‘And five of them were foolish, and five were wise. For the foolish, when they took their torches, took no oil with them, but the wise took oil in their vessels with their torches.'
The division between five and five is arbitrary. The point is that everyone is in one section or the other (compare Matthew 7:13-14). And the question is whether they will be those who are truly prepared when the Lord comes, or whether they will be those who are just carelessly assuming that everything will be all right, only to discover at the last that it is not. They lack the vital ingredient that makes all the difference, the oil of true spirituality which reveals itself in giving true spiritual light.
The torches would be sticks to which oiled rags would be attached. These would be soaked in oil. As the time passed the oil in the rags would tend to dry out, and the wise therefore took with them vessels containing olive oil with which they could further soak the rags when they had to be lit, thus renewing the oil. The foolish just depended on the old oil as being enough for the purpose. But because they all had to wait for a while the oil in their torches would dry out.
In these verses we have laid out before us the basically important question in life. In what does true wisdom consist? And the answer given is that true wisdom lies in possessing the God-provided oil so that the torch may shine out (Matthew 5:16). The parable does not tell us where this God-provided oil would come from. But we have only to look at the remainder of the Gospel, and especially to Jesus' teaching, to discover the answer to that question. It comes from being especially blessed by God (Matthew 5:3-10; Matthew 11:6; Matthew 13:16; Matthew 16:17), it comes through faith (Matthew 8:10; Matthew 9:2; Matthew 9:29; Matthew 15:28), it comes from the working of the Holy Spirit (Matthew 3:11), it comes from being one of the ransomed (Matthew 20:28). Most of those who are seen as wise in this world will spurn such oil, for it is for ‘babes' (Matthew 11:25; Matthew 18:3-4 compare 1 Corinthians 1:18 to 1 Corinthians 2:16). It is for the lowly in heart (Matthew 5:3-9; Matthew 11:28-30).