Luke 16:9

Make to yourselves friends. Here Jesus turns to the Pharisees (see COL 369), who were present (see v. 14) and who, as leaders of the Jewish nation, were in a special sense stewards of the truth and blessings God had bestowed upon His chosen people (see Vol. IV, pp. 26-28). As stewards of Heaven, the leaders of Israel had been wasting the “goods” Heaven had entrusted to them, and it would not be long before they would be called upon to “give an account” of their stewardship.

Jesus does not imply that heaven is to be purchased. The truth to which He does direct attention is that we should make use of present opportunities with a view to our eternal welfare. We are but stewards of the material possessions that come to our hands in this life, and God has entrusted them to us that we may learn the principles of faithful stewardship. All that we have in this present life is actually “another man’s,” that is, God’s; it is not our “own” (Luke 16:12; see 1 Cor. 6:19). We are to use the material things entrusted to us to advance the interests of our Father in heaven, by applying them to the needs of our fellow men (see Prov. 19:17; Matt. 19:21; 25:31-46; Luke 12:33) and to the advancement of the gospel (see 1 Cor. 9:13; 2 Cor. 9:6, 7).

Mammon of unrighteousness. See on Matt. 6:24. This expression indicates a degree of contempt for “riches,” much as we speak of “money” as “filthy lucre.” To make friends “of’ mammon means to make friends “by means of’ it.

When ye fail. Textual evidence favors (cf. p. 146) the reading “when it fails.” The rendering “when ye fail” would mean “when ye die.” But the Scriptures do not teach that men are received “into everlasting habitations” at death, as this rendering would require, but at our Lord’s return (see John 14:3). “When it fails” means “when riches [the mammon of unrighteousness] fail.” When the steward’s source of income failed (Luke 16:3), then it was that he gave thought to the future (v. 4). The point of the parable is not the steward’s failure in his stewardship, or his death, but his method of solving the problem of loss of personal income. Thus the context, as well as the general tenor of Scripture, requires the reading “when it fails.” The antecedent of “it” is “mammon,” and the antecedent of “they” is “friends.”