Luke 16:9

MAKE FRIENDS

‘And I say unto you, Make to yourselves friends of the mammon of unrighteousness; that, when ye fail, they may receive you into everlasting habitations.’

Luke 16:9

Our Lord wishes us to understand that His religion and service call for just as much zeal, prudence, and tact as the pursuit of earthly gain, for the Christian life must be just as wisely regulated as the worldly, and, as far as forethought, industry, and enthusiasm are concerned, the Church has many a lesson to learn from the Exchange.

There are few spectacles more melancholy than to watch the tactless and apathetic methods by which the average Christian seems to think it likely he can lure to the ranks of righteousness and transform the forces which make for evil into the forces which make for good. The question is one of pure policy. It is the point upon which our Lord fastens for the main lesson He teaches in the parable; ‘Make to yourselves friends of the mammon of unrighteousness.’ It implies two things.

I. We are to be stewards for Christ: that is the relationship in which we are to stand. We must not, therefore, regard anything as apart from, or outside that stewardship, and must treat nobody with a cold indifference as if they lay beyond the range of our Christian influence.

II. Everywhere and out of everything we are to try to make friends—friends first, of all, of ourselves, friends, secondly, of righteousness, and, finally, of God.

III. What is mammon?—Let me offer you a few practical examples of what is meant by the obscure phrase our Lord here employs—obscure to us, but, perhaps, clear to the Jews who heard it. The Syriac word ‘mammon’ seems to have been used as the generic term for money, food, or anything else which is made to minister to evil ends by men of evil minds. But the point to notice is that nothing is evil in itself, but may be made streams of righteousness or wells of unrighteousness. We may turn things at will into friends or foes. Our Lord teaches a strictly scientific principle, the principle which the great Francis Bacon introduced into the natural science of his day. Bacon taught that we ought to conquer nature. How? By making her our friend. Let man, he says, only stop to study and obey the laws of nature and she will show her gratitude by becoming his aid and benefactress. And now this natural principle must be reflected in our dealings with the world moral and spiritual, if, that is to say, we are to win the world to the service of God. Take, for example, the dealings we have with money. It is powerful for good or for evil; it may become the mammon of unrighteousness, or it may become a friend and ally destined to purchase entrance into everlasting habitations. It ceases to be mammon—when? Why, when you cease to use it as such. And so we see the meaning of our Lord’s saying which follows the parable: ‘Ye cannot serve God and mammon.’

Archdeacon H. E. J. Bevan.