The Parable of the Unjust Steward

0 Shares

Jesus addressed this parable to His disciples, immediately after the three parables of the lost in Luke 15 and shortly before the parable of the rich man and Lazarus, with the Pharisees, who loved money, listening nearby. It is among the most difficult of His parables to read correctly, since the commendation at its center falls on a man whose conduct nobody in the story calls honest.

The Steward’s Crisis

"And he said also unto his disciples, There was a certain rich man, which had a steward; and the same was accused unto him that he had wasted his goods. And he called him, and said unto him, How is it that I hear this of thee? give an account of thy stewardship; for thou mayest be no longer steward."¹

A steward in that setting managed an estate on an owner's behalf, holding real authority over a household's finances while remaining fully accountable to the man who owned it. This steward stands accused of waste rather than theft. The master's demand for an account signals that the stewardship is already ending, and nothing the steward does from this point forward will recover the position itself. What remains to him is a short window in which he still holds the authority of the office, though the office is already forfeit.

The Steward’s Scheme

"Then the steward said within himself, What shall I do? for my lord taketh away from me the stewardship: I cannot dig; to beg I am ashamed. I am resolved what to do, that, when I am put out of the stewardship, they may receive me into their houses. So he called every one of his lord's debtors unto him, and said unto the first, How much owest thou unto my lord? And he said, An hundred measures of oil. And he said unto him, Take thy bill, and sit down quickly, and write fifty. Then said he to another, And how much owest thou? And he said, An hundred measures of wheat. And he said unto him, Take thy bill, and write fourscore."²

The steward weighs his remaining options without illusion. Manual labor is beyond his strength, and begging is beneath what pride he has left. What he still holds, for a short time longer, is authority over his master's accounts, and he spends that authority before it can be taken from him. He reduces one debt by half, from a hundred measures of oil to fifty, and another by a fifth, from a hundred measures of wheat to eighty. Whether these reductions came out of the steward's own commission, which he had a right to forgo, or out of his master's principal, which he had no right to touch, the parable never says. Both readings have been argued from the text, and nothing in the account settles the question either way.

The Master’s Commendation

"And the lord commended the unjust steward, because he had done wisely: for the children of this world are in their generation wiser than the children of light. And I say unto you, Make to yourselves friends of the mammon of unrighteousness; that, when ye fail, they may receive you into everlasting habitations."³

The lord who commends the steward is the master within the story, not Jesus speaking in His own person, and what he commends is stated with precision. He commends that the steward had done wisely, not that he had done rightly. Shrewdness and honesty are not the same virtue, and the parable does not confuse them. Jesus then draws His own application from the master's verdict rather than repeating it: the children of this world plan for their own futures with more foresight, in their own generation, than the children of light generally show in planning for theirs. The instruction that follows, to make friends by means of worldly wealth so that these same friends receive believers into everlasting habitations once this wealth has failed, holds up the steward's foresight as the pattern to imitate, not his method. He acted for a temporal end that was already failing him regardless of what he did. He is commended for planning at all, while the disciples are told to spend that same kind of foresight on an end that does not fail.

Faithful in the Least

"He that is faithful in that which is least is faithful also in much: and he that is unjust in the least is unjust also in much. If therefore ye have not been faithful in the unrighteous mammon, who will commit to your trust the true riches? And if ye have not been faithful in that which is another man's, who shall give you that which is your own?"⁴

Jesus draws a line from the smallest test to the largest trust. Money is named the least of the things a man might be given charge over, and it is also named another man's, since it belongs finally to God rather than to whoever holds it for a season. True riches, entrusted only to the man already faithful with the least, are named his own by contrast, an inheritance rather than a stewardship. The steward in the parable failed this test with the mammon in his charge, yet even his failure was turned to a shrewd use before the end came. Jesus does not ask His disciples to imitate the failure. He asks them to match, and to exceed, the shrewdness the steward showed while managing a trust that was never rightly his to spend as he did.

"No servant can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon."⁵

The parable closes on an absolute rather than a caution. A servant in that world belonged to one master, and a divided loyalty between two was never a live option, since whichever master received less would in time receive nothing at all. Paul names in his own words what such divided loyalty produces once money is placed where God alone belongs: "For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows."⁶ Money itself stands condemned by neither that verse nor this parable. The love of it, and the service rendered to it in place of God, is what both condemn.

What the Parable Commends and What It Does Not

The steward's ethics remain exactly as ambiguous as Luke leaves them. The text does not say whether the reductions were the steward's own commission, lawfully renounced, or his master's money, unlawfully reduced. What the parable states without ambiguity is the commendation itself. Shrewdness in securing a future is praised, and the disciples are told to bring that same shrewdness to bear on an end that will not fail them. The children of this world do not need Christ's warning to plan ahead; they already plan ahead by instinct, spending money, time, and effort on ends that end when they do. The children of light are given a longer horizon and a surer end to plan for, and Jesus asks whether they will show as much foresight toward it as a dishonest steward showed toward a stewardship he had already lost.

Paul gives the same principle its plainest form when he writes of giving rather than of stewardship: "He which soweth sparingly shall reap also sparingly; and he which soweth bountifully shall reap also bountifully."⁷ The measure sown determines the measure reaped, whether the sower is a dishonest steward securing houses to receive him or a believer laying up treasure that does not fail. The parable does not ask whether resources will be spent. Every steward spends what passes through his hands, faithful or not. It asks only what the spending is aimed at, and what it is expected to secure when the present stewardship, honest or otherwise, comes to its end.

Christ is teaching His disciples to be sagacious, to handle a bad situation wisely, and the charge belongs beside the one He gives them on another occasion: "Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves: be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves."⁸ The steward's fraud supplies the bad situation. His shrewdness in meeting it supplies the pattern worth taking. The dishonesty itself is not commended in any degree, by the master inside the story or by Christ in the application He draws from it. What is held up for the disciples to imitate is the steward's foresight alone, turned to an end that will not fail them.

Luke 16:1-2, KJV. ↩
Luke 16:3-7, KJV. ↩
Luke 16:8-9, KJV. ↩
Luke 16:10-12, KJV. ↩
Luke 16:13, KJV. ↩
1 Timothy 6:10, KJV. ↩
2 Corinthians 9:6, KJV. ↩
Matthew 10:16, KJV. ↩