Justifying Wealth-Seeking – Luke 16:14-18

How would you ridicule someone who challenged your devotion to money and wealth?  “You aren’t living in the real world,” or “You would have everyone living from day to day in anxiety over where their next meal will come from,” or maybe even, “God gave us brains to figure out how to make money.”  Jesus wasn’t swayed.

The Pharisees, who were lovers of money, heard all these things, and they ridiculed him. And he said to them, “You are those who justify yourselves before men, but God knows your hearts. For what is exalted among men is an abomination in the sight of God.

“The Law and the Prophets were until John; since then the good news of the kingdom of God is preached, and everyone forces his way into it. But it is easier for heaven and earth to pass away than for one dot of the Law to become void.

“Everyone who divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery, and he who marries a woman divorced from her husband commits adultery.  (Luke 16:14-18 ESV)

Jesus’ strong comments on the right use and danger of money prompts ridicule from the Pharisees because they must justify their pursuit of money.  If there was a middle class in Israel the Pharisees were part of it and generally supported creating wealth even if it meant denying the intent of the law (as when they allowed a member of their sect to say his money was dedicated to God so as not to have to support his parents with it).  Jesus accuses them of wrong motivation and warns that God hates such a motivation.

Jesus highlights that the coming of the kingdom with him marks a great transition from the time of the Law and the Prophets, marked by John’s coming with the baptism of repentance.  And he notes that the general population is quite eager, even violent, to enter into the kingdom.  This is a contrast to the Pharisees’ failure to care about the kingdom.  And though the era of the Law has ended that does not mean the Law will not be fulfilled and, in fact, will be taken to its proper extent, as in the law of divorce.

The Pharisees taught that there were all kinds of reasons permitting divorce, but the intent of the Law, as Jesus authoritatively teaches and is confirmed in the kingdom of God, is that there is no reason for divorce.  It is a sin.  Jesus doesn’t treat of exceptions here, as he did in his remarks recorded in Matthew 19, where adultery on the part of a spouse marks an exception.  His point is to show the way the Pharisees misunderstand the nature of the Law.