Matthew 24:42-51 (NASB)
42 "Therefore be on the alert, for you do not know which day your Lord is coming.
43 "But be sure of this, that if the head of the house had known at what time of the night the thief was coming, he would have been on the alert and would not have allowed his house to be broken into.
44 "For this reason you also must be ready; for the Son of Man is coming at an hour when you do not think He will.
45 "Who then is the faithful and sensible slave whom his master put in charge of his household to give them their food at the proper time?
46 "Blessed is that slave whom his master finds so doing when he comes.
47 "Truly I say to you that he will put him in charge of all his possessions.
48 "But if that evil slave says in his heart, 'My master is not coming for a long time,'
49 and begins to beat his fellow slaves and eat and drink with drunkards;
50 the master of that slave will come on a day when he does not expect him and at an hour which he does not know,
51 and will cut him in pieces and assign him a place with the hypocrites; in that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
Jesus was speaking to his disciples, giving them final instructions, as it were. He was particularly focused on them remaining alert for his return and comporting themselves well as his servants while they did. Throughout his lecture to his disciples, Jesus used various characters to render his points: a thief invading a house, servants fulfilling their duties (or not) in their Master's absence, virgins waiting for the bridegroom to arrive, servants given money by their Master to increase in his absence, a shepherd separating sheep from goats. In all of these analogies, the same commands are driven home: watch for my return and fulfill well my will in my absence. To fail to do so would carry dire consequences; to obey would result in reward. When Christ used the analogies that he did, was he intending to make his disciples precisely parallel to slaves and female virgins? Well, the first seems unlikely in light of the following:
John 15:15-16 (NASB)
15 "No longer do I call you slaves, for the slave does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all things that I have heard from My Father I have made known to you.
16 "You did not choose Me but I chose you, and appointed you that you would go and bear fruit, and that your fruit would remain, so that whatever you ask of the Father in My name He may give to you.
Obviously, that Christ intended his disciples to think of themselves literally as his virgins is also very unlikely. These analogies are simply rhetorical devices carrying Christ's commands to remain on the alert for his return and fulfill well his will. By way of these analogies, Jesus was giving a broad-strokes exhortation to his disciples, not indicating that his disciples were actually mere slaves, or actually were young, female virgins, or that he was actually a thief who would steal from them in the dead of night.
But those opposed to the idea of eternal security in Jesus Christ want the analogies to be more significant, particularly the servant-Master ones, because they seem to offer ground for a saved-and-lost construction to Jesus words. A servant of Christ the Master can only refer to a born-again person, they say. And so, if such a servant can do evil and be cast into a place of weeping and gnashing of teeth, it has to mean that a born-again person can lose their salvation.
Well, it seems to me there are some things that confound putting such a construction on Matthew 24:42-51:
Born-again believers are not merely servants but children of God, adopted joint-heirs with Christ (Romans 8:17), accepted by God in him, given a Spirit of adoption whereby they may cry, "Abba, Father!" (Romans 8:15) The relationship such people have to God far exceeds in intimacy the servant-Master one. But in the servant-Master parable of Matthew 24 there isn't the slightest hint of such intimacy, no inkling of a deeper, closer fellowship between the Master and his servants. How strictly, then, ought one to treat the parable as parallel to the redeemed child-Heavenly Father relationship? Not very, it seems to me. And this has a bearing on whether or not its appropriate to say that the servants in the analogy/parable are representative of the post-Calvary, born-again person. In light of the sharp disparity here in what saved-and-lost folks want to make a tight parallel, I am confident that it does no violence to the passage to say that it is not speaking particularly of born-again people, but only generally of an inferior-superior relationship (hence the virgins-bridegroom analogy).
There is, too, the constraining fact that the sole basis upon which anyone gains acceptance with God is Christ and their trust in him as their Savior and Lord (Romans 10:9-10; John 3:16; 1 John 5:11-13; Acts 4:12; John 14:6; 1 Timothy 2:5). Every born-again person is "accepted in the Beloved (Christ)" (Ephesians 1:6); there is no other way to God except in and through the Beloved. Good works, especially, are explicitly and repeatedly excluded as a means of being saved. (Ephesians 2:8-9; 2 Timothy 1:9; Titus 3:5; Galatians 3:1-3, 1 Corinthians 1:26-31, etc.) But if good works have nothing whatever to do with how one obtains salvation, and if Christ alone is the sole avenue to acceptance by God (John 10:9; John 1:12), how do good works (obedience to God) become the means by which one retains their salvation? And how, if works are the way one remains saved, does one not ultimately become one's own savior? These facts and questions cast a great pall over the saved-and-lost interpretation of Matthew 24:42-51, in my view.
Also, in his lecture to his disciples in Matthew 24 & 25, Jesus says nothing about salvation, about his atoning sacrifice for the sins of all mankind, about his disciples being made alive spiritually by the Holy Spirit, about believing in their heart and confessing with their mouth the Lord Jesus Christ. These are all necessary predicates, however, to being in relationship with God. Here, again, the servants-Master parable does not properly parallel the child-Heavenly Father relationship of the born-again person. Was Christ, then, intending to make such a parallel? It doesn't seem so to me.
In addition to these things, I wonder about the person in whom the Spirit truly dwells carrying on as the unfaithful servant did in Christ's parable(s). Where the Master is totally absent in the parables, the born-again person is indwelt by the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 6:19-20; John 14:16-17; 1 John 4:13; Romans 8:9-14, etc.) who convicts, teaches, comforts, strengthens and transforms them (John 16:8-13; Ephesians 3:16; Philippians 2:13; 1 Corinthians 2:10-16; Galatians 5:22-23, etc.). In fact, without his presence within, a person cannot be, and is not, saved (Titus 3:5-8; Romans 8:9). How can a person for whom all these things are true, carry on like the unfaithful servant? I don't think they can - persistently and untroubled, as the unfaithful servant did - which further weakens the idea that the servant-Master parables are meant to parallel and characterize the child-Heavenly Father relationship.
In light of all this, it seems clear to me that Jesus was not intending to teach anything about salvation in Matthew 24:42-51, about being an adopted joint-heir with himself in God's family, but was merely exhorting his disciples, in a very OT, law-keeping, Jewish way, to serve him well in his absence - especially when his absence grew prolonged.
