Big Idea: Our heavenly well-being depends on how we have handled the possessions entrusted to us here on earth.

Understanding the Text

Two more parables (16:1–8a, 19–31) follow the three in chapter 15. In the light of the interpretive comments on the first parable in 16:8b–9, both parables make a connection between life on earth and life in heaven, and the focus in both is on wealth and how we use it, a prominent theme in Luke that has already been given sustained attention in chapter 12 (summed up in the call to store up treasure in heaven in 12:33–34) and, more indirectly, in chapter 14. The same theme will recur especially in 18:18–30.

Between the two parables is a collection of sayings, with a change of audience (from the disciples to the listening Pharisees) in 16:14. Most of these…