Luke 16: A Dishonest Manager Gets Praised
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✝ Passage: Luke 16
A manager is about to lose his job for wasting his master’s assets, so he calls in the master’s debtors and cuts their bills — securing himself favor and a soft landing before the axe falls. The twist is that the master commends him for it, and Jesus holds him up as an example, not of honesty, but of shrewdness applied under pressure. The children of this world, he says, are wiser in dealing with their own generation than the children of light.
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bible luke 16
Two masters, no split custody
Right after that uncomfortable parable comes one of the flattest lines in the Gospel: you cannot serve both God and Mammon. No hedging, no partial allegiance — Luke notes the Pharisees, who loved money, scoffed at this.
A rich man who never learns a name
The rich man and Lazarus reverses everything by the time we get to the afterlife: the beggar who lay uncared-for at the gate is comforted, and the rich man who never once names him — even from torment, he asks for Lazarus to be sent, treating him as an errand-runner still — is in anguish. Status doesn’t carry over.
“No servant can serve two masters… You aren’t able to serve God and Mammon.” — Luke 16:13
“Remember that you, in your lifetime, received your good things, and Lazarus, in like manner, bad things.” — Luke 16:25
Questions for study
- What exactly is Jesus commending in the dishonest manager — and what is he not commending?
- Why can devotion to money and devotion to God not be split evenly?
- What does the rich man’s request to “send Lazarus” reveal about how little he ever really saw him?
- What would “shrewdness” applied to something eternal actually look like in your own decisions?