Luke 16:9 - Coke's Commentary on the Holy Bible

And I say unto you, &c.— Our Lord's advice is worthy of the most serious attention; the best use that we can make of our riches being to employ them in promoting the salvation of others. For, if we use our abilities and interest in bringing sinners to God, if we spend our money in this excellent service, we shall conciliate the good-will of all heavenly beings, who greatly rejoice at the conversion of sinners, as was represented in the preceding parables; so that with open arms they will receive us into the mansions of felicity. And therefore while self-seekers shall have their possessions, and honours, and estates, torn from them with the utmost reluctancy at death, they who have devoted themselves, and all that they have, perseveringly to the service of God, shall find their consumed estates to be greatly increased, and their neglected honours abundantly repaired, in the love and friendship of the inhabitants of heaven, and in the happiness of the world to come; and shall rejoice in having disposed of their wealth to such an advantage. Dr. Heylin, instead of the mammon of unrighteousness, reads the false mammon; and so in Luke 16:11. And he observes, that it is literally mammon of injustice: so in the preceding verse, the steward of injustice; and in ch. Luke 18:6 judge of injustice; all which may be rightly rendered, the unjust, or false judge,—false steward, and false mammon; for truth and justice, with their derivatives, are often convertible terms in scripture, and sometimes in modern language. That our Lord does not mean unrighteous, or ill-gotten, but false and uncertain riches, is plain from Luke 16:11 where unrighteous mammon is not opposed to righteous but to true. Nothing can be more contrary to the whole genius of the Christian religion, than to imagine that our Lord would exhort men to lay out their ill-gotten goods in works of charity, when justice so evidently required that they should make restitution to the utmost of their abilities. When ye fail, means when ye die; and it is with apparent propriety that our Lord suggests the thought of death, as an antidote against covetousness. Strange it is that so many, on the very borders of the grave, should be so wretchedly enslaved to that unreasonable passion! Mr. Henry observes on the expression Make to yourselves friends, that parables must not be forced beyond their primary intention; and therefore we must not hence infer, that any one can befriend us, if we lie under the displeasure of our Lord: but that in the general, we must so lay out what we have in works of piety and charity, as that we may meet it again with comfort on the other side of the grave. Instead of that they may receive you, some read, that they may make you be received.