Shrewder about our future (Christians, let’s not jeopardise ourselves)

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.