Lovers of God

The parable of the unrighteous steward

Lk 16:1-13 1 Now He was also saying to the disciples, "There was a rich man who had a manager, and this manager was reported to him as squandering his possessions. 2 "And he called him and said to him, ‘What is this I hear about you? Give an accounting of your management, for you can no longer be manager.’ 3 "The manager said to himself, ‘What shall I do, since my master is taking the management away from me? I am not strong enough to dig; I am ashamed to beg. 4 ‘I know what I shall do, so that when I am removed from the management people will welcome me into their homes.’ 5 "And he summoned each one of his master’s debtors, and he began saying to the first, ‘How much do you owe my master?’ 6 "And he said, ‘A hundred measures of oil.’ And he said to him, ‘Take your bill, and sit down quickly and write fifty.’ 7 "Then he said to another, ‘And how much do you owe?’ And he said, ‘A hundred measures of wheat.’ He said to him, ‘Take your bill, and write eighty.’ 8 "And his master praised the unrighteous manager because he had acted shrewdly; for the sons of this age are more shrewd in relation to their own kind than the sons of light. 9 "And I say to you, make friends for yourselves by means of the wealth of unrighteousness, so that when it fails, they will receive you into the eternal dwellings. 10 "He who is faithful in a very little thing is faithful also in much; and he who is unrighteous in a very little thing is unrighteous also in much. 11 "Therefore if you have not been faithful in the use of unrighteous wealth, who will entrust the true riches to you? 12 "And if you have not been faithful in the use of that which is another’s, who will give you that which is your own? 13 "No servant can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth."

If you create something, it’s yours, isn’t it? You may let someone borrow it for a while, and for a price, and have it eventually returned to you; alternatively, you may give it to someone, transferring ownership.

The money (and the stuff it buys) that you have belongs to the ‘loan’ category. In general, you earn money using your talents to transform raw material to something useful. Money that is gifted to you was initially earned by someone else. In either case, both, the raw material, and your talents, were created by God, and loaned to you. So then, they belong to God. God loaned them to you and others while you all are alive, but after you all die, they revert back to God. Since everyone eventually dies, everything eventually returns to God.

In that sense, we are like the rich man’s manager, with the rich man representing God.

It is unrighteous for us to think that we own the wealth that we have. The wealth we have (which consists of our net worth, and our talents) is considered unrighteous because it is not really ours, but God’s. It fails us when we die, in the sense that we can no longer avail of it after we die.

In the parable, when the manager knew that his time as a manager was soon going to be up, he used his master’s resources to make things better for him in the next stage of his life, and his master thought that that was a shrewd move. Jesus’ point in the parable was that we too need to be like that manager, and use the unrighteous wealth that we have received to do things that will result in an eternal reward that we can use when we get to the next stage of our lives (i.e. life in heaven).

Unbelievers (the sons of this age) know how to prepare for the next stage of their lives, but believers (the sons of light) don’t. We need to fix that in ourselves.

So then, how do we convert unrighteous wealth to eternal reward? We do that by serving God, and building His kingdom. Our service to God on earth results in an eternal reward that is our own, and one that we never lose.

However, you can’t just go about building God’s kingdom. God has to enlist you. How does God decide who to enlist for what?

In God’s eyes, unrighteous wealth is the ‘little’ stuff, and service to God is the ‘true riches’ and the big stuff. Per verse 10, how you use unrighteous wealth is a good predictor of how well you will serve God; specifically, if you are faithful (or unfaithful) in the use of unrighteous wealth then you will also be faithful (or unfaithful) in the service of God. God doesn’t want unfaithful servants, and therefore, before He enlists you, He tests your ability to handle the wealth He gave you, and based on how you perform, He decides accordingly concerning what ministry to give you in the building of His kingdom.

What does ‘being faithful’ mean? To be faithful is to do what God tells you to do. God is faithful because He does what He says. We are faithful when we do what God says. When you do with your money what God tells you to do then you are faithful with unrighteous wealth. Verses 11 and 12 tell us that if we are not faithful with unrighteous mammon (the stuff that belongs to another person i.e. God) God won’t give us the true riches (the honor of serving Him – resulting in a reward that will be ours to keep forever).

Now here’s the rub: what God tells you to do with your money is different from what you would like to do with it. We tend to focus on accumulating as much money as we can, whereas God wants us to become more like Jesus, Who never desired to accumulate money. That is why, you can’t serve God and mammon at the same time. One, and only one, must be prioritized.

If you prioritize God, then you have to deprioritize money. If you want to serve God, you must give up your desire to make decisions based on how best to make the most money; rather, you should be asking, how best can you serve God.