Chapter 16 – One God Translation

Luke

   16 Jesus also said to his disciples, “Once there was a rich man, whose manager was accused of wasting the rich man’s money. 2 So the rich man called the manager in and said, ‘What is this I hear about you? Give me your management report, because you will not be managing any more.’ 3 The manager said to himself, ‘What am I going to do, now that my master is taking away the management job from me? I do not have strength to go digging, and I am ashamed to beg. 4 I know what I will do, so that when I am dismissed as manager, people will welcome me into their homes.’ 5 He asked each person who owed his master to come and see him. He asked the first one, ‘How much do you owe my master?’ 6 He replied, ‘A hundred units of oil.’ The manager said to him, ‘Take your bill, quickly sit down and write fifty.’ 7 Then he said to another, ‘And how much do you owe?’ The man answered, ‘A hundred measures of wheat.’ He said to him, ‘Take your bill and write eighty.’ 8 His master commended the defrauding manager because he acted cleverly, because people of this age[433] act more cleverly in dealing with their own kind than do the children of light. 9 I am telling you, make friends for yourselves using the wealth of this corrupt world, so that when it is used up they will welcome you into the homes of the coming age! [434]
    10 “Whoever can be trusted with small things can also be trusted with big things, and whoever is dishonest in small things will also be dishonest in big things. 11 So if you are not trustworthy when it comes to worldly wealth, who will trust you with true riches? 12 And if you are not trustworthy with what belongs to someone else, who will give you anything of your own? 13 No one can be a servant of two masters. Either he will hate one and love the other, or he will be devoted to one and look down on the other. You cannot serve both God and money.”
    14 Now the Pharisees, who loved money, had been listening to all this, and they began mocking Jesus. 15 He said to them, “You justify yourselves in front of people, but God knows your hearts. What is highly respected by people is detestable in the sight of God.
    16 “The Law and the prophets were until John; from then on the Gospel about the Kingdom of God is being preached, and everyone is urgently invited to enter it. 17 But it is easier for heaven and earth to pass away than for the smallest detail of the Law to fail. [435]
    18 “Anyone who divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery, and he who marries a woman who is divorced commits adultery. [436]
    19 “There once was a rich man who wore expensive purple and fine linen clothes, and lived a life of luxury. 20 A poor man named Lazarus lay at his gate, covered in sores, 21 longing to be fed from the scraps which fell from the rich man’s table. And besides, the dogs came and licked his sores. 22 The poor man died, and he was carr[437]ied away by the angels to Abraham’s bosom. The rich man died too and he was buried. 23 Tormented in Hades, he looked up and saw Abraham a long way away with Lazarus at his side.
    24 ‘Father Abraham,’ he cried out, ‘have mercy on me and send Lazarus so that he could dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, because I am in agony in this flame.’ 25 But Abraham said, ‘Child, remember that during your life you received your good things, just as Lazarus received bad things. But now he is being comforted here, while you are in agony.
    26 And besides all that, between us and you there is a huge chasm set, so that those who want to go from here to you cannot do so, and no one can cross over from there to us.’ 27 The rich man said, ‘Father, I am begging you, then please send him to my father’s house. 28 I have five brothers and he could warn them, so that they will not also come to this place of torment.’ 29 But Abraham replied, ‘They have Moses and the prophets. Let them listen to them.’ 30 But he said, ‘No, father Abraham, but if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent!’ 31 But Abraham said to him, ‘If they will not listen to Moses and the prophets, they will not be persuaded even if someone rises from the dead.’” [438]

Luke

[433]

The present evil world system which will persist until it is replaced by the new Age of the coming Kingdom of God on earth (see Mt. 19:28; Acts 3:21).

[434]

A home belonging to the Age to Come. Jesus is speaking with irony here, since money will never achieve a place in the coming Kingdom of the Age to Come.

[435]

The law in the New Covenant is in the spirit and not the letter (see Rom. 7:6; Col. 2:16-17; Eph. 2:14-15).

[436]

An exception, for infidelity, which allows for divorce and thus remarriage, is given in Matt. 19:9.

[437]

The phrase “Abraham’s bosom” would suggest to readers of the NT the coming banquet at which Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and the prophets will celebrate in the coming Kingdom when Jesus returns. However the story about Lazarus and the rich man pictures a conscious embodied existence with rewards and punishments before the future judgment. The wicked are within earshot of the saved. According to Josephus the Pharisees of the 1 st century believed in the immortality of the soul (an unbiblical belief) and hence in a conscious intermediate state for the righteous and the wicked between death and future resurrection. The Jewish Talmud refers to Abraham’s bosom and it is clear that in some Jewish circles Abraham was thought to be alive and well, immediately after death.

[438]

On no account should this one story by used, as it often is, to contradict the whole of the rest of Scripture which teaches that the dead are unconscious till the future resurrection (Ecc. 9:5, 10; Jn. 11:11, 14). In this story, one well known to Jews, the characters are not disembodied “souls” or “spirits.” Thus taken literally it gives no support at all to the traditional idea that the dead are currently disembodied, without bodies, in heaven or underground in hell! Rewards are given at the future resurrection of the upright, Jesus had said earlier in 14:14. It would be highly confusing to pit Luke 16 against Luke 14, and ch. 20, and against the rest of the Bible. The biblical view of death is established by such clear texts as Ps. 88:11-12: death is “the land of forgetfulness”; Ecc. 9:5, 10 “the dead know nothing at all…there is no activity or planning or knowledge or wisdom in Sheol/Hades.” Man in death “ceases to be” (Job 7:21). Ps. 115:17: “The dead do not praise the Lord, nor do any who go down into silence.” Jesus in this story uses a measure of irony, using the Pharisees’ story against themselves. In the same context a few verses earlier, Jesus had used sarcasm: “Use the wealth of this world to make friends for yourselves so that when it is gone, you will be welcomed into an eternal home!” (16:9).