Who thanks whom?

Just spotted this for the first time: Luke 17:6-10 and Luke 17:11-19 are deliberately juxtaposed.

17:6-10 establishes that the right way to relate to God is as his servants. When we serve him, he doesn't “thank” us, because we recognise that we are merely giving him (a tiny part of) what he is due. As the commentaries point out, this is really about the fact that God does not owe us anything because of the service we have given him. Our service never puts us in his debt.

17:11-19 has, as its key motif, thanksgiving. All 10 lepers exercised what we would term “faith”, namely that they asked Jesus for mercy. But only the one leper who returned to give thanks was described Jesus as having the kind of faith that saves (σωζω) a person. In other words, gratitude is an integral part of genuine saving faith. Faith without gratitude isn't really faith at all.

What links these two stories is the theme of giving thanks.

Human nature, the wrong response that Jesus encounters “on the road” is one that (a) thinks God should thank us - that our service of him puts us in his debt, and (b) fails to go back and thank God for his blessings to us.

The appropriate response, that Jesus also encounters, recognises that (a) our service for God is no more than, and in fact quite a bit less than, what we owe him. God doesn't owe us a thing. (b) What God has done for us is so amazing that we owe him everything — including, but certainly not limited to, verbal thanksgiving.