Commentary - Luke 16:14-18

Bird's-eye view

In this short but dense passage, Jesus pivots from a parable about money to a direct confrontation with the Pharisees, who loved it. Their scoffing reveals their heart, and Jesus proceeds to dismantle their entire worldview. He exposes their self-justification as a sham before a God who sees the heart. He then makes a profound statement about the turning point of redemptive history, the hinge between the era of the Law and the Prophets and the present proclamation of the Kingdom. But lest anyone think this new era means a lowering of God's standards, Jesus immediately affirms the absolute permanence of the Law, down to the smallest stroke of a letter. As a hard-hitting, practical example of this unyielding standard, He addresses the issue of divorce and remarriage, cutting through all human traditions and restoring God's creational intent. The passage moves from the particular sin of greed to the general principle of God's unchanging Word, showing that the gospel of the kingdom does not abolish righteousness but rather establishes it on a true foundation.

This is a masterful takedown of any religion that seeks to curry favor with the world. The Pharisees had managed to be both highly religious and highly esteemed by men, a neat trick. Jesus blows this up, declaring that what men applaud, God often finds detestable. The kingdom He brings is not a comfortable addition to the status quo; it is a violent upheaval that demands a radical reorientation of everything, founded upon a Word that is more stable than the heavens and the earth.

Outline

Context In Luke

This passage comes directly on the heels of the parable of the unjust steward (Luke 16:1-9) and Jesus' explicit teaching that "You cannot serve God and mammon" (Luke 16:13). The parable itself is a difficult one, but its point is about using worldly wealth with shrewd, eternal wisdom. The Pharisees, identified here as "lovers of money," hear this teaching and their reaction is not honest inquiry but visceral contempt. They scoffed. Jesus' words in our text are a direct response to their mockery. He is not changing the subject from money to the law and divorce. Rather, He is showing them why they scoff. Their love for money is a symptom of a deeper disease: a heart that justifies itself before men and despises the unchanging, heart-searching standard of God's Law. The teaching on the permanence of the Law and the example of divorce are illustrations of the very standard they are rejecting in their love for worldly esteem and wealth.

Key Issues

The Unmovable Standard

When modern people think of religion, they often think of something flexible, something that ought to adapt to the times. The Pharisees, for all their reputation for strictness, were masters of this kind of adaptation. They had developed a complex system of traditions and loopholes that allowed them to appear righteous while nursing hearts full of greed, pride, and lust. They could be "lovers of money" and still be the most respected religious men in town. They had, in effect, figured out how to serve God and mammon, or so they thought.

Jesus confronts this head on. He tells them that the entire game is changing. The kingdom is here, and it does not play by their rules. But the newness of the kingdom is not a departure from God's standard; it is the fulfillment of it. The Law they claimed to uphold, but had actually domesticated, is more permanent than the ground they are standing on. And to prove it, He picks an issue where their clever adjustments were rampant, the issue of divorce. The kingdom Jesus brings does not offer a lower bar for us to get over. It sets the bar at an impossible height, the very perfection of God's will, and then provides a Savior who has cleared it for us, and who by His Spirit gives us a new heart that loves the bar and wants to aim for it.

Verse by Verse Commentary

14 Now the Pharisees, who were lovers of money, were listening to all these things and were scoffing at Him.

Luke gives us the crucial diagnostic key to the Pharisees' character: they were lovers of money. This was not a minor character flaw; it was their master. It was idolatry. So when Jesus finished His teaching with the stark declaration, "You cannot serve God and mammon," He was launching a direct assault on their god. Their reaction was not reasoned debate; it was scoffing. This is the sneer of a threatened idolater. They were turning up their noses at Him. The word implies a deep-seated contempt. They were not just disagreeing with a point of theology; they were mocking the very idea that their wealth, which they saw as a sign of God's blessing and their own righteousness, could be a spiritual snare.

15 And He said to them, “You are those who justify yourselves in the sight of men, but God knows your hearts, for that which is highly esteemed among men is detestable in the sight of God.

Jesus immediately diagnoses the root of their problem. Their entire religious system was geared toward an audience of men. They were experts in impression management. To justify yourselves means to declare yourselves righteous, to manufacture an appearance of righteousness that would win public approval. And they were successful. But Jesus points to a different court, a different Judge. "God knows your hearts." Man looks at the outward performance; God looks at the central motivation, the seat of desire, the heart. And in their hearts, He saw the love of money. Then comes the great reversal, a foundational principle of the kingdom. That which is highly esteemed among men, the very things our world celebrates, success, wealth, influence, reputation, is often an abomination in God's sight. Not because these things are intrinsically evil, but because fallen men invariably turn them into idols, making them the basis of their self-justification.

16 “The Law and the Prophets were until John; since that time the good news of the kingdom of God is proclaimed, and everyone is forcing his way into it.

This verse marks a monumental shift in the history of redemption. The period of promise, testified by the Law and the Prophets, reached its terminus with John the Baptist. John was the last and greatest of the old covenant prophets, standing on the threshold of the new. With his arrival, and supremely with the arrival of the one he announced, the era of fulfillment has dawned. The kingdom is no longer just a future hope; it is present good news being proclaimed. And the response it elicits is not passive. "Everyone is forcing his way into it." This is not a picture of polite society queuing up. This is the image of a city gate being stormed. It speaks of a violent, desperate, holy zeal. The tax collectors, the prostitutes, the sinners, they heard the good news and realized this was their only chance, and they pressed in with all their might. The Pharisees, on the other hand, stood back and scoffed.

17 But it is easier for heaven and earth to pass away than for one stroke of a letter of the Law to fail.

Lest anyone hear verse 16 and think that the "good news" of the kingdom is a relaxation of God's standards, Jesus immediately corrects them. The dawning of the new era does not abrogate the old revelation. The moral will of God, as revealed in the Law, is more permanent than the physical universe. A "stroke of a letter" refers to the tiniest decorative hook or horn on a Hebrew character. Not even the smallest detail of God's revealed will can fail or be set aside. Jesus did not come to abolish the Law but to fulfill it, to live it out perfectly and to bear its curse on our behalf. The gospel does not do away with the Law; it establishes it by providing the only way it can truly be satisfied, through the substitutionary work of Christ and the regenerating work of the Spirit.

18 “Everyone who divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery, and he who marries a woman who is divorced from a husband commits adultery.

And here is the proof, the hard case. If you want to see what the unyielding nature of the Law looks like in practice, consider marriage. The Pharisees had developed all sorts of sophisticated arguments, based on Deuteronomy 24, to permit divorce for trivial reasons. They had softened God's standard to accommodate man's hardness of heart. Jesus sweeps all their casuistry aside and gets back to the foundational, creational principle of "one flesh." He states the standard in its most absolute and uncompromising form. This is not intended to be a complete treatise on the grounds for divorce, which He addresses elsewhere. It is a sharp, illustrative jab to prove the point of verse 17. The Pharisees were using the Law to justify themselves in the sight of men, but Jesus uses the Law to reveal the heart. Their casual approach to the marriage covenant was a perfect example of how they ignored the weightier matters of the Law, just as their love of money was.

Application

This passage is a spiritual gut check for the church today. The spirit of the Pharisees is alive and well, and it tempts us in at least three ways. First is the love of money. We live in a culture that is besotted with wealth, and the church has too often baptized this idolatry with a thin veneer of "blessing." We must hear again that you cannot serve God and mammon. If our financial decisions are not governed by a desire for the kingdom, then we are serving the wrong master.

Second is the desire for the esteem of men. We are constantly tempted to trim the sails of our doctrine and ethics to make them more palatable to a hostile culture. We want to be seen as reasonable, compassionate, and relevant. But Jesus reminds us that what is highly esteemed among men is often an abomination to God. Faithfulness requires a willingness to be scoffed at, to be considered fools for Christ's sake.

Third is the temptation to lower God's standards. We do this when we find clever ways to explain away the Bible's clear teaching on sexual morality, on the sanctity of life, or on the nature of marriage. We do it when we treat the Law as a set of outdated suggestions instead of the permanent, unmovable Word of God. The gospel is not a free pass to ignore the Law. The gospel is the good news that Christ has fulfilled the Law for us, and has freed us from its condemnation so that we might, for the first time, begin to delight in it and walk in its ways from a new heart. We must, like the sinners who heard Jesus, stop scoffing, stop justifying ourselves, and start forcing our way into the kingdom with a desperate, joyful faith.