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Luke 16 Commentary

Please choose a passage:

Jesus tells His disciples the Parable of the Unrighteous Steward. It is about a manager of a rich man’s estate who is fired for bad stewardship.

Jesus continues His teaching about money. He tells His disciple the faithfulness principle. He who is faithful in a very little thing will be faithful in much greater things. And He who is unrighteous in a very little thing is unrighteous in much.

Jesus reminds His disciples that they can only have one master; it is impossible to serve two. He applies this truth to God and Money, again warning them that they cannot serve both. They will have to choose.

Luke informs the readers that the Pharisees who had been listening to Jesus teach about money were scoffing at what He said. Luke describes the Pharisees as “lovers of money.”

Jesus affirms the endurability of God’s Law. He says that even though the Age of the Law and Prophets have passed, and the Age of the Gospel of the Kingdom has come, it is easier for heaven and earth to pass away than for one part of the Law to fail. In the middle of saying these things, Jesus offers an enigmatic line that everyone is forcing his way into the kingdom of God. 

Jesus continues to teach about the goodness of God’s law and against the self-justified perversions of it by the scoffing Pharisees. He offers a prime example of their detestable manipulation of the law by pointing out how they exploit a manufactured loophole in the marriage laws of Moses.

Jesus tells the Pharisees “The Parable of the Rich Man and Poor Lazarus.” It is a story about a rich and a poor man who die. Both go to Hades—the place of the dead. The poor man is brought to paradise/Abraham’s bosom and lives on in a state of comfort. The rich man whose master was money (rather than God) is in a place of agony where his riches offer no aid.