Amy C Walters

The Parable of the Dishonest Manager | Luke 16:1-15

In Luke 16:1-15, we find a strange parable about a Dishonest Manager. When he gets fired, he gives some of his master’s debtors a discount on their debt. Because in doing so, they will owe him a favor. The parable shows us that wise managers prepare for what’s next.

When this story was coming up on the blog schedule, I was both excited and nervous, because this parable has long baffled me. I wasn’t really sure what Jesus was saying. So I was excited to get the chance to tackle it and learn it and understand it better.

And a sermon on this parable by Kent Hughes in Luke 16 was very helpful for me in recognizing some key parallels. Those parallels provide the outline for this post. 

The characters in this parable include a rich man or a master, as he’s referred to throughout most of this story, and his manager, an employee, who has been mishandling his property. When the master finds out what the manager has been doing, he fires him. He calls him in to give an account and says, “You cannot be manager anymore. You’re fired.” 

Even if you’ve never been fired before, you can probably imagine how it might feel. It would feel very upsetting and disorienting. What will you do next? How are you going to make a living? How are you going to be able to afford your home and your food and your car and all the things that you need? Is there another job waiting for you? 

This manager is feeling some of those things. We see his internal thought process in this story as he says to himself, “What shall I do? I’m not strong enough to dig, and I’m ashamed to beg.” 

He’s thinking through the options. Manual labor, no thanks. This guy is white collar, and he doesn’t want to get into manual labor. “I’m ashamed to beg.” So he’s not going to go out on the street corner and panhandle. So what’s left? 

In the middle of his thinking, he has an epiphany. “I know what I’ll do so that when my job is gone, people will welcome me into their houses.” He’s thinking about how to ingratiate himself to get people on his side. 

So the manager calls his master’s debtors, and he reduces their debt. Different versions of Scripture might have different numbers for how much olive oil and wheat is owed. That’s because measurements in the Ancient Near East don’t exactly line up with our units of measurement. But the idea is the same. 

With the first debtor who comes to him, he reduces that debt by half. That’s a huge discount! The second guy gets a 20% reduction, so still quite a bit. 

How do you think those debtors would feel towards the manager after this? They would be incredibly grateful! You could imagine them saying, “I owe you one!” And that is exactly the manager’s plan, that they now owe him. And when he is in need later, when his job is over and the money runs out, he can go and call in some favors. 

This is a brilliant solution. He’s already burned his bridges with his master. He’s not going to get that job back. So he shrewdly manipulates things to get the favor of the people. 

When the master finds out, he commends him. Now, I think this is one of the parts that throws us off, because we think, wait a minute, the master has just been robbed of some of what he is owed by his debtors. Shouldn’t he be mad about this? 

But it’s important to notice that the master commends the manager for his shrewdness. Shrewdness is an awareness, a judgment of people and situations, and how to work them out for your favor.

So the master recognizes that this was a crafty move. He’s almost saying, “Touche, you got me there, well done!” So it’s not saying necessarily that the master is happy about the situation but that he recognizes what the manager has done and why. 

Jesus’ next couple of statements are some other things that can trip us up. Jesus goes on to say that “the people of this world are more shrewd in their dealing with one another than are the people of the light. I tell you, use worldly wealth to gain friends for yourself, so that when it is gone, they will welcome you into eternal dwellings.” 

It almost sounds like Jesus is commending the dishonesty of the manager. But that’s not what’s happening here. Jesus isn’t highlighting the dishonesty, he’s pointing to the shrewdness, the awareness of the situation. 

Jesus talks about worldly people and people of the light. This could also be stated as believers and unbelievers, Christians and un-Christians, people who have rejected Jesus and people who are following Jesus. Remember, this is a parable that he has told to the disciples. They are the main audience here. So the disciples are the people of the light. 

Another key comparison is with the manager as he comes up with this plan for people to welcome him into their houses. And then Jesus later says, “Use your wealth to make friends

friends so that when it is gone, friends will welcome you into eternal dwellings.” So we have a comparison between houses on earth and an eternal home. A welcome on this earth and a welcome in heaven. Jesus is talking about planning ahead for heaven.

The manager recognizes that his job is coming to an end. I am not going to have this forever, so I need to be ready for the next stage of life. And this is what he was commended for, being aware of what’s coming and preparing himself for it.

Jesus is saying that the people of the light, his followers, need to be thinking ahead to the next chapter, to eternity, and how to prepare for it. 

Our key truth for today is that wise managers prepare for heaven. 

This dishonest manager prepared for joblessness by gaining favor with people so that they would owe him one. And Jesus is saying those who are wise will prepare themselves for the next chapter. When this life is over, will they be welcomed into heaven?

We tend to spend a lot of time avoiding thoughts of death and what comes after it. We spend a lot of time prolonging our lives here on this earth so that we don’t have to deal with death. Jesus is saying that wise followers of his don’t avoid those ideas, but intentionally invest in what’s going to happen next. They are not caught up in getting everything they can out of life here on earth. They’re thinking about where they’re going to spend the rest of eternity and what that is going to be like. 

If we want to be wise followers Jesus, then we should prepare for heaven. We anticipate and invest in heaven.