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Buy a ticket to Heaven?
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Luke 16:9
In the NKJV, Luke 16:9 reads like this: “And I say to you, make friends for yourselves by unrighteous mammon, that when you fail, they may receive you into an everlasting home [literally, ‘the eternal dwellings’].” Within the context the Lord is clearly using irony, or sarcasm. In the immediately preceding verse the owner's ‘commendation’ of the stupid steward is obviously sarcastic, since the steward was sacked. And verse 14 below indicates that what Jesus said was for the benefit of the Pharisees, who were greedy. The use of sarcasm is not rare in the Bible. Getting into the eternal dwellings does not depend on ‘buying’ friends down here; it depends on pleasing the Owner up there. And who says someone who can be bought with ‘unrighteous mammon’ is going to Heaven? He would have to get there first in order to ‘receive’ the buyer. The whole ‘scene’ is patently ridiculous. Just by the way, verse 13 declares a terribly important truth. To embrace the world's value system (humanism, relativism, materialism) is to reject God. Materialistic ‘Christians’ are really serving mammon (‘mammon’ includes more than just money).

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© 2016 Wilbur N. Pickering, ThM, PhD