Luke 16:10-12 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

He that is faithful in that which is least, is faithful also in much Here our Lord proceeds in the application of the parable. As if he had said, Whether ye have more or less, see that ye be faithful as well as wise stewards: for if you make that use of your riches which I have been recommending, you shall be received into those everlasting habitations, where all the friends of goodness dwell, because, by your fidelity in managing the smallest trust of temporal advantages committed to your care, you show that you are capable of the much greater trust of spiritual and heavenly employments and enjoyments, things of a much higher nature. And he that is unjust in the least He that useth these lowest gifts unfaithfully; is unjust also in much Is likewise unfaithful in spiritual things. In other words, If you do not use your riches, and power, and other temporal advantages, for the glory of God, and the good of your fellow- creatures, you shall be excluded from the abodes of the blessed, because, by behaving unfaithfully in the small trust committed to you now, you render yourselves both unworthy and incapable of a share in the everlasting inheritance. For if ye have not been faithful in the unrighteous Or rather, as the word here signifies, the false, the deceitful mammon That is, in the use of your riches, and other temporal blessings, very properly called the false mammon, because they always deceive those who confide in them as the sovereign good; who will commit to your trust the true riches? Spiritual and eternal blessings, which alone are true riches. “The word riches is substituted by our translators instead of mammon, which was the word Christ intended, and which, for that reason, should find its place in the translation of this verse. Mammon, coming from the Hebrew אמן, signifies whatever one is apt to confide in; and because men put their trust generally in external advantages, such as riches, authority, honour, power, knowledge, the word mammon is used to denote every thing of that kind, and particularly riches, by way of eminence.” Macknight. See note on Matthew 6:24. And if ye have not been faithful in that which is another man's The word man is not in the original, and is improperly supplied in the translation, for it is not man but God who is intended; to whom the riches, and other advantages in our possession, do properly belong; who has committed them to us only as stewards, to be laid out for the good of his family, and who may any moment call us to give an account of our management. Observe well, reader, none of these temporal things are ours; we are only stewards of them, not proprietors: God is the proprietor of all: he lodges them in our hands for a season, but still they are his property. “Rich men,” says a late writer, “understand and consider this! If your steward uses any part of your estate, (so called in the language of men,) any further, or any otherwise than you direct, he is a knave: he has neither conscience nor honour. Neither have you either the one or the other, if you use any part of that estate which is in truth God's, not yours, any otherwise than he directs.” Who shall give you that which is your own That which, when it is conferred upon you, shall be perpetually in your possession, shall be your own for ever. Our Lord's meaning, therefore, is, “Since you have dared to be unfaithful in that which was only a trust committed to you by God for a short time, and of which you knew you were to give him an account, it is evident you are not fit to be intrusted by him with the riches of heaven; these being treasures which, if he bestowed them on you, would be so fully your own, that you should have them perpetually in your possession, and never be called to an account for your management of them.”