We’ve just had a federal election in which this question was very live and raw: should Australia build its wealth in order to
invest it in its citizens, or the other way around?
Whatever your views about politics, Jesus tells
us that we all face a similar dilemma when it comes to thinking about our
eternal future. In the parable of the Shrewd Manager, in Luke 16:1-15, we face
this question head-on and Jesus challenges us:
9 “I tell you, use worldly wealth to gain friends for
yourselves, so that when it is gone, you will be welcomed into eternal
dwellings.”
Parables
can be hard to interpret and it’s important
to read them carefully; they are not like manuals; every detail is not an instruction.
They are figurative stories, generally with a few main points and a clue or two
to help. But in this parable, Jesus specifically tells us what it means (in
verse 9).
Talking
specifically to his disciples (verse 1),
Jesus says the point of this parable is that Christians should be using ‘worldly
wealth’ to do something much more worthwhile, something much less ‘wasteful’; surprisingly,
it is something we should be doing for ourselves – gaining friends.
I’ve
heard the Shrewd Manager in this parable likened to the story of Frank William
Abagnale Jr, in the movie, Catch Me If You
Can, in which we see that although the young Frank was a total crook, there
was much to learn from and even admire about him.
So
too this manager is dodgy – firstly for the reason, he was getting the sack;
because he had been “wasting” his master’s wealth in ways that were also “dishonest”
(verses 1 and 8). This language is the same as that used earlier when Jesus
refers to the Prodigal Son, who “squandered his Father’s wealth” with wild
living (Luke 15:13).
It
is the manager’s response to facing the sack that draws Jesus’ attention: he
proceeds to give his master’s clients extreme discounts, slashing their bills
without the consent of the owner. And he does this so that after he gets the
sack, instead of being faced with slave labour or becoming destitute, the master’s
clients will love him and become his community of support.
He
buys these friendships at the expense of his master. But in a strange twist,
this change in the manager is a kind of repentance. To an original reader, the
manager's lifestyle of ‘waste’ with his master’s possessions would have figuratively
pictured the sinful life as a prodigal life, squandering wealth.
But
in a dramatic turn of events, this manager suddenly adopts the completely
opposite approach. He begins using his master’s wealth in a way that gives
extreme benefit to others (the master’s clients) and only indirectly to
himself! And to most of our surprise, the master indeed now commends the
manager. The reason given is that the master admires his shrewd actions (verse
8).
The
manager’s shrewdness was his clever action benefiting his own welfare – which resulted from an understanding of the
predicament he was in and how he could turn it around.
In
making his point, Jesus points out that this
world is better at this kind of clever decision-making than Christians are,
much like the genius Frank Abagnale Jn.:
8 “the people of this world are more shrewd in
dealing with their own kind than are the people of the light”
I’m
not sure how clever our country always is, overall, in this respect. But the
general wisdom of the world usually goes like this: ‘invest in your people’ if
you want to truly prosper and thrive as a people, as a business, or as a country.
The reason generally given is: ‘people are your greatest asset’. So, it goes, ‘don’t
put the cart before the horse’. In other words, this line of wisdom says that the
only way to be healthy and wealthy, ultimately, is to build and invest in your
people, your community; that’s the long-term game plan for ‘building to last’ so
that you will be standing as a business or a country at the end of all the
booms and the busts.
But
in fact, we all have a lot in common
with this manager in this parable, who was in jeopardy on account of how he had
been handling the possessions at his disposal. His master was taking away his
job and he was faced with digging or begging (verse 3). He had come under judgment
for his ‘wasteful’ living (verse 1), and his sentence was the loss of his life
as he knew it.
Much
like the sentence of death over all people, as humans, as managers of God’s
creation, we are all losing our jobs too. What
we have will also not last; our days are numbered, and, in the end, we won’t be
able to take any of it with us; we are going to lose it all on account of our
sin – we have squandered God’s wealth and glory in living against him (Luke
15:13).
Just like this manager, none of us actually
owns anything at all; everything belongs to God; it’s all his stuff — he is the
Proprietor, the Owner, and the Sole Director — we are only managers of our
master’s wealth, his possessions. Wealth is, of course, broader than money and
includes all things of value and worth in this world.
The
question this parable asks us to think about as Christians (now that we have become his disciples, verse 1), is to
what extent we are still literally wasting our master’s wealth (actual money
and possessions, verse 9), and to what extent are we using it shrewdly. Still, he has given it all to
us with the renewed role of using it for our good and the good of others. But
are we using it for real, true, lasting benefit and gain?
Alluding
to the ‘dishonest’ manager, in verse 10-12 we read:
10“Whoever can be trusted with very little can
also be trusted with much, and whoever is dishonest with very little will also
be dishonest with much. 11So if you have not been trustworthy in
handling worldly wealth, who will
trust you with true riches? 12And
if you have not been trustworthy with someone
else’s property, who will give you property of your own?
According
to Jesus, the whole of creation is “someone else’s property”. What is at stake
with our use of it is the gift (or not) of true
wealth in his eternal kingdom; how rich and rewarded will we be forever in the future?
The teaching of this parable is that
we can and should be investing in our futures now using the resources at our disposal
that don’t belong to us anyway.
But
rather than serving God by using worldly wealth shrewdly – wisely making decisions that result in our true good – we
can end up serving this world’s riches as slaves to possessions (which is idolatry).
Alluding
to the master of this manager, in verse 13 we read:
13 “No one can serve two masters. Either you will
hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise
the other. You cannot serve both God and money.”
The
real problem for the dishonest and wasteful manager in this parable that put
him in perilous jeopardy was that his actions betrayed a hateful despise of his
master as the real Owner, Proprietor and Sole Director over the possessions he
wanted to manage his own way.
And
so, Jesus’ warning to handle wealth well in this world is a warning to
Christians about jeopardising our eternal life and future through failing to
use worldly wealth to truly serve God.
In
fact, Jesus implies that it is an incredible ‘waste’ for his followers to not
be using the worldly wealth we have under our management to build our eternal
futures. Again, we read in verse 11:
11 So if you have not been trustworthy in
handling worldly wealth, who will trust you with true riches?
But
this parable also concerns the way that
Christians are to do this. We do this by investing in people. Again, in verse 9 it says:
9 I tell you, use worldly wealth to gain
friends for yourselves, so that when it is gone, you will be welcomed into
eternal dwellings.
According
to Jesus, the best way to use worldly wealth now is to use it to make “friends”.
What does this mean, exactly? The context of Luke 15 and the rest of Luke 16 is
important in carefully understanding this. In Luke 15 we have the parable of the lost coin, the lost sheep, and the lost sons (seeking
and saving the lost), but after this parable in Luke 16 we have the parable of Lazarus
and the judgement of the rich man, who neglects to show mercy to the poor (16:19).
The word “friends”
is vague, and probably in context, it is meant to have broad application.
I
think it can and should apply to all ways to use money and possessions to
benefit the poor, evangelistic ministries, fellow
believers in the church, our family, our mates and friendships.
In other words, it is there, as God’s
own wealth, for the good of people. So, we should be using it to benefit people, investing it
into people. That’s what it is there for.
And
this is the big point of the parable: if we’re really clever (shrewd), we will
see that this is the only thing we can do with worldly wealth that will not
jeopardise our eternal reward as Christians; but will actually, ultimately be
of benefit to ourselves in the new creation.
There
is an important nuance to notice here to really grasp the full weight of Jesus’
point here.
Notice
in verse 9, it does not actually say “when it is gone, they will welcome you into eternal dwellings”. It actually says, in
an accurate translation, “when it is gone, you will be welcomed” – What this means is
that Jesus is thinking about you, and the welcome you will receive in heaven;
rather than giving a parable focused on using your wealth to bring more people to
heaven. While evangelistic ministry is a great way to invest worldly wealth in
service of God, this parable is about you, as a Christian, being shrewd and
securing for yourself a richer welcome into the eternal kingdom of our Father.
It
is “you” who will be welcomed into eternal dwellings if you use and invest wealth
in this world for the good and the gain of people. Yes, wealth can be used so
that others will be there too, but there is no causal relationship between
evangelistic giving and conversions! ‘They’ can
be there and might be there, but regardless,
it is what good you have done in this life for others and how that will be of
measurable significance to your life eternally that is in focus in this parable
I believe.
In
similar vein we are told elsewhere:
“Be as shrewd as snakes but as harmless as
doves” Matthew 10:16
“Freely you have received, freely give” Matthew
10:8
So
let’s learn from this story about a manager who responded to judgment wisely; facing
extreme jeopardy, shrewdly changing to use his master’s credit and expense for
the good of both clients and ultimately his own welfare and welcome.
The
Apostle Peter, also alluding to the effect of facing up to our mortality
through suffering in this life, describes the result that this can have on
Christians:
1 Therefore, since Christ suffered in his body,
arm yourselves also with the same attitude, because whoever suffers in the body
is done with sin. 2 As a result, they do not live the rest of their earthly lives for evil human desires, but
rather for the will of God. 1 Peter 4:1-2.
Christians let’s not jeopardise ourselves. Let’s be
shrewder about our future. Let’s invest in people.
Finally,
let me qualify all of this with a reminder that using our (God’s) money or
possession for our own good directly is not necessarily is sinful!
In
the Bible we know and see that within the Creator's framework people should
seek good, both for themselves and for others. Life before and outside the
Garden is to be a human pursuit of the "it is good" element of
creation.
Ultimately
God as the highest good, and so should attract our greatest pursuit and love by
a long shot (Luke 14:26). While John Piper (referring to Jonathan Edwards and C
S Lewis) refers to this as Christian Hedonism, Tim Keller describes it as a
matter of the right ordering of our ‘loves’.
What
this means is that in practice sin is not so much what is ‘selfish,’ but what
is against God and others and is not good for us. It is loving and right to
ourselves and others, and therefore God, to seek our own good, because this is
what is good for God and ourselves and others.
Shrewdness
and wisdom, then, involves identifying what is good for us, what are the
greatest goods, and why. It is always the ‘why’ that ultimately makes the pursuit
of something good, not the object itself.
As
1 Corinthians 13 famously says:
3 If I give all I possess to the poor and give
over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.
If
we give ourselves and everything for reasons other than true love and worship
of Christ, we will, in fact, lose our reward – “we” will benefit nothing from it
in the End.
But let’s love
our Master by investing his wealth in people. It would be great if
Australia and its governments did this more, but as a Christian, I feel even greater
the rebuke of Jesus to be doing this much more myself, not just as a voter, but
as a citizen.
