THE GOSPEL OF LUKE: - Vital Christianity

121"No servant can serve two masters—for either he will hate the one and love theother—or else he will hold to the one and despise the other. You cannot serveGod and mammon" (Mt 6:24).People are continually trying to do what Christ says is impossible. They are trying to befriends of the world and friends of God at the same time. Such an attempt leads to a state ofconstant discomfort because they have too much religion to be happy in the world and too muchof the world in their hearts to be happy in their religion.Half-hearted Christians are not respected by either fellow Christians or non-Christians.The reason is because they are constantly compromising and thus have a muted witness. Joy andpeace in the Christian life only comes through wholehearted commitment (Ro 15:13). If it isworthwhile to serve Christ at all, then He should be served with one’s whole being. Christwarned,"Anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God" (Jas 4:4).The end of undecided and half-hearted Christians will be to be cast out forever.Luke points out that the Pharisees sneered because they loved money. Jesus then turnedtheir sneers around by telling them they were the dishonest managers because they honored whatGod detested (Lk 16:15). We have already seen that in Jesus’ day the religious people believedthat health and wealth were signs of being holier and closer to God. If you were sick or poor,there must be some kind of sin in your life. They had literally made money their God, using it asa sign of godliness. Some religious people do the same today.Both the manager and his master were totally preoccupied with achieving a singlegoal: more wealth. The master was rich! And he had hired a manager to ensure that his richesgrew while he took care of other affairs. We don't know what was involved in the "wasting";maybe it was intentional fraud or maybe it was negligence. But either way, we do know that themanager caused the master to incur loss when he was supposed to bring profit.The master heard that there was something wrong and told the manager to give anaccount. This would be like demanding that he bring in the accounting record books so that anaudit could be performed.