A sermon preached at Covenant Presbyterian Church of Fort Smith, Arkansas on May 3, 2026.
“Will any one of you who has a servant plowing or keeping sheep say to him when he has come in from the field, ‘Come at once and recline at table’? Will he not rather say to him, ‘Prepare supper for me, and dress properly, and serve me while I eat and drink, and afterward you will eat and drink’? Does he thank the servant because he did what was commanded? So you also, when you have done all that you were commanded, say, ‘We are unworthy servants; we have only done what was our duty.’”
On the way to Jerusalem he was passing along between Samaria and Galilee. And as he entered a village, he was met by ten lepers, who stood at a distance and lifted up their voices, saying, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us.” When he saw them he said to them, “Go and show yourselves to the priests.” And as they went they were cleansed. 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. Now he was a Samaritan. Then Jesus answered, “Were not ten cleansed? Where are the nine? Was no one found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?” And he said to him, “Rise and go your way; your faith has made you well” (Luke 17:7–19)[1]
Writing in Tabletalk magazine several years ago, R.C. Sproul said, “The essence of theology is grace; the essence of Christian ethics is gratitude.” He refers to this as the grace-gratitude dynamic: the more we understand how undeserving we are as recipients of God’s grace, the more grateful we will be.[2] Grace is, in essence, the unmerited, sovereign favor of God, whereby he freely justifies, adopts, and sanctifies us through the work of the Holy Spirit. It is not a response to what we think or say, nor is it achieved by anything we do. The proper response then is thanksgiving and praise. I am reminded of George Herbert’s poem “Gratefulness,” in which he prays:
Thou that has given so much to me,
Give one thing more—a grateful heart;
Not thankful when it pleaseth me,
As if thy blessings had spare days;
But such a heart, whose pulse may be
Thy praise.
God has bestowed his grace upon us, let us too pray for grateful hearts.
And yet, there is within the human heart a persistent tendency to think in terms of merit: What have I earned? What is owed to me? Even in the Christian life, this instinct lingers. We may not say it aloud, but we often feel it: Surely God sees my efforts? Surely, he will respond in kind? Surely, I’m owed something? As one man once asked me honestly, “I’ve served God faithfully all my life; why has he not blessed me more?”
Addressing this merit-mentality, Jesus provides a story of a faithful servant of a wealthy household, to which Luke couples an account of Jesus miraculously healing ten lepers. The two are connected, revealing what Sproul called the “grace-gratitude dynamic.” In the story, Jesus addresses what God needs and what we contribute. In the following account, we learn what God gives, what we deserve, and what God deserves. Considering the two passages together, we find that when we rightly understand the grace of God to us, it produces gratitude in us.
What God Needs
Jesus’s story begins with a servant who has been working all day, plowing fields and tending sheep.At the end of the day, when his work is finished, it isn’t yet finished.He must clean up, dress up, and serve his master’s supper. Only when all is done will he serve himself. Should he instead expect his master to serve him, saying, “Come at once and recline at table”? Of course not! He’s the servant. It would be like, Phil Ryken says, “going out to dinner and hearing the waitress say, ‘You know, I’ve been working hard all night, and I’m a terrific waitress, and I’m really hungry right now, and I think I’ll just sit down with you folks and eat some of your shrimp Alfredo.’”[3]That would be her last table to serve, wouldn’t it? And without a tip!
A servant is not served but serves. Does his service require the master to thank him? No.The servant has a duty and he does it, no applause necessary.Or, as I told a young man who worked for me years ago, “I don’t need to thank you for doing your job. The job is the thanks.”
Of course, we understand this in the context of everyday life, but what is the spiritual significance of Jesus’s story? He explains: “So you also, when you have done all that you were commanded, say, ‘We are unworthy servants; we have only done what was our duty’” (17:10). In Jesus’s story, God is the master. We are the servants. We recognize ourselves by the defining word “unworthy,” which doesn’t mean worthless but meritless. God owes us nothing, but we owe him everything, even our very existence. “What do you have that you did not receive?” Paul asks, “If then you received it, why do you boast as if you did not receive it?” (1 Cor. 4:7). We are “unworthy,” indeed.
And it is here that we realize that Jesus is not teaching us about working without thanks, but the unmerited favor of God bestowed upon the unworthy. God does not thank us for what he alone has done for us: “For by grace [we] have been saved through faith. And this is not [our] own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast” (Eph. 2:8-9). We are unworthy servants, bought with a price,[4] a price paid by the blood of Christ:
Yet, here is the irony: Even though we deserve nothing, Jesus willingly became a servant for our salvation. You may recall four chapters earlier in Luke’s Gospel, Jesus told a parable concluding with this statement: “Blessed are those servants whom the master finds awake when he comes. Truly, I say to you, he will dress himself for service and have them recline at table, and he will come and serve them” (12:37). This was foreshadowing, to be sure, but it introduced a foreign concept to our thinking: a master dressing himself for service and serving us. And then, later in Luke’s Gospel, we hear it again: “For who is the greater, one who reclines at table or one who serves? Is it not the one who reclines at table? But I am among you as the one who serves” (22:27). A master does not serve; he is served. And yet, our Lord said, “I am among you as the one who serves.” Yes, we are the unworthy servants of Jesus’s story, but he is the worthy servant, who served us by saving us through his atoning death and resurrection. And even now he bids us to come at once and recline at table with him, not because he is needy but because he loves us and died to bring us into his kingdom.
“Only fear the Lord and serve him faithfully with all your heart,” Samuel said to Israel, “For consider what great things he has done for you” (1 Sam. 12:24). The grace of God transforms unworthy workers into grateful servants. And this guards against pride, as though we had achieved something great, and resentment, as though God owes us more. We are servants, gladly so, of a gracious Master.
What God Gives
Our text now shifts from story to reality.Proceeding onward to Jerusalem, Jesus enters a village and is met by ten lepers. They stand at a distance, as the law required.[5] Their condition has rendered them unclean, isolated, cut off from community and worship. And yet they cry out together, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us” (Luke 17:13). Rightly do they call him “Master,” for they are servants too. They ask him for mercy, that he, the Great Physician, would heal them, that he, the righteous One, would cleanse them. It is model petition with no claim, no merit, only need.
How does Jesus answer their plea? He does not heal them or even pronounce them clean. He simply commands, “Go and show yourselves to the priests” (17:14), in accordance with the law.[6] Taking Jesus at his Word, they believe and obey, before the confirming evidence appears. And only as they go, they are healed. “Help meets them,” J.C. Ryle says, “in the path of obedience.”[7]
Ten lepers, equally helpless, equally undeserving, equally dependent come to Christ. And he heals them, all of them. Not one of them earned it.Not one of them contributed to it.Yet, in his sovereign mercy and grace, Christ healed them, all.
Don’t miss the gospel in this miracle. For, “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners” (1 Tim. 1:15), not the clean but the unclean, not the healthy but the sick, not the morally impressive but sinners. Christianity is not a plan for moral improvement. It is the sovereign grace of God bestowed upon the unclean and unworthy, cleansing the defiled, restoring the outcast, giving life to the dead, saving the undeserving. While God owes us nothing, he gives us everything in Christ.
And yet, there is a sobering detail we must not miss in this miraculous account: All ten receive the gift but only one returns to give thanks and praise. Nine out of ten expressed no gratitude, as if they were owed what they miraculously received, giving not even a thank you in return. It is a sad testimony, and a common one too.
What God Deserves
One of the ten does come back, not quietly but “praising God with a loud voice.” And it leads him right where it should: “on his face at Jesus’ feet.”He knows who healed him.He knows it was a miracle. He knows there is only one who heals the leper. He knows his Savior and Master by name.He displays the kind of gratitude that grace compels.
And to this beautiful picture of gratitude, Luke (not so) subtly adds, “Now he was a Samaritan” (Luke 17:15-16).A Samaritan! He’s not even part of the covenant community.He’s an outsider, the least expected, and yet the most grateful. Perhaps he presumed Jewish Jesus would heal only Jewish lepers. How surprised he must have been to be healed.
But where are the ungrateful ones?“Were not ten cleansed?” Jesus asks (17:17).Of course, he knows.He’s not asking; he’s teaching. How easy it is to receive the gifts of God without returning thanks.It is a defining characteristic of depraved humanity,[8] and one of the prevailing sins of our age.[9]
The nine received mercy, but they did not respond in worship. The one received mercy and returned in praise, to whom Jesus says, “Rise and go your way; your faith has made you well” (17:19).By God’s grace through faith, he is both healed from leprosy and saved for eternity, inevitably leading to thanksgiving and praise.
Let us then examine ourselves in light of his testimony. He returns, not to move on as though nothing has happened.He glorifies God, recognizing the true source of his blessing. He gives thanks, responding personally and humbly.He worships Christ, who is worthy of worship!
The Christian life is not a life of subtle self-congratulation but Christ-centered gratitude. As the Apostle Paul put it, “Far be it from me to boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ” (Gal. 6:14). We, unworthy servants, boast not in what we have done but in what Christ has done for us: mercy instead of judgment, cleansing instead of defilement, fellowship instead of isolation, salvation instead of condemnation.R.C. Sproul says, “When we truly understand grace—when we see that God only owes us wrath but has provided Christ’s merit to cover our demerit—then everything changes. The Christian motivation for ethics is not merely to obey some abstract law or a list of rules; rather, our response is provoked by gratitude.”[10]Let our lives then be defined by grace-compelled gratitude, rejoicing in God’s mercy, giving thanks for his grace, and gratefully confessing, “God owes me nothing, yet in Christ, he has given me everything.”
[1] Unless referenced otherwise, all Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version
(Wheaton: Crossway Bibles, 2001).
[2] https://learn.ligonier.org/articles/what-grace
[3] Philip Graham Ryken, Luke, Vol. 2 (Phillipsburg: P&R Publishing, 2009), 221.
[4] 1 Cor. 6:20
[5] Lev. 13:45-46
[6] Lev. 14:1-32
[7] J.C. Ryle, Expository Thoughts on Luke, Vol. 2 (Edinburgh: The Banner of Truth Trust, 2012), 233.
[8] Rom. 1:21
[9] 2 Tim. 3:1-2
Planter, Pastor, Preacher 