Luke 16:10-13

“ He that is faithful in that which is least, is faithful also in much; and he that is unjust in the least, is unjust also in much. 11. If therefore ye have not been faithful in the unrighteous mammon, who will commit to your trust that which is true? 12. And if ye have not been faithful in that which is another man's, who shall give you that which is your own? 13. No servant can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon. ”

Many regard these reflections as arbitrarily placed here by Luke. But whatever Bleek may say, is it not just the manner in which we constitute ourselves proprietors of our earthly goods, which leads us to make a use of them which is contrary to their true destination? The following piece, therefore, derives its explanation from the parable, and is directly connected with it. Luke 16:12 (τῷ ἀλλοτρίῳ) would even be unintelligible apart from it.

Ver. 10 is a comparison borrowed from common life. From the experience expressed in the two parallel propositions of this verse, it follows that a master does not think of elevating to a higher position the servant who has abused his confidence in matters of less importance. Faithful toward the master, unjust toward men.

The application of this rule of conduct to believers, Luke 16:11-12. The unrighteous mammon is God's money, which man unjustly takes as his own. Faithfulness would have implied, above all, the employment of those goods in the service of God; but our deprivation once pronounced (death), it implies their employment in our interest rightly understood by means of beneficence. Through lack of this fidelity or wisdom, we establish our own incapacity to administer better goods if they were confided to us; therefore God will not commit them to us. Those goods are called τὸ ἀληθινόν, the true good, that which corresponds really to the idea of good. The contrast has misled several commentators to give to the word ἄδικος the meaning of deceitful. This is to confound the word ἀληθινός with ἀληθής (veracious). The real good is that which can in no case be changed to its opposite. It is not so with money, which is at best a provisional good, and may even be a source of evil. This is the application of 10a; Luke 16:12 is that of 10b. Earthly goods are called another's good, that is to say, a good which strictly belongs to another than ourselves (God). As it is faithfulness to God, so it is justice to man, to dispose of them with a view to our poor neighbour. That which is our own denotes the good for which we are essentially fitted, which is the normal completion of our being, the Divine Spirit become our own spirit by entire assimilation, or in the words of Jesus, the kingdom prepared for us from the foundation of the world. Our Lord's thought is therefore this: God commits to man, during his earthly sojourn in the state of probation, goods belonging to Him, which are of less value (earthly things); and the use, faithful or unfaithful, just or unjust, which we make of these settles the question whether our true patrimony (the goods of the Spirit, of which the believer himself receives only the earnest here below) shall or shall not be granted to him above. Like a rich father, who should trust his son with a domain of little value, that he might be trained later in life to manage the whole of his inheritance, thus putting his character to the proof, so God exposes external seeming goods of no value to the thousand abuses of our unskilful administration here below, that from the use which we make of them there may one day be determined for each of us whether we shall be put in possession, or whether we shall be deprived of our true eternal heritage, the good which corresponds to our inmost nature. The entire philosophy of our terrestial existence is contained in these words.

Ver. 13, which closes this piece, is still connected with the image of the parable: the steward had two masters, whose service he could not succeed in reconciling, the owner of the revenue which he was managing, and money, which he was worshipping.

The two parallel propositions of this verse are usually regarded as identical in meaning, and as differing only in the position assigned to each of the two masters successively as the objects of the two opposite feelings. But Bleek justly observes, that the absence of the article before ἕνος in the second proposition seems to forbid our taking this pronoun as the simple repetition of the preceding τὸν ἕνα in the first; he therefore gives it a more general sense, the one or the other of the two preceding, and places the whole difference between the two parallel propositions in the graduated meaning of the different verbs employed, holding to being less strong than loving, and despising less strong than hating. Thus: “He will hate the one and love the other; or at least, he will hold more either to the one or other of the two, which will necessarily lead him to neglect the service of the other.”

It makes no material difference.

This verse, whatever the same learned critic may say, concludes this discourse perfectly, and forms the transition to the following piece, in which we find a sincere worshipper of Jehovah perishing because he has practically made money his God. The place which this verse occupies in Matthew in the Sermon on the Mount (Luke 6:24) is also suitable, but somewhat uncertain, like that of the whole piece of which it forms part.