Luke 16:8-12

Luke 16:8-12 “The master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly. For the people of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own kind than are the people of the light. I tell you, use worldly wealth to gain friends for yourselves, so that when it is gone, you will be welcomed into eternal dwellings. “Whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much, and whoever is dishonest with very little will also be dishonest with much. So if you have not been trustworthy in handling worldly wealth, who will trust you with true riches? And if you have not been trustworthy with someone else’s property, who will give you property of your own?

Jesus is talking about God in these parables. He is the master, the one who gives true riches, the one who gives us property. After all, He is the Creator of all that is, and He is the distributor of everything that is. In the parable of the dishonest manager, the profligate repented of his dishonorable and reckless lifestyle by making his wrongs right. Of course, he did that for purely selfish reasons, but he did it. The master commended him for acting wisely. He did not lie about his situation or blame his wrongdoings on others or aberrant conditions; he just made things right. In today's scriptures we see Jesus saying that the untrustworthy who live their lives dishonestly cannot be given more because they will continue to live their lives in the same way. These people cannot be trusted with any more. Sadly, the master cannot give them property of their own, real property, that which lasts for eternity.

In our finiteness with our inability to look into the celestial, when we look at the words riches and property, we have an anemic understanding of Jesus' meaning as He uses these words. Jesus speaks of riches and property because the concepts approximate what exists in heaven. But the realities of the heavenlies are quite different from the earthly concepts governing us. Paul said that the man who was caught up into the third heaven could not even talk about what he saw. That man (Paul) did not even have words or concepts to express what he saw because what he saw was far beyond his reality, beyond his imagination, beyond his ability to describe. That is where God is and where true reality exists. When Jesus talks to us, it is like talking to blind animals, existing in the center of the earth or to blind fish, swimming in pools in dark caves. Concepts of the heavenlies and eternal life go beyond the realities of life we experience. On Earth, we deal with the shadows of reality, not reality. We deal with faith, not with the full understanding of the realities of all things.

What are the true riches, the property Christians receive? Through his presence, the Holy Spirit brings true riches to us. He is the reflection of God himself. He inhabits the land given to the body of Christ. For the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking, but of righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. We who are in Christ are the land and from his fruit in us, we display God to the world. We display the Promised Land, God's plan of reconciling the world to himself. As part of the trinity, the Holy Spirit is the giver of all things. In the above passage, Jesus says if you cannot be trusted with little, He will not give you more. If you are a liar about your life, continuing on with your own will, you cannot be trusted with more. But if you repent of your life, realizing you are wasting your life by living for yourself, you will receive true riches, real property. You will be part of HIS BODY, filled with the Holy Spirit, the earnest of heaven. The earth is the Lord's and the fulness thereof; our lives are God's possessions. In this finite existence He has given to us, if we cannot be trusted with the property we have, how can we be trusted with eternal property, eternal existence? With our profligate, sinful lives and terrors such as nuclear bombs that can wipe out all existence on Earth, how can God trust us or promise us anything else? In our sinful state, we cannot be trusted with his riches and property.

What about us? What is our hope of God's presence, his eternal life, his property? Outside of repentance, we are without hope! We do not merely add Christ to our lives, we repent of ourselves: our lack of stewardship, our lack of responsibility, and our resulting poor choices. We repent of the sins we allow to permeate our thinking, our attitudes. We repent of self, of being a god to ourselves. Then we accept Jesus Christ as Savior (the Way out), and He gives us real property, true riches, even himself. We become his body. He alone gives eternal life; He alone opens the riches of heaven to us. IN HIM God welcomes us into eternal dwellings. As Christians, are we new creatures right now? The Bible says, yes, but we probably do not comprehend fully what that means. Someday we will understand our inheritance in its fulness. Someday each of us will look at that old man that gripped our souls and say, "How did that fleshly, sinful person inhabit my soul?" Then with full knowledge, we will understand the realities of our new LIFE in Christ. We will understand our heavenly beings shine like translucent jewels, reflecting the light and glory of God. The temple of God that we represent is a beautiful place of many different hues that will express the image of God throughout all existence. If not today, SOMEDAY, WE WILL ALL UNDERSTAND!