Luke 16:1-13

1 st. Luke 16:1-13. The Unjust Steward.

Is there a connection between this lesson on riches and the preceding? The formula ἔλεγε δὲ καί, and He said also (Luke 16:1), seems to indicate that there is. Olshausen supposes that the disciples (Luke 16:1) to whom the parable is addressed are publicans brought back to God, those recent converts of chap. 15, whom Jesus was exhorting to employ wisely the earthly goods which they had acquired unjustly. But the expression: to His disciples (Luke 16:1), refers naturally to the ordinary disciples of our Lord. In the sense of Olshausen, some epithet would require to have been added. The connection is rather in the keeping up of the contrast between the life of faith and pharisaic righteousness. The two chief sins of the Pharisees were pride, with its fruit hypocrisy, and avarice (Luke 16:14). We see in the Sermon on the Mount, which was directed against their false righteousness, how Jesus passes directly from the one of those sins to the other (Matthew 6:18-19). This is precisely what He does here. He had just been stigmatizing pharisaic pride in the person of the elder son. Now this disposition is ordinarily accompanied by that proud hardness which characterizes the wicked rich man, as the heart broken by the experiences of faith is naturally disposed to the liberal actions of the unjust steward. Hence the form: He said to them also.