Shrewd Saints and Unrighteous Mammon Text: Luke 16:1-13
Introduction: The Parable That Makes the Pious Squirm
There are certain passages of Scripture that are designed by the Holy Spirit to function like a burr under a saddle. They are meant to irritate, to provoke, and to jostle us out of our comfortable, pietistic slumbers. The parable of the unrighteous steward is chief among them. Many a preacher has tiptoed around this story, or tried to explain it away, because it seems, at first blush, to praise a swindler. It appears to commend dishonesty. And in our age of sentimental, therapeutic Christianity, we want our parables to be filled with fluffy sheep and gentle, loving fathers, not clever crooks.
But Jesus is not interested in our sentimentalism. He is interested in our salvation, and that often requires a sharp dose of reality. This parable is a splash of cold water in the face of the church. It is a divine commendation of a particular kind of worldly wisdom, a shrewdness that the sons of this age possess in spades, but which the sons of light are often sorely lacking. We Christians can be so heavenly-minded that we are no earthly good, and Jesus here tells us that our lack of practical, forward-thinking wisdom in the things of God is a disgrace.
We live in a time when Christians have a very confused relationship with money. On the one hand, you have the health and wealth gospel, which essentially baptizes greed and turns God into a cosmic slot machine. On the other hand, you have a kind of Gnostic piety that treats money as inherently dirty, something to be avoided and distrusted, as though matter itself were the problem. Both are profound errors. The Bible teaches that money is not the root of all evil; the love of money is. Money itself is a tool. It is a created thing, and like all created things, it is to be stewarded, managed, and leveraged for the glory of the Creator.
This parable is a master class in that kind of leverage. Jesus grabs a story from the cutthroat world of ancient finance, a world of debtors and creditors and managers looking out for number one, and He uses it to teach us an eternal lesson. He is not commending the steward's ethics, but He is absolutely commending his brains. He is telling His disciples, and by extension, us, to wake up, to look at how the world works, and to be at least as clever in securing our eternal future as the ungodly are in securing their temporary one.
The Text
Now He was also saying to the disciples, “There was a rich man who had a steward, and this steward was reported to him as squandering his possessions. And he called for him and said to him, ‘What is this I hear about you? Give an accounting of your stewardship, for you can no longer be steward.’ And the steward said to himself, ‘What shall I do, since my master is taking the stewardship away from me? I am not strong enough to dig; I am ashamed to beg. I know what I shall do, so that when I am removed from the stewardship people will take me into their homes.’ And he summoned each one of his master’s debtors, and he began saying to the first, ‘How much do you owe my master?’ And he said, ‘One hundred baths of oil.’ And he said to him, ‘Take your bill, and sit down quickly and write fifty.’ Then he said to another, ‘And how much do you owe?’ And he said, ‘One hundred kors of wheat.’ He said to him, ‘Take your bill, and write eighty.’ And his master praised the unrighteous steward because he had acted shrewdly, for the sons of this age are more shrewd in relation to their own kind than the sons of light. And I say to you, make friends for yourselves from the wealth of unrighteousness, so that when it fails, they will take you into the eternal dwellings. He who is faithful in a very little thing is faithful also in much, and he who is unrighteous in a very little thing is unrighteous also in much. Therefore if you have not been faithful in the use of unrighteous wealth, who will entrust the true riches to you? And if you have not been faithful in the use of that which is another’s, who will give you that which is your own? No servant can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.”
(Luke 16:1-13 LSB)
The Coming Audit (vv. 1-2)
The story begins with a situation every one of us should understand in our bones.
"There was a rich man who had a steward, and this steward was reported to him as squandering his possessions. And he called for him and said to him, ‘What is this I hear about you? Give an accounting of your stewardship, for you can no longer be steward.’" (Luke 16:1-2)
The first thing we must establish is that we are all stewards. You are not the rich man in this story; you are the steward. The fundamental Creator/creature distinction means that God owns everything, and we own nothing. Your money, your house, your car, your time, your talents, your very next breath, it is all His. He has entrusted it to you to manage on His behalf. We are all middle-management.
And this steward was caught "squandering." This is the same word used to describe the prodigal son, who wasted his inheritance on riotous living. It means to scatter, to dissipate, to manage foolishly and wastefully. And let us be clear: every one of us, in our natural state, is a squanderer. We take the good gifts of God and we scatter them on our own lusts, our own pride, our own trivial pursuits. We are all guilty as charged.
And because the master is just, the day of reckoning comes. "Give an accounting of your stewardship, for you can no longer be steward." The pink slip is issued. The audit is called. This is the reality that hangs over every human life. We will all stand before the judgment seat of Christ to give an account for what we have done with what He has given us. The party is over, and the books must be balanced.
A Scoundrel's Clarity (vv. 3-7)
What follows is the heart of the parable, the part that reveals the steward's genius.
"And the steward said to himself, ‘What shall I do, since my master is taking the stewardship away from me? I am not strong enough to dig; I am ashamed to beg. I know what I shall do...’" (Luke 16:3-4)
Notice the cold, hard realism. This man is not given to wishful thinking. He doesn't hope the master will change his mind. He doesn't deny the reality of his situation. He faces his crisis head-on. He knows he is about to be unemployed and without prospects. He assesses his skill set: "not strong enough to dig." He considers his pride: "ashamed to beg." He is in a corner, and he knows it.
This is the kind of clear-eyed assessment that is often lacking among the sons of light. We often prefer a pious fog to the sharp lines of reality. But this man, this scoundrel, sees his future with perfect clarity, and he acts decisively.
His plan is brilliant in its simplicity. He uses the last vestiges of his authority as steward to secure his future. He calls in his master's debtors and systematically reduces their debts. The man who owes a hundred baths of oil now owes fifty. The one who owes a hundred kors of wheat now owes eighty. What has he done? He has used his master's assets to place a great number of influential people in his personal debt. He has created a network of obligatory gratitude. When he is out on the street, these men will be socially and morally bound to "take me into their homes." He has leveraged his present position to guarantee his future reception.
The Praiseworthy Principle (vv. 8-9)
Now comes the verse that causes all the trouble, followed by Jesus' direct command.
"And his master praised the unrighteous steward because he had acted shrewdly, for the sons of this age are more shrewd in relation to their own kind than the sons of light. And I say to you, make friends for yourselves from the wealth of unrighteousness, so that when it fails, they will take you into the eternal dwellings." (Genesis 1:8-9)
Let us be absolutely clear. The master did not praise his dishonesty. He praised his shrewdness. The word is phronimos, meaning prudent, wise, sensible, thoughtful. This is not a commendation of theft; it is a commendation of forward-thinking pragmatism. The point is not that we should cook the books, but that we should be as intelligent and decisive about our eternal future as this man was about his temporal one.
Jesus drives the point home with a devastating comparison. The "sons of this age," the unbelievers, are more savvy, more astute, in dealing with their own kind than are the "sons of light." The average unbelieving hedge fund manager puts more thought, planning, and strategic energy into securing his retirement in Boca Raton than the average Christian puts into securing his welcome into the eternal dwellings. That ought to sting.
And so Jesus gives the command: "make friends for yourselves from the wealth of unrighteousness." What is this "wealth of unrighteousness," or "unrighteous mammon"? It is simply the currency of this fallen world. It is money, assets, possessions. It is called unrighteous not because it is inherently evil, but because it is the primary tool of the unrighteous world system, and it is temporary. It is going to fail. Your 401k will one day be worthless. Your house will turn to dust. Jesus says to take this temporary, fading currency and use it to make eternal friends. How? Through breathtaking, strategic, gospel-centered generosity. You use your money to support the proclamation of the gospel, to build up the church, to care for the saints, to show hospitality. You are converting that which is temporary into that which is eternal. You are sending it on ahead, investing it in people who will be on the welcoming committee for you in heaven.
The Farm League of Faithfulness (vv. 10-13)
Jesus concludes by explaining the principle behind the command. Our life here is a test, a proving ground.
"He who is faithful in a very little thing is faithful also in much... Therefore if you have not been faithful in the use of unrighteous wealth, who will entrust the true riches to you?" (Luke 16:10-11)
Your handling of money is the "very little thing." It is the practice field. It is the farm league. How you manage the "unrighteous wealth" that God has temporarily placed in your hands demonstrates your fitness, or lack thereof, for handling the "true riches" of the age to come. This is a staggering thought. Your bank statement is a spiritual indicator. Your budget is a theological document. It reveals what you truly believe about God, the world, and eternity.
He continues this line of thought: "And if you have not been faithful in the use of that which is another’s, who will give you that which is your own?" (v. 12). Everything you have now is "another's", it all belongs to God. You are a steward. Your faithfulness in managing His property now determines whether you will receive "that which is your own", your eternal inheritance, your place as a co-heir with Christ, ruling and reigning with Him forever. Stewardship precedes ownership. Faithfulness in the rental property qualifies you for the title deed to the mansion.
Finally, Jesus lays the two options bare. There is no third way.
"No servant can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth." (Luke 16:13)
Mammon is wealth personified as a rival deity. It demands loyalty. It demands worship. It promises security, significance, and power, all the things that only God can truly provide. And you must choose. You cannot serve both. You cannot have one foot in the kingdom of God and one foot in the kingdom of Mammon. If God is your master, money is your servant, a tool to be deployed for His purposes. If Mammon is your master, then God becomes, at best, a useful accessory to your financial ambitions. Your use of money does not determine your master; it reveals your master.
Conclusion: Gospel Shrewdness
This parable, then, is a call to a radical, gospel-fueled shrewdness. It calls us to have the same clear-eyed realism about our eternal future that the unrighteous steward had about his earthly one. We are all stewards who have squandered our master's goods. We all face a final accounting. We cannot work our way out of this debt, and we should be ashamed to beg for mercy on our own merits.
So what is the truly shrewd move? It is to look to the one who managed His stewardship perfectly. Jesus Christ, the Son of God, was the only faithful steward. And in the ultimate act of divine shrewdness, He took our bankrupt accounts upon Himself. On the cross, He took the bill that read "unpayable" and with His own blood, He wrote "Paid in full." He used the infinite wealth of His own righteousness to make friends for God, purchasing for us an eternal dwelling.
Because He has done this, we are now free. We are free from the need to serve Mammon for our security. Our future is secure in Christ. Therefore, we are liberated to be joyfully, wildly, and shrewdly generous with the resources God gives us. We are no longer trying to secure a place for ourselves. We are joyfully investing in the kingdom we have already been given.
So the question this parable leaves us with is this: Are you being shrewd? Are you looking at your time, your money, and your possessions with the clear-eyed realism of a man whose future depends on it? Are you leveraging the temporary, fading wealth of this age for the permanent, glorious riches of the next? The sons of this age are wise for a day. We are called to be wise for eternity.