Scroll back in my timeline to September 17th and you will find a post entitled, “Does Jesus Commend Dishonest Stewardships?” In this post, I challenged the idea that Jesus would use a parable to promote an “end justifies the means” lesson. One of the ideas I put forward in the post was that it’s possible, and in line with the cultural norms of the first century, for hired managers to tack on a commission to what they were collecting as their fee. It may have been this commission that the unjust manager eliminated in a shrewd attempt to gain approval from people when he was out of a job.
In this post, I want to set forth another option as a way to reason through the Scriptures which may offer an explanation teaching just as valuable of a lesson without having to shoehorn in an exegesis that somehow has Jesus commending the very behavior the unjust manager was being fired for.
It’s been a while, so let’s refresh our memories by reading the parable at issue:
“He also said to the disciples, “There was a rich man who had a manager, and charges were brought to him that this man was wasting his possessions.
And he called him and said to him, ‘What is this that I hear about you? Turn in the account of your management, for you can no longer be manager.’
And 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, and I am ashamed to beg.
I have decided what to do, so that when I am removed from management, people may receive me into their houses.’
So, summoning his master’s debtors one by one, he said to the first, ‘How much do you owe my master?’
He said, ‘A hundred measures of oil.’ He said to him, ‘Take your bill, and sit down quickly and write fifty.’
Then he said to another, ‘And how much do you owe?’ He said, ‘A hundred measures of wheat.’ He said to him, ‘Take your bill, and write eighty.’
The master commended the dishonest manager for his shrewdness. For the sons of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than the sons of light.
And I tell you, make friends for yourselves by means of unrighteous wealth, so that when it fails they may receive you into the eternal dwellings.” (Luke 16:1-9 ESV).
For a more detailed explanation that I feel is a legitimate way to understand Jesus’ message, feel free to reread the September 17th post. (For those who are reading this in the Tuesdays With Tony Volume 4 book, flip back a few pages or consult the table of contents for the page number).
In the explanation I want to consider now as another way to read this parable, we will focus on the nature of the manager’s work and assume that the amount he lowered the fee was, indeed, money that belonged to the Master. But when we think of the master as God, and us as the unjust servant, perhaps there is a very important lesson that Jesus wants us to understand.
It would have been the manager’s job to use the master’s possession in a way that brought glory and honor to the master. This could have been done in a number of ways. We think of fiduciary as meaning to act in the best interest of the one to whom you are the manager. In the first century, honor was a key element of the patron/client relationship. The patron would extend charis (grace) and the client would extend pistis (faith). This relationship permeated the multicultural Roman world, and even the Israelites would be familiar with this political concept.
So, the unjust manager would have the responsibility of not only increasing the profits of his master, but to use his master’s wealth to increase the pistis his clients would give to him. One problem we have when Jesus says “that this man was wasting his possessions,” is we do not know how the man was wasting his possessions.
Our twenty-first century mindset immediately goes to ineptitude or embezzlement. But could it be that the man was not using the master’s wealth to increase his master’s honor among the people? This is a hard thing for us to wrap our heads around because honor is not something we usually prize in financial transactions. Sure, we want to make money honorably and we want to be generous and charitable when we do, but how many of us would see it as a good trade-off to lose financially to make a client who would owe us his or her pistis?
This is the reality of the world Jesus lived in. Many poor people needed a patron to give them access to influence, customers, funds, or favors. It’s just the way the world worked then. And when you had a patron, that patron required you to come to him for all your needs. He did not want you to go to many patrons. If you needed something he didn’t have access to, it was his job to act as a mediator in his network of patrons to work things out for you.
The thing that made this system work was honor. The desire for the patron to seek honor. It was a big deal if he could demonstrate all the honor people were paying him. It greatly elevated his esteem in the eyes of his peers. Since we do not know in what way the manager in the parable was wasting his master’s possessions, we need to be careful about jumping to a wrong conclusion to cause us to miss the point Jesus wants us to get.
Paul later commandeers the charis (grace)/pistis (faith) political language of his time and applies it to God. We are so accustomed to hear grace and faith as religious terms that we never think that when first century Jews and Gentiles heard these terms from Paul and the other writers, they were not religious terms. They would have heard them as political terms and that’s exactly what the inspired writers wanted them to hear.
Jesus had set up a kingdom and He was the one, and only Patron they would need. He offered grace that they could not get on their own. In return, we would be his clients and return our love for Him in an act of faith. Jesus would even mediate between us and the Father on our behalf. Now, let’s apply this to the story of the unjust manager and see if we can find another application for us.
Perhaps the unjust manager was not using his master’s wealth to bring honor to him. But when he slashed the amount owed to his clients, they would undoubtedly be indebted to his master, bringing great honor to him, even though he did this for a selfish reason. This could have been the thing the master commended the unjust manager for doing. Finally, the manager was using his wealth for something truly beneficial to the master.
How does this relate to God? If God is our Patron, then we are His clients. Everything we have is truly “on loan from God” as the late Rush Limbaugh was fond of saying. What money and possessions we have are not ours, but are God’s that He has made us managers over. How can we use His stuff to bring honor to His name?
We don’t have to go far in the parables or the letters of the New Testament to find out. How many times do we see Jesus tell us to be generous with our possessions, which are really His possessions we simply manage? How many times does He tell us to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, or take care of the sick with His stuff on loan to us? Are we being just or unjust managers of His possessions we manage?
In the New Testament, when Paul met the Apostles to ensure they all were teaching the same Gospel, this was their parting instructions to him as they extended the right hand of fellowship to him:
“and when James and Cephas and John, who seemed to be pillars, perceived the grace that was given to me, they gave the right hand of fellowship to Barnabas and me, that we should go to the Gentiles and they to the circumcised.
Only, they asked us to remember the poor, the very thing I was eager to do.” (Galatians 2:9-10 ESV).
“Remember the poor.”
Even after Jesus left the earth to ascend to Heaven to take His seat on the throne as our King, the disciples knew the importance of using God’s possessions for good in a way to bring honor to His name. In return for the charis (grace) He gives us, we offer pistis (faith) to him by bringing glory and honor to Him before men. The people in the first-century would have understood the importance of this act of faith.
And lest we think we may be grasping at straws with this application, Jesus later gives us a glimpse into how He will judge us as just or unjust managers. It’s not by how much Bible knowledge we have. It’s not by how much theology we have figured out. It’s not by how many church services we have attended. While these things are important, it’s not the measure by which He will use to tell us if we’ve been just or unjust managers of His stuff. With all the things He could have highlighted as the standard He will use in judgment, He gives us this insight:
“When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on his glorious throne.
Before him will be gathered all the nations, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats.
And he will place the sheep on his right, but the goats on the left.
Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.
For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me,
I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.’
Then the righteous will answer him, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink?
And when did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you?
And when did we see you sick or in prison and visit you?’
And the King will answer them, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.’
“Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.
For I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink,
I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not clothe me, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.’
Then they also will answer, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not minister to you?’
Then he will answer them, saying, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.’
And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.” (Matthew 25:31-46 ESV).
Could it be that the message from the parable of the unjust servant is that we are to use the Master’s possession we have by giving for the benefit of others rather than hoarding it for ourselves? Should we seek the honor that our charity will send to God? Whether honor or glory, we do all to elevate Him in the eyes of others.
James says something interesting that may lend credibility to this application:
“You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. You do not have, because you do not ask.
You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions.” (James 4:2-3 ESV).
Is James telling us that the parable teaches we are being the unjust manager if we use God’s possessions on ourselves to the exclusion of giving away God’s stuff to those who dearly need it? Is it the just manager who takes what is God’s that He has laid upon us to ensure we use it on the hungry, the thirsty, the stranger, the naked, the sick, or those who are in prison? If we look at the acts of the early Christians in the first few centuries, they went down in history as being extremely benevolent to all who needed it, whether Christians or non-Christians.
After Emperor Constantine welcomed Christianity into the Roman Empire, his nephew, Julian, tried to reverse this as an avid enemy of Christianity when he tried to restore the pagan Roman gods to their rightful place in the empire. But he kept running into an interesting challenge. The people knew Christians were generous and honorable people. Many had been beneficiaries of their benevolence. Listen to how Emperor Julian referred to this, 300 years after the New Testament was written. In the full letter to a pagan priest, Julian recommends that they start acting more like Christians. Please note, Julian referred to Christians as “impious Galileans” in this excerpt.
“We ought then to share our money with all people, but more generously with the good, and with the helpless and poor so as to suffice for their need.
And I will assert, even though it be paradoxical to say so, that it would be a pious act to share our clothes and food even with the wicked. For it is to the humanity in a person that we give, and not to their moral character. Hence I think that even those who are shut up in prison have a right to the same sort of care, since this kind of philanthropy will not hinder justice….
For it is disgraceful that, when no Jew ever has to beg, and the impious Galileans support not only their own poor but ours as well, all men see our people lack aid from us.”
For centuries, Christians tried to live the life of a just manager of God’s things. Perhaps there is more we can learn from the parable of the unjust servant about what God expects from us than we really want to admit. What are we doing as managers of the things God has entrusted to us for our management? At the very least, Matthew 25 tells us we will give account of that very thing. How much of God’s stuff have we given away to the benefit of others?
“And I tell you, make friends for yourselves by means of unrighteous wealth, so that when it fails they may receive you into the eternal dwellings.” (Luke 16:9 ESV).
Jesus tells us we must deny ourselves and bear our cross daily:
“And he said to all, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.” (Luke 9:23 ESV).
He also says, His yoke is easy and His burden is light:
“Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.
For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” (Matthew 11:29-30 ESV).
How can we reconcile this paradoxical statement of Jesus?
The light burden and easy yoke we bear in Jesus is not the measure of the weight we release when we deny ourselves and bear our cross, giving up everything to Him.
It’s measured on how heavy the burden is after we’ve given up everything that weighs us down to follow Him.
This is from the archives (February 3rd, 2023) as we move closer to our national elections. Tom Pledger, this is for you.
God’s sovereignty is amazing and beyond what we can ever imagine.
For example, when God wants to exercise His sovereignty over a nation, He has more arrows in His quiver than we can imagine in order to accomplish His purposes.
He doesn’t have to bring in another nation to conquer in order to exercise His sovereignty.
Sometimes He may choose to just make a nation’s leaders stupid and therefore make stupid decisions.
“therefore, behold, I will again do wonderful things with this people, with wonder upon wonder; and the wisdom of their wise men shall perish, and the discernment of their discerning men shall be hidden.” (Isaiah 29:14 ESV).
As an American, I’m not sure which is the more scary way God can exert His sovereignty.
Kris Emerson says in his lesson, Strong In Grace, that peace is that place we live between the Grace of God where we get gifts we do not deserve and the Mercy of God where we do not get the punishment we do deserve.
What a wonderful peace our Lord gives us.
Jesus created a perfect paradise on earth for us.
We took that wonderful gift and corrupted it with our sin.
Illnesses, death, pain, famine, tears, consequences…
Look at what we did to His perfect creation; the thing He said was very good.
When we struggled with living in a lost paradise, He had every right to say to us, “You made your bed, now lie in it.”
Instead, He took on flesh, lived over three decades in His broken creation, and crawled into our beds next to us.
When He had every right to walk away from us, He instead, chose to walk hand in hand with us.
And because of that, He intimately understands us better than we can understand ourselves.
Is there anyone in creation who is better suited to be our Mediator, our Advocate, our Champion?
“For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin.
Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.” (Hebrews 4:15-16 ESV).
As we see men and women failing miserably trying to be kings, presidents, or Prime Ministers,
We should take comfort in that Jesus is the perfect and everlasting King.
The Father placed all kings and lords on the earth under His feet and one day, they will answer to Him, the only Sovereign, for their rule upon earth.
Trust King Jesus when men rule in chaos.
Trust King Jesus when selfish shepherds devour their own sheep.
Trust King Jesus when leaders pervert justice and give aid to the wicked.
For the day of reckoning is coming where all wrongs will be made right; all crooked will be made straight; all injustice will receive justice.
When King Jesus exerts His sovereignty over rulers of the earth, the King of kings and Lord of lords will have the last word and none will be able to resist Him.
Keep your allegiance to King Jesus when others tempt you to betray Him. I promise, we do not want to be found in the enemy’s camp when the Father decides to send His Son.
Nations will rise and fall, but the kingdom of Heaven will remain forever.
How might our lives be different if God had locked Satan up after the fall of Adam and Eve, or perhaps, right before the conversation about the forbidden fruit?
Just think what it would be like if we didn’t have the adversary, prowling around like a lion waiting to devour us.
Well, things might not be as good for us as we might imagine.
If God had punished Satan right when he sinned, that wouldn’t end the evil we invite into our hearts.
The truth is, Satan may make the path to evil a little more enticing, but he doesn’t make us commit evil. We are well capable of doing that ourselves.
If God took Satan out of the picture at midnight tonight, and there were no demonic influences, how long do you think it would be before God would have to lock us up for committing evil?
A month?
A day?
An hour?
Less?
Removing Satan would not eliminate the root cause of evil, no matter what some popular religions may tell us today.
Man always has, and always will, have free will. And the Bible makes it clear that the devil didn’t make us do it. This is what James says about why we commit sins:
“But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire.
Then desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death.
Do not be deceived, my beloved brothers.” (James 1:14-16 ESV).
The truth is, we don’t need Satan to make us sin. He’s just a convenient influence to help us feel good and rationalize why we want to do what we want to do anyway.
Did you hear what James said? We are tempted when we are lured and enticed by our own desires, not by Satan.
Satan may be a bad influence on us, but he is not the cause of our sins any more than God is the cause of our sins or obedience.
If God locked people up right away when someone committed evil, how long would it take the earth to be unpopulated?
We can no more blame God for not locking up Satan when he sinned as we can blame Him for not locking us up right away when we sin.
Here is a thought I have been meditating on recently:
At what point do I become the goat on the left who will say to Jesus,
“Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not minister to you?” (Matthew 25:44b ESV).
This is an introspective question, not one I’m seeking a literal answer to. But it is a question I need to face head-on and not sweep under the rug because it’s unpleasant to think about.
I am in the book of 2 Kings in my daily Bible reading. We are familiar with the story of Naaman and his leprosy. But have we spent much time thinking about Gehazi, the servant of Elisha? Perhaps we all have a little of Gehazi in us.
When God cleansed the rich and powerful Naaman of his leprosy, Naaman offered a great reward from his thankful heart. But Elisha refused to take it.
Gehazi, however, coveted the money and secretly ran after Naaman, concocted a story, and asked for the reward. Naaman was thrilled and his generous heart doubled his offer, which Gehazi was all too happy to accept. Greed has that effect on us.
In the end, Gehazi got his wealth, but the leprosy of Naaman was transferred to him and his descendants. Sometimes, the immediate, temporal reward we see becomes a stronger desire than the unseen reward we will receive in due time.
Esau exchanged his birthright for a mess of pottage. Jesus asks us to consider what we will give in exchange for our souls. All too often, we are enticed by the shiny things we see with our eyes and trade away the pearl of great price for a bit of dirt.
And God will let us enjoy the temporary items we trade our souls for. It’s the least He can do if that is where our heart is. If we want a mess of pottage, then we will be able to enjoy it on earth. But what a tragic loss for us.
Jesus says that some people seek glory that belongs to God for themselves. If that’s what they want, God will let them have it, but it will cost them if they rob God of His glory. They can have it here, but God will take it back later.
“Thus, when you give to the needy, sound no trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may be praised by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward.” (Matthew 6:2 ESV).
Gehazi coveted things he had no right to covet, as did the hypocrites who wanted God’s glory. They all were able to enjoy their mess of pottage, but at what cost?
May we all be more like Abraham, our father in faith, who did not see the fullness of God’s promises to him, but died in faith, knowing the reward was his in God’s time.
I have been studying the instance where Jacob wrestles with God. There are so many questions I have that are not easily answered.
How can man wrestle with God and win?
Why did the man who wrestled with Jacob ask him his name?
What was the significance about the man touching Jacob’s hip, giving him a life-long limp?
On the surface, these are interesting facts in a good story. But when you dig deep, these elements of Jacob’s wrestling with God has profound theological elements that provide wonderful council and lessons for us.
I am still putting my thoughts together on this, but I am considering writing about this in my next Tuesdays With Tony post in a few days.
I am just curious, is there anyone else who has some of the same questions I have about this story, or is it just me?
Genesis 19 tells us something amazing about God. In this chapter, God sends angels to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah. Before they do, they visit Abraham’s nephew, Lot, to save him from destruction.
So, Lot invites them into his house, but the wicked men of Sodom come knocking.
“And they called to Lot, “Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us, that we may know them.” (Genesis 19:5 ESV).
Lot comes to their defense. He pleads with them to not do this wickedness against these strangers. But the men of Sodom will not be denied. They pressed hard against Lot and determined to break down his door to get what they wanted.
But then this happened:
“But the men reached out their hands and brought Lot into the house with them and shut the door.
And they struck with blindness the men who were at the entrance of the house, both small and great, so that they wore themselves out groping for the door.” (Genesis 19:10-11 ESV).
Lot, in his goodness, tried to save the angels, but it was beyond his ability. When he failed, God acted through these strangers to save Lot.
Let’s not let this amazing lesson escape us. When we do all we can, God is ready to step in when it is beyond our ability to fix things. Isn’t that amazing?
Sometimes, we shoulder burdens too heavy for us. Sometimes, we expect too much from ourselves. Sometimes, we forget that we have a powerful God Who is willing and able to shoulder what we cannot bear.
And He invites us to let Him do just that:
“casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you.” (1 Peter 5:7 ESV).
I just finished 2 Kings in my daily Bible reading. The spiral had begun. While Judah had moments where a king’s good and honest heart toward the Lord led to a reprieve of judgement, the die was cast and the curses Moses and Joshua spoke about to the people were about to come to fruition.
God was exceeding gracious and long-suffering to the people. Yet, the people spurned the messengers of the Lord and killed His prophets.
As readers of this book, we get to witness the decline and march toward self-destruction of these people.
Not much has changed. We are a people who have spurned the Lord, His message, and we deride His messengers. We are on a steady decline and march toward self-destruction.
Jesus has been lifted up, and we must look to Him as our only means of salvation. But we continue our march toward destruction, just like the people of Israel and Judah. Once we set our hearts to do what we want to do, there remains nothing left but the waiting for God’s wrath and for His long-suffering to end.
We are living a slow-motion train wreck for all to see. Yet the Spirit still pleads for us to turn to the Lord. Some will listen and be saved. I suspect most will not. Most do not want to bend the knee to King Jesus.
In the book of 2 Kings, we witness what rejection and rebellion to God looks like. Yet many are doomed to follow their same path by rejecting the only salvation available to them.
May those with a good and honest heart learn from the past and embrace King Jesus before it’s too late.