Bible Commentaries
Luke 16

Verses 1-31

XVI 1-31 Advice on the Right Attitude to Earthly Goods —All this chapter is proper to Lk save for scattered parallels of 13, 16-18 in Mt. The parables of ch 15 about God’s kindness towards the sinner do not alter in any way the fundamental truth that he must be loyally served no matter what the cost; Lk here returns to the duty of renunciation but adds a positive aspect of that renunciation which is full of encouragement. What is to be done with the goods of which a disciple of Christ strips himself? Jesus reminds him that the poor are always with us; therefore let him use his goods to make friends with these special friends of God and so secure a welcome for himself in the world to come.

1-13 The Unjust Steward —Many find difficulties in the interpretation of this parable, but the meaning is clear enough especially if an emended reading be given to 9. There is question of a steward who manages the estate of a rich man: the steward is a villicus or farmbailiff. Accused of bad management (and with good reason, as the parable hints) he is dismissed. How is he to live. Afraid to work ashamed to beg, he is not ashamed to steal. Therefore he calls up the tenants who pay their rent in kind and with them he falsifies their contracts and so cheats the master further. By this piece of trickery the bailiff thinks to make friends and patrons for himself who will welcome him after his dismissal. The lord’s commendation of ’the steward of unrighteousness’, this dishonest bailiff, is the great difficulty. Which lord? Surely not the cheated master! But how could our Lord praise such a piece of swindling so contrary to all his spirit and teaching? The answer is, as Lagrange points out, that both master and bailiff are children of this world’; the former learns how he has been swindled in a way that will be difficult to prove: ’he prudently decides to treat it as a joke and makes the comment anyone would make in the circumstances: "A rascal, but a clever rascal!" ’ Our Lord commends neither master nor bailiff. The arable does not say that the bailiff had acted ’wisely’ ut ’shrewdly’, i.e. with a prudence that belongs to the ideals of this world; this is what our Lord (not the master here) means in 8b, where he compares ’the children of this world’ with ’the children of light’, Hebraisms which denote those who live by the ideals of this world or of the world to come; cf.Ephesians 5:8; 1 Thessalonians 5:5. If only those who have the light to live with a view to their eternal advantage would show the keenness and sagacity of those who live for temporal advantage!

9. An example of how the children of light might imitate the shrewdness of the steward: ’Make for yourselves [as he made for himself] friends through the means of the mammon of unrighteousness, in order that when it shall be no more with you they may welcome you into everlasting dwellings’. ’Mammon’, an Aramaic word (lit. ’something confided’ or ’deposited’), used under the form of’ Mammon of unrighteousness’ as we speak of ’filthy lucre’. Our Lord does not condemn the possession of wealth absolutely, but demands that in this as in all else a man should regard himself as a steward for God. The day will come when that stewardship shall cease by death; Vg and DV follow the reading ’when you shall fail’, but ’when it [i.e. mammon] shall fail you’ is the preferable reading; both come to the same meaning. Therefore prepare for that day by giving alms. It is not necessary to conclude that it is the poor, whom we thus secure as friends, who shall themselves welcome us to heaven where they are at home; ’they’ may be impersonal as in 12:20. But there is an echo here of 6:20 and 16:22. 10-13. The parable is followed by advice about the unrighteous mammon with which is compared something that is true (not the true mammon as the grammatical construction shows); but it is evidently a contrast between false riches and genuine riches. The contrast between ’that which is another’s’ and ’that which is your own’ may mean the wealth confided to our stewardship by God on the one hand, and our own soul’s welfare on the other. Almost verbal parallel between 13 and Matthew 6:24.

14-18 Denunciation of the Pharisees —The introductory verse is special to Lk, the rest finds parallels in Matthew 11:12-13; Matthew 5:18, Matthew 5:32. The Pharisaic opposition to Christ’s teaching on wealth arises not only from their love of money (F?????????) but from that traditional Jewish attitude which looked on worldly prosperity as a sign of God’s favour. But Jesus insists that God’s standards are far otherwise: ’that which among men is lifted up is an abomination before God’, lit. stinks in God’s face. For 15a see 18:9.

The sudden introduction of the ideas in 16-18 may be explained by the supposition that the Pharisees quoted the Law in favour of the traditional attitude. But this is no time, replies our Lord, to look on earthly prosperity as a sign of God’s favour, even if the Law did promise it to Israel in return for faithful service. ’The Law had been upheld by the Prophets, of whom John was the last, but from now onwards the Kingdom of God was to be preached’ ( Lagr., GJC II71). In what way does ’everyone use violence towards’ the Kingdom of God? The Greek says ’everyone advances violently into it’. In view of the demand for stern renunciation it must be concluded that here our Lord means that it is no longer a question of prosperity being a sign of God’s favour, but of depriving oneself of everything for the Kingdom of God.

In 17, perhaps in answer to an unspoken objection, he adds that what he has said is not against the Law; the Kingdom of God is the beginning of a new order in which the Law finds its fulfilment, for everything in the Law that is necessarily good and true is good and true because it forms part of God’s Eternal Law.

The remark in 18 seems utterly discordant unless it be taken as a cited example of the way in which Jesus means his teaching about the fulfilment of the Law to be understood. In Matthew 19:8-10 he declares that repudiation (remarriage is not included) was against the mind of Moses; he may well claim here then that the Law is brought to its perfection by his teaching on marriage.

19-31 Dives and Lazarus —The parable logically follows: the fact of being rich is no assurance that a man is God’s favourite, despite what was asserted to be the contrary teaching of the Law. Here is added the authority of Abraham to show what was the true mind of Moses, for Moses cannot be put in opposition to Abraham. An ancient opinion took this story as real history, and it is true that our Lord does not elsewhere give names to the actors in his parables. But the generall opinion is that we have here a true parable. Note the contrasts again: a rich man, finely clothed and sumptuously fed each day; a poor beggar, lying at the gate, famished, diseased, reduced to the extremity of being abandoned by all but the despised curs of the street who also wait to be fed with the crumbs of the rich man’s table. Omit ’and no one gave him’ with the Greek MSS.

The reverse of the medal is shown in 22-24; the beggar sitting close to Abraham in the great feast of God’s Kingdom, the rich man in hell tortured by fire and parched with thirst. The situation is thus changed: the beggar is rich and the rich man now begs through the good offices of Lazarus. The request is refused: the change of situation is now irrevocably fixed, and there is no means of bridging the gulf of separation. If it is not said, it is at any rate supposed that Lazarus is not only poor but righteous, the rich man not only rich but Jiving for the things of this world; this is implicit in 27-30. Lk is not here teaching that the poor are necessarily the friends of God and the rich his enemies. 22b-23. ’And the rich man also died and was buried; and in hell lifting up his eyes . . .’.25. ’Son, remember that thou didst receive thy good things in thy life-time’, i.e. the goods thy heart was set upon; 25b supposes the opposite for Lazarus.

27-28. The rich man confesses that he and his brethren have not understood what it is that wins companionship with Abraham, the ideal friend of God; but the excuse is inadmissible because the Law and the Prophets teach precisely that, and what could be more authoritative than the Law and the Prophets in the eyes of a Jew? Thus the parable teaches that Jesus is in full accord with the Law regarding both the significance of wealth and the duty of charity; cf.Deuteronomy 26:13; Isaiah 58:5-8; Amos 6:4-6; Amos 8:4-6.