So, you went to work today, you fulfilled every obligation that your employer placed before you, the tasks were completed as required, and that small sense of inner satisfaction, of being useful and profitable was within you once again at the end of the day.
Was what you did as important as the surgeon who saved that little girl’s life? As the fireman who pulled the entire family to safety? As the world leader who caused peace between two nations, thereby saving the lives of thousands and averting war?
Probably not, at least not in your mind right now.
“If ye love me, keep my commandments.” (John 14:15)
And so, you obey your Lord’s commandments, with as much sincerity of heart that you can, and then you read that if you do all that you have been commanded to do, to count yourself as unprofitable, and the unprofitable servant is cast into outer darkness.
But wait, you say, that cannot be so, I did all I was commanded to do in love, isn’t following the Lord’s commandments, actions taken in love for Him enough?
“Wherefore? Because they sought it not by faith, but as it were by the works of the law. For they stumbled at that stumblingstone;” (Romans 9:32)
Which can cause you to be profitable, love or faith? And if love, then love of a sincere heart, love revealed by actions, or must the two be combined?
The love spoken of here cannot be produced, it is impossible for it to exist within us, unless we first have faith, unquestioning faith in the Scriptures, in the promises revealed therein, and that faith must abide in the full assurance of those truths.
I suggest this, that unmitigated faith, that sincere and deeply understood and revealed love, and the actions performed, not only those we have been commanded to do, but those above and beyond them, are what makes us profitable, as much as any who are hid in Christ, can actually be thought of as profitable to the Living God who needs absolutely nothing at all from us.
“Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works?” (Matt. 7:22)
Actions performed without love for the Savior, love professed in the heart, even with our lips, with no actions of love, obeying the commandments, but never more than that. The verse does not say, “Love without works” my friends, it says, “Even so faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone.” (James 2:17)
We are saved by grace through faith, we perform works of actions in love because, and only because, we have been blessed with that faith, and that faith causes us, in love, to go beyond what we have been commanded to do, always and only for His glory.
That surgeon, that firefighter, not even the people they saved from certain death have not done one single thing that has any eternal value whatsoever, and you did not either today at work, unless you performed an action of love in faith for the glory of the Most High.
If you did so, then today, even in a small, in a somewhat seemingly insignificant way in your mind, you were profitable.
There is no place in the Scriptures that commands me to write these letters, there is mentioned nowhere in His Holy Word that my beautiful wife is to type them up for me. But there is also no place in the Word of God that says I am to feel profitable. It says I am to be profitable.
Faith, love, actions, if these are separated, you will not be profitable.
