Luke 16:25

‘But Abraham said, “Son, remember that you in your lifetime received your good things, and Lazarus in the same way evil things, but now here he is comforted, and you are in anguish.” '

‘Son.' Abraham recognises his kinship. He is a son of Abraham, but it does him no good (compare Luke 3:8). The Pharisees also laid great stress on being sons of Abraham (John 8:33; John 8:39). The reply of Abraham to the rich man is the reply of Jesus to the taunts of the Pharisees (Luke 16:14). If in your life time you receive good things, and do not use them to the glory of God, in the afterlife you will receive bad things. Riches are a heavy responsibility which few can bear and survive, for they corrupt the soul.

The reply is not saying that all who suffer in this life will have joy in the next life, and that all who have joy in this life will have sorrow in the next. That is to look at it superficially. The reply is particular to their situations. The one is the rich man who enjoyed his luxuries with thought or care for no one but his own family, who misused his riches and ignored God's Instruction given in the Law of Moses. Who basically ignored God. He knew what the Instruction of God taught him, but the pleasure of sin and the delight in riches overrode it. His comforts anaesthetised him. He had thus rejected compassion and had chosen to enjoy ‘good things'. he had no doubt had compassion on those that he loved. But he had not looked outside his own circle. Thus the good things that he had enjoyed now witnessed against him, and cried out about his disobedience. The other is the man whose name was recorded in Heaven, who was the one whom God helped. In his life he had suffered lack, but because his heart was right towards God he had no lack in the next life. And the principle is that the joys or sorrows that they experienced in this life no longer matter, except to testify for or against what they were, for the next life sets all to rights for good or bad. (For was we discover at the end the condemnation of the rich man lay in the fact that he had ignored the Instruction of God).