Being the Unjust Steward

Trinity 9| Luke 16:1-9| Pastor James Preus| Trinity Lutheran Church| August 17, 2025

Can you imagine being this unjust steward, accused of wasting his master’s property, and now in just a little while, he is going to be thrown out of the life he has enjoyed so much? How desperate his situation is! Well, you do not need to imagine. You are the unjust steward. Nothing you possess is truly yours, but you are only a steward of it, a manager. Your body, your intellect, your money and property, your time, they are all given to you by God to manage for a time, and you are being called to account. You will in short time, whether a few months or a few years or decades, be removed from your stewardship, that is, you will die. And then, the books will be opened and you will need to give an account of how you have managed your Master’s property. Yet, unlike the unjust steward in Jesus’ parable, you will not need temporary housing, but an eternal dwelling. What will your eternal dwelling be when you are removed from management? Will it be the heavenly kingdom or punishment in hell?

The time you have on this earth is given to you from God. Have you managed it well? When God examines the books, will He be pleased? Or have you wasted the time God has entrusted to you? During your stewardship on earth, God has entrusted to you the most precious treasure on earth or in heaven: His holy Word and Sacraments, by which you receive forgiveness of sins for Christ’s sake, wisdom from heaven, and the very Holy Spirit. Have you used this treasure for its good purpose? People will spend hours in a car a week to get to work, hours watching their kids play sports or watching entertainment on a screen, but they are not willing to drive across town or through the country to spend the time God gave them to worship Him and receive His heavenly blessing. How about you?

“My body, my choice” has been used to justify the most heinous crime of dismembering children in the womb and throwing their dead mutilated bodies away. Yet, you don’t need to even go to that extreme to see the wickedness in the statement, for it is God who made your body, and what’s more, has redeemed your body, as the Apostle says, “You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.” (1 Corinthians 6:20) and “do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God” (1 Corinthians 6:19) And so, how have you managed your body, which you have received from God. Did you use its health and talents for His glory. Did you do honest work and help your neighbor? Or did you treat your body as if it were your own thing to abuse and throw away? Have you honored your body in marriage, or have you used your body for that which God forbids?

Of all the things God entrusts to our stewardship, people are most jealous of their money. This is why Jesus says, “You cannot serve God and money.” Money is the most popular false god in the world. Poor people long for it. Rich people trust in it. Hardly anyone thinks that their food, clothing, house, and all their goods come from God. Rather, they credit cursed money for all their good things. Like a city slicker who thinks fruit comes from a can, so people attribute to money the cause of all their good things. But all our goods come from God. The money you have is the money God allowed you to get. And he cares how you use it. He does not want you to worship it by trusting in it instead of Him.

And so, every soul on earth will be removed from management and must hand over the books for God, the Master, to review. The unjust steward in Jesus’ parable said, “What shall I do? I am not strong enough to dig, and I am ashamed to beg.” And so, he speaks the truth for each of us who likewise will shortly be removed from management. We’re too weak to dig. A person cannot be justified by works of the Law, since through the Law comes knowledge of sin (Romans 3:20). So, you cannot earn yourself an eternal dwelling in God’s kingdom by your good works. Your good works cannot save you.

Likewise, you should be ashamed to beg. Now, that might grind the gears of you Lutherans as Martin Luther’s last words he ever wrote were, “We are beggars; this is true.” And indeed, we are beggars. Yet, as beggars we do not beg aimlessly. When a beggar sits on the sidewalk asking for money from every person who walks by, he has no hope in any person. He just figures eventually someone will throw something into his cup. But he has no claim to anything given to him. He can’t entrust himself to any person walking by.

Yet, when we come before God, we do not beg without hope. Luther calls us beggars, because we do not deserve that for which we beg. But that does not mean we do not have a rightful claim to it. Christ Jesus has paid our debt of sin on the cross. In Him we have atonement, forgiveness, and redemption. That means we have a rightful claim to the heavenly kingdom, because God has promised it to us for Christ’s sake. Yet, we dare not come before God without Christ’s blood and righteousness. We are ashamed to beg God for access to heaven without pleading for Christ’s sake. For without Christ Jesus, we have no claim to the heavenly kingdom. Yet, with Christ, it is as the hymnist writes:

Jesus, in Thy cross are centered

All the marvels of Thy grace;

Thou, my Savior once hast entered

Through Thy blood the holy place:

Thy sacrifice holy there wrought my redemption,

From Satan’s dominion I now have exemption;

The way is now free to the Father’s high throne,

Where I may approach Him, in Thy name alone. (One Thing Needful, stanza 8; ELH 184)

And so, since we have such confidence in Christ that our eternal dwelling place is secured, this should change the way we manage our Master’s property here on earth. From the unjust steward in Jesus’ parable, we learn to rely on our Master’s mercy and justice. Think of it, a steward is removed from office for mismanaging his master’s property. So, the steward then cooks the books so that his master’s debtors are forgiven substantial amounts of debt. You would assume that that steward would then not only be out of a job, but he would be thrown into prison. But instead, the master commends the unjust steward and stands by the books. He does this for two reasons. First, because he is merciful, and so he wanted his steward to treat his debtors with mercy. Second, because he is just. While the steward had access to the books, his actions were legally the actions of the master. The master would not go back on his words, so he stands by the debt forgiveness written in the books in his name.

So, how much more should you trust in God’s mercy and justice. How much more should you be willing to forgive others their debts and trespasses knowing that God has forgiven your trespasses. How much more should you be willing to use the property God has entrusted to you toward generosity and the kingdom of God? Jesus is not teaching us to cheat and steal like this unjust steward, rather, He is teaching us to engage in our management with as much fervor and diligence as this unjust steward. The unjust steward strived for a temporary dwelling. Christ teaches you to strive for an eternal dwelling. The sons of this age use people to get money. Christ teaches you to use money to help people. And the greatest way you can help people is by supporting the Gospel.

Every parent wants to leave his children with a good inheritance. And this is right, as the proverb says, “A good man leaves an inheritance to his children’s children, but the wealth of the sinner is stored up for the righteous.” (Proverbs 13:22) Yet, what good does it do your children if you leave them a million dollars, but they have rejected the faith and have forfeited the eternal inheritance won by Christ? As Jesus says, “What profits it a man if he gains the whole world, but forfeits his soul?” And so, as the unjust steward was willing to spend his master’s money to secure housing for himself, so you should be willing to spend your Master’s money to secure friends for yourself. This does not mean that you can buy your way into heaven, as some have thought by purchasing masses and indulgences. Rather, this means that as heirs of the heavenly kingdom, you should not forfeit it for unrighteous wealth that will fail you in this life, but rather use it to make eternal friends. Support the preaching of the Gospel both in your own parish and in missions. Support Christian education. Put your sweat and blood and time and money toward something that will not fail, because your sweat, blood, time, and money sure will fail.

Do you believe that God has stored up for you true wealth in heaven? Do you believe that He will entrust you with much for eternity? Then manage that little which has been entrusted to you for a little while on this earthly stewardship as if you believe it. Do not be wasteful with what God has given you. And by wasteful, I do not mean what the world means, not getting the appropriate monetary return. “For what is highly esteemed among men is an abomination in the sight of God.” (Luke 16:15) What the world will praise you for at the end of your life will not get you praise from God. Rather, God wants you to store up treasure in heaven, not establish a legacy of mammon on earth. God doesn’t need your mammon. But He has entrusted you with mammon to help His kingdom, so that you may greet friends in your eternal dwelling.

Finally, you should have the utmost confidence in your eternal dwelling. For there is a Manager who has made you His friend, so that you will welcome Him in His eternal dwelling. Christ Jesus was not an unjust steward. Neither was He unjust nor was He a steward, but the rightful owner of all things. Yet, He was falsely accused and removed from office by the wicked chief priests and Pontius Pilate. Yet, so little did Christ esteem the glory of this world, that He diligently worked for our eternal salvation instead. He took our debt, and He canceled it, with His blood as ink, He fixed the books for us. As St. Paul writes in Colossians 2, “having forgiven us all our trespasses, by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This He set aside, nailing it to the cross.” (vss. 13-14)

While we were in debt to the Ten Commandments, Christ canceled that debt and gave us the Holy Spirit instead, who guides us to produce good fruits. While the Ten Commandments accused us for failing to fulfill them perfectly, Christ makes us a new creation. And as the master in the parable would not change what his steward had written in the books, so God will not add back what has been forgiven you. In Christ, you are debt free, except to live by the Spirit. You must not add back the debt, which has been erased. That would be to deny Christ’s cross. Rather, we are to live as those whose debts have been forgiven, and whose Master is generous and merciful, and desires you to be generous and merciful with what He has entrusted to you.

My brothers and sisters in Christ, we have a merciful and just Master, who has canceled our debts. So, let us be generous with what He has entrusted to us today to the glory of His Kingdom and our eternal home. Amen.