IN the preceding chapter, we have learned the gracious purpose of God toward the lost one, the rebellious son. Here we are instructed respecting the Jew in the capacity of steward, and how grace even meets him there, if he would but understand his impending and deserved discharge; nay, his Lord, at personal loss, would mitigate an inevitable sentence, and, in the hour of degradation, lay a groundwork for future and abiding honors. Could a Jew, could any say that they have dispensed God’s gifts with a faithful, un-wasteful hand? The son wastes his substance in riotous living. The steward wastes it by inattention and unfaithfulness. Whatever be our standing, we have not requited God for His goodness to us. We are convicted. We can only say, one and all: “What shall I do?” In this extremity, grace opens a path not only for safety, but unfailing maintenance. We have no property save what belongs to our Lord. We have no title to the mammon of unrighteousness—possession does not establish right; we only hold it by sufferance. Such is our humiliating title and claim to all earthly accumulation. The grace of God canvasses not our title—it overlooks it. It bears with our trespass, and only desires that we so improve our possessions-ours without title or right, nay, distinctly our Lord’s—that when we are called finally to give an account of our stewardship, we may have so traded on our Lord’s rights, that there will be many to own our good works, and sanction honor and reception to us for our services through them.
But if we are unfaithful in our dispensing the mammon of unrighteousness, which God regards as the least, we will be unfaithful in a greater, and consequently we must not expect to be entrusted with true riches, with that which is our own, but only in proportion to our faithfulness in the least. And if your heart is devoted to mammon, to which you have no right, it cannot be devoted to God; you cannot serve both. You must regard it as the least of all God’s gifts; and, therefore, it must never take a high place in your desires, much less be placed in the same view with Him the bountiful source of all.
All these sayings, which in the first verse of the chapter we find were addressed to the disciples, are quite unpalatable to the Pharisees, for their hearts were set on unrighteous mammon; “they were covetous;” they were not ready to be debtors to mercy alone. This further rejection only leads our Lord with greater plainness to declare the result. He denounces self-justification before men, and assures those popularity-loving religionists that human estimation is God’s abomination; that the law and the prophets were until John, but now the “kingdom is preached,” and every one (Jew and Gentile) is pressing into it; that no tittle of the law shall fail; that the law which binds a man to his wife cannot be abrogated. Let the wife be whom she may on the earth, Christ can have no queen there but Israel; but Israel is not without sin if she is wedded to another. And, furthermore, let your eye take a survey of the end: see whether poverty is preferable now, with rest and consolation by and bye, or riches now and torment hereafter. Is it better to be accepted of God, or enriched in the earths? On which was set the heart of Israel? A despised beggar here may be highly accepted in the kingdom of God. There, in Abraham’s bosom, in the richest hospitalities, in the closest friendship, may such an one be placed. Here he may desire “to be fed from the crumbs of the rich man’s table, and the dogs may lick his sores;” (kindness from Gentiles;) but there the rich and luxurious one, who passed Lazarus here without sympathy or notice, will then select him as alone fit to minister to him and assuage his bitter suffering. Little had been his means here for establishing a character for charitable sympathy, yet unquestioned testimony is borne to his possession of it by his once proud, rich and heartless neighbor, but now an expatriated sufferer. Strict propriety, as in the “elder brother,” does not ensure the warm son-like affection the repentant younger one glows with. A beggar, reputedly destitute of earthly means, can outstrip in heart and principles for service the richest and the most largely gifted with human subsidies. Social nearness to Abraham, as the bosom figuratively expresses, is within reach of the least blessed on earth; and the blessing of the barn and the store, which some so earnestly desired as their inheritance, did not ensure that one which alone gave value to all others. It is well to notice here, that the word heaven is not mentioned in this passage, nor do I apprehend that the future state is taught in it, but the fact that the presently unblessed Jew may not be so by and bye. It is a word of comfort to the poor of the flock, and of warning to those who sought present “consolation.” It is plainly a word to Israel, though it opens a door to them who could boast of no earthly portion; and if “the dogs” symbolize the Gentiles, their act but exemplifies our duty, and it moreover unfolds to us more plainly the characteristics of the people who should supersede the present religionists.
The reformation will not arouse Israel from its present state of self-security and ease. “If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded though one rose from the dead.” I make no comment on the “five brethren,” as I might not be correct in doing so; but there is deep instruction in the conversation between Abraham and the now suffering but once luxurious Jew.