, doing work we were commanded to do, and the doing earns us nothing.
The word translated “unworthy” sharpens the point. The Greek is ἀχρεῖος (achreios), which carries the sense of useless or worthless, even unprofitable. But, in fact, the servant is not useless; the field was plowed, and supper was made. He is useless in the sense that he has added nothing to his standing. He has produced no surplus, no merit beyond what was owed. He has only done his duty.
We say as much every time we come to the table. Before we receive the body and blood of Christ, we confess that we do not presume to come trusting in our own righteousness, but in God’s manifold and great mercies, that we are not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs. We say it because it is true at our best and not only at our worst. The church is not a community of sinners alongside the righteous, because there are no righteous persons to stand alongside. There are only servants who, having done all that was commanded, say, “We are unworthy servants; we have only done what was our duty” (17:10), and whose one only hope in life and death is that it is God’s nature always to have mercy.
The One Who Returned (17:11–19)
When Jesus healed ten lepers on his way to Jerusalem, he was, as he does elsewhere, doing what other prophets had done before him, but on a larger scale. In 2 Kings 5, the Syrian commander Naaman came to the prophet Elisha covered in leprosy and was healed. Jesus himself referenced that story at the beginning of his ministry, noting specifically that out of all the lepers in Israel, only this foreigner was healed (Luke 4:27). Luke’s reader, prepared by that earlier story, cannot miss what is happening here. A Samaritan leper is healed while the nine Jewish ones walk on. Naaman has returned.
All ten cry out for mercy, and all ten receive it. As they go to show themselves to the priests, Luke writes that “they were cleansed” (17:14). The word is καθαρίζω, the language of ritual purification, the category the priests dealt with. Ten men enter the story as unclean. Ten leave it cleansed. And yet, the story does not end there.
One leper turns back. The Samaritan. Luke’s description of what follows is deliberately blurred:
Then one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, praising God with a loud voice; and he fell on his face at Jesus’ feet, giving him thanks (17:15–16).
He praises God and falls at Jesus’ feet. Luke does not separate these two actions. The worship given to Israel’s God is shown by prostrating oneself before Jesus of Nazareth. This is Luke’s subtle Christological argument, conveyed not through words but through posture.
Then Jesus says something unexpected. The man has already been healed. Every medical fact about him has changed. Yet Jesus says, “Your faith has made you well” (17:19). The word is no longer καθαρίζω. It is σῴζω, the verb for salvation. Jesus is talking about more than just skin being restored.
Ten received cleansing. One received salvation. The difference wasn’t in what Jesus offered but in who came back.
This is why gratitude isn’t just a virtue to develop; it’s a sign of understanding. How easily we praise and give thanks shows how well we recognize what we’ve been given and how truly unwell we once were. The nine went their way, probably happy. They had been physically cleansed. Only the one who knew his deep need understood the significance of the gift. He went home saved.
He was a foreigner. Like Naaman, he was, by every social and religious standard, the last person anyone would expect to be healed. He was also the only one who returned to worship and give thanks, and therefore the only one who was saved.