Buying Friends for Eternity

To begin with, let me explain something: Most Christians do not seperate Luke from Paul from Peter and so on. The Bible is read as a whole without any differenciation between the different authors. This is both good, and not so good. It is good because the Bible is all God's word, and needs to be taken as a whole; but it is also not so good because we lose the individuality of each book/of each author. Paul thinks differently than Luke or Matthew or any other book in the Bible. Luke is different than the other Gospel writers and has his own distinct emphases.

Matthew, Mark and Luke all wrote gospels about Jesus that were very similar (John's was very different); but each one of them stressed different teachings about what Jesus had to say. Luke's gospel is the one that stressed the importance of handling money well.

Throughout the book of Luke, Jesus talked about how we get trapped by and choked out by the need to have more, and by the concerns over what we do have. When he called people to follow him and to enter the kingdom of God, they were asked to leave everything, which rich men, who gained their money in socially acceptable ways could not do. However, rich men who gained their money in bad ways (such as tax collecting on Rome's behalf) were willing to give up everything and follow Jesus.

JESUS' TEACHINGS - THE KINGDOM BELONGS TO THE POOR, NOT TO THE RICH

Let me explain through Jesus' teachings how this all works....

Luke 6:20:  Looking at his disciples, he said: "Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God." This pretty much summed it up. In Matthew, Jesus said, "blessed are the poor in spirit," but in Luke, he said, "Blessed are the poor." According to Luke, the kingdom belonged to the poor and powerless; not to the rich, the powerful, and the popular. In Luke Jesus said, "Woe to you who are rich, for you have already received your reward." According to Luke, the rich got everything on earth, and God chose the poor to be the recipients of his kingdom.

Paul changed this teaching a bit, but still held to its basics when he wrote to the Corinthians, "Think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influencial; not many were of noble birth (1 Corinthians 1:26)."

Paul saw that not many rich and noble were called, however, Luke very clearly divided between the rich and the poor. The poor get the kingdom and the rich don't.

JESUS' TEACHINGS - HOW CAN A RICH MAN ENTER THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN AND BE SAVED?

Even though there was a great divide between rich and poor in Luke, there was hope for the rich in Luke. To put it very bluntly, the rich could only enter the kingdom by buying friends with the money they had...not just any friend (remember the prodigal son bought a lot of friends who failed him in his time of need), they had to buy the kinds of friends who would welcome them into the kingdom - the kingdom that Jesus offered to the poor. Although there are a few examples in the book of Luke, the teaching itself is made most evident in Luke 16.

Before I open up the parable in Luke 16 and look into the explanation that Jesus gave concerning the parable, let me take you back to Matthew's gospel. In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus talked about those who would make it on judgment day and those who would be rejected. We expect Jesus to open up a large book (Revelation 20:15) and look to see if each person has "been born again (John 3:3)." But not so in Matthew and not so in Luke. In Matthew (25:31-46), those who make it to heaven, did so because they fed the hungry, visited the sick and the lonely, clothed the naked and so on...no more, no less.

Now back to Luke...

In chapter Luke 16, Jesus told a parable about a steward (the head business man of a wealthy household) who was about to lose his job because he was mismanaging the householder's finances. The steward saw that he was in a bind - he had a good job and didn't want to have to be stuck with a lousy one - so he quickly maneuvered to get himself another good job when his time was up.

He called together people who owed his boss money and worked out awesome deals with them, letting them pay back smaller amounts. His dealings made the other household owners happy, thus giving the steward the connections he needed to have as he faced unemployment.

Even though what the steward did was dishonest, Jesus commended him for his cleverness. But Jesus didn't stop with this being a lesson on cleverness, he had 3 lessons garnered from the parable.

1. For the people of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own kind than are the people of the light (Lk 16:8).

People in the world deal better with impending disasters of the world (such as job loss) than people of faith do with impending kingdom and eternal disaster. Why? Because when people of the world see impending worldly disaster, they (like the steward in the parable) prepare for it; but even though the kingdom and judgment of God is coming, the people of faith do not bother to prepare themselves appropriately for that coming disaster.

2. Use your worldly resources to benefit others and make friends. Then, when your earthly possessions are gone, they will welcome you to an eternal home (Lk 16:9 NLT).

I chose this translation because the version reflects well the meaning of this verse. In the original Greek, there is one word for "they may receive..." It is just as this translation states..."they may receive...." The NIV is one of the few versions that misses this. So why is this important? And who are "they?"

In the parable the steward was trying to get himself into a new home for a good job. Jesus concluded his parable with a lesson that we should do the same - in the face of a coming judgment (a kingdom coming upon us made for the poor and for the powerless), use our money to get friends who will welcome us into that kingdom.

Those people who are called "they" are the ones who hold the future of rich people in their hands. Remember Matthew 25? Remember that those who were rejected from eternity with Christ were those who neglected the needy? This is a different angle of the same judgment. This angle shows us that the poor, the powerless, and the abused of this world hold the power in the world to come. They are the ones who welcome some of the rich into eternal dwellings and they are the ones who turn away other rich people from eternal dwellings. This is clearly spelled out in another parable from Luke 16 - the parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus.

3. The third lesson Jesus gave about the parable seems to contradict the first.

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 (Lk 16:10-11)?

This third lesson from the same parable tells us that although the steward was very clever in preparing for a new job, he may have ruined his possiblity of getting a job with the people he helped out. Those households that got the great break knew they were getting a break because of this steward, but they also saw that the break they were getting cost the owner of the steward's house dearly. If he did that to his present owner, how could he be trusted for the next? As the proverb goes, "A leapord cannot change its spots."

This third lesson from the Parable of the Steward instructs us to be smart with money; because if we deal with it unethically, we cannot and will not be trusted with eternal responsibilities. In other words, what we do with our money now will have consequences in the next life.

Now let's get back to the second of these 3 lessons - the subject of buying friends for eternal homes.

EXAMPLES OF FAILURES IN LUKE

Right after Jesus gave the parable of the steward who bought friends for the future, he gave us an example, a parable, of someone who did not prepare for his future - The parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus. In this parable, Lazarus received the highest reward in the coming kingdom only because he was poor and miserable in this life; while the rich man received eternal torment because he was rich in this life. Luke 6's "Blessed are the poor, woe to you who are rich" was spelled out in detail by Abraham: "Son, remember that in your lifetime you received your good things, while Lazarus received bad things, but now he is comforted here and you are in agony (Lk 16:25)."

In torment the rich man looked to Abraham to help him and then looked indirectly to Lazarus for a small favor. The parable shows us that Abraham could not and would not help the rich man; furthermore the parable lets us see that Lazarus was silent during the entire time. No one wanted to or could help the rich man out because he did not help the poor man who lived and died at his gate.

Jesus further emphasized this same lesson in chapter 18 when a rich ruler came to him and asked him what he had to do to inherit eternal life. Jesus told him to sell everything and give to the poor. When the rich man heard this he was sad because he didn't want to let go of his money, which was, as far as we know, obtained honestly; and as I stated before, the rich with honest money had a harder time letting go of it than those who became wealthy in socially unacceptable ways.

These cases along with other teachings of Jesus in the book of Luke clearly show us that salvation, entering the kingdom of God, and finding eternal life depends upon being poor or giving money to those who are poor. Wealth in this world is a huge barrier to eternal life.

EXAMPLES OF SUCCESS IN LUKE

One who did it right in Luke was Zaccheus (Lk 19:1-10) who gave half his money to feed the poor, returned fourfold to those he cheated, and as a result found salvation.

EXAMPLE IN ACTS

The book of Acts was also written by Luke as a follow up to the book of Luke. Luke recorded the ministry of Jesus while Acts followed the beginnings of the early church. Early on, as the church just started, Chirstians had all things in common because people who had possessions, gave to those who did not have.

There were no needy people among them, because those who owned land or houses would sell them and bring the money to the apostles to give to those in need (Acts 4:34-35).

When it came to possessions and money, the early church followed Jesus' teachings that were clearly presented in the book of Luke.

REPENTANCE

As much as Luke focused on giving money, he also brought up the need to repent (or a better translation would be "to turn around"). Actually, he stressed repentance in Acts more than the book of Luke.

John the Baptist started baptizing before Jesus, preaching and warning people to turn away from their sins. Yet when people heard him preach and wanted to be baptized, John wouldn't baptize them until they had showed the fruit of repentance.

THE FRUIT OF REPENTANCE

According to John the Baptist, the way we can measure one's repentance (the fruit of repentance) was defined by what office one bore as a human being:

To the general people he said share what you have. If you have an extra car, give one to the person who can't afford any. The early church practiced this; everybody had all things in common.

He told tax-collectors/businessmen to be honest and follow the rules of ethics.

And finally he told soldiers/policemen to put away unnessesary violence and learn how to live with the salary they had without complaining.

BAPTISM

In the book of Luke, John the Baptist baptised, but Jesus did not; but in the Book of Acts we see people were baptised by the disciples and other church members. So if I include the Book of Acts, I would summarize Luke's thought like this:

To enter the kingdom of heaven and to gain eternal life, you must repent (turn around), be baptized, and show the fruits of repentance by sharing all you have with those who need. Anything less was unacceptable.

LAST THOUGHTS

After a few years in 1st Century Jerusalem, other than small communities and certain individuals that came and went from time to time in the past 2,000 years, the church as a whole never returned to having all things in common.