Luke 16:14-18

Luke 16:14-18 - The Law and the Kingdom of God

¹⁴ The Pharisees were listening to all this

and, being lovers of money themselves,

they ridiculed him.

¹⁵ He said to them,

“You make righteous people of yourselves before others,

but God knows your hearts.

What people highly esteem is abomination in the sight of God.

The honour code of the culture was based precisely on estimation before others Wealth brought honour. The Pharisees generally saw it in this light. The ostentatious patronising of the poor that it permitted was also a means to acquire honour. For Pharisees almsgiving was a significant factor in their own self-esteem. In Jesus’ mind the whole honour code invariably led to the deadening of true self-awareness and personal conscience.

¹⁶ “The law and the prophets were everything up until John.

Since then the kingdom of God is being proclaimed,

and all are struggling to enter it.

¹⁷ It is easier for heaven and earth to collapse

than for one small letter of the law to drop out.

The phrase all are struggling to enter it can also be translated as ‘everyone is pressured to enter it’. Commentators, as well as translators, are divided. Certainly Jesus, as well as the disciples sent on mission, urged people to enter it. Pharisees had resisted this urging.

Jesus was not in fact referring to the minutiae of the law but to its non-negotiable deepest spirit. The good news of the kingdom was in fact the extension and application of that beautiful spirit of the Torah. Many of the prophets had spoken at length of the misuse of wealth. Jesus was not so much preaching something different. He was interpreting the very law that Pharisees prided themselves on knowing intimately. Had they known the law, they would not have resisted entry into the kingdom.

¹⁸ “Whoever divorces his wife and marries another woman commits adultery,

and whoever marries that divorced woman commits adultery.”

The exact relevance of Jesus’ comment is again a point of contention for commentators. Why did Luke include it at this juncture?

In the culture of the times a wife was considered to be the possession of the husband. Jesus may well have viewed the Pharisees’ attitude to women as a simple extension of their attitude to wealth.

The last of the commandments of the Decalogue reflected this entrenched patriarchal attitude:

You shall not covet your neighbor’s house;

you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife,

or male or female slave,

or ox, or donkey,

or anything that belongs to your neighbor (Exodus 20:17)

Whilst various strands of the Pharisee movement discussed what might be acceptable reasons for divorce, they all agreed without question on a man’s right to divorce. Women had no such rights. For Jesus, however, both men and women had equal dignity before God, whatever about general social attitudes. Whilst the culture generally saw a man’s sexual relationship with an already married woman as an act of adultery against the husband to whom she was married (a violation of his property or wealth), for Jesus divorce was a sin against the woman, married or divorced, and had nothing to do with property rights.

Next >> Luke 16:19-29