The Parable of the Dishonest Manager

Luke 15 focused on God’s willingness to forgive even the most heinous of sinners when they repent, with Jesus telling three parables about lost things in order to make the point. That brings us to Luke 16, where the theme of money and possessions runs through the various teachings from Christ. The proper use of money is particularly in view in today’s passage, which gives us Jesus’ parable of the dishonest manager or steward (vv. 1–9).

The parable of the dishonest manager may be the most difficult of Jesus’ parables to interpret, for it features a character who acts dishonestly and is praised. Given our Lord’s high view of God’s law (Matt. 5:17–19), however, we know that Jesus cannot be commending sin.

In the parable, a rich man is about to remove the manager of his household. Facing unemployment and looking out for his own self-interest, the manager acts so that once he is fired, he will have friends who will welcome him into their houses and provide for him. He has not been let go yet, so he contacts people in debt to his rich master and reduces what they owe. Perhaps he removes the interest on the bills owed, or he forfeits his commission on the debt. Regardless, the debt forgiven is large. For example, he halves the total amount of oil owed, which represents an initial debt of about 875 gallons of oil, requiring 150 olive trees to produce. The rich man does not get angry at the manager but praises him for his shrewdness (Luke 16:1–8).

Then Jesus comments that unbelievers are frequently shrewder than believers before telling us to make friends via “unrighteous wealth” so that when money fails they will receive us into “eternal dwellings” (vv. 8–9). “Eternal dwellings” indicates that the parable is about salvation. Jesus probably calls the money unrighteous because wealth can become an occasion for sins such as greed. Moreover, the recognition that wealth will fail reveals limits to the utility of money. Possessing riches will not save us on the day of wrath, Proverbs 11:4 tells us. In light of all that, Jesus seems to be saying that believers need to be just as wise in their own self-interest as unbelievers are. Our greatest self-interest is eternal life, which money cannot buy. Generously giving to others is how we are to live (the manager gave away money by forgiving debts), for we cannot take our wealth with us anyway when we die. If we are generous, however, we will be welcomed into eternal life, not because generosity merits heaven but because a generous heart is a fruit of salvation (Luke 19:1–10).