Luke, Wesley, & Wealth
Gaining, "Saving," Giving
Faith, Wealth, and Luke’s Gospel
According to Jesus’s celebrated sermon at his home synagogue in Nazareth, Jesus’s mission can be summed up in these words: “to preach good news to the poor” (4:18).1
For more on Luke’s theology of wealth and poverty, see my Substack series, “Good News to the Poor,” here.
Greek terms for poor in the New Testament congregate especially in Luke’s Gospel. Luke includes material on wealth and possessions also found in the Gospels of Matthew and Mark, as well as a number of other passages. For example, the parable of the rich man and the story of the poor widow both appear in all three Synoptic Gospels, but Luke alone has the Song of Mary (1:46–55), the parable of the rich fool (12:13–21), the parable of the shrewd manager (16:1–13), the story of the rich man and Lazarus the beggar (16:19–31), and the story of Zacchaeus (19:1–10). The Third Gospel tells the story of “good news to the poor,” and its definition of discipleship heavily emphasizes the relationship of faith and wealth.
Wealth and Luke 16
In his preaching, John Wesley works with some of this Lukan material, and especially with some of Jesus’s sayings in Luke 16. Since he doesn’t develop how fully this chapter is devoted to questions of Money, let me summarize.
Luke 16:1–9: The parable of the shrewd manager opens with the phrase, “A certain rich man,” and ends with Jesus noting the importance of investing worldly wealth in ways that have eternal ramifications.
Luke 16:10–13: Speaking to his disciples, Jesus generalizes from the parable of the shrewd manager to emphasize faithful stewardship. He goes on to assert that no one can serve both God and Money. Here, I capitalize “money” in order to take seriously that Jesus’s concern is not with dollars or denarii, but with the power Wealth can wield over us. Either it serves us or we serve it; there is no middle ground.
Luke 16:11–18: Even though Jesus has been speaking to his disciples (16:1), the Pharisees overhear his words and belittle him. They seem to think that his concern with the poor makes him unfaithful to God’s Instructions (torah). He turns the tables on them—first, declaring his own faithfulness; and second, accusing them of setting God’s Instructions aside. The problem is not that they had lots of money (Pharisees weren’t noted for their wealth), but that they love money. To put it differently, they love what money brings (or buys): prestige, invitations to the right parties, and so on. Jesus is working with a well-known proverb, that money is the root of evil (e.g., Acts 20:33; 1 Tim 6:10). Luke has repeatedly shown us that the Pharisees are so consumed with their social standing that they exhibit little concern for the plight of the poor (e.g., 11:39–43; 15:1–2). Luke now tells his readers the same thing, summarizing in a single expression—“lovers of money”—the greed of the Pharisees, their lack of care for the marginal, and their hyper-concern with social standing.
16:19–31: Still speaking to the Pharisees, Jesus tells the story of the rich man and Lazarus—a story with this punch line: Those who are faithful to Moses and the prophets already know and do what God wants in taking care of marginal, impoverished people like this beggar Lazarus.
In short, this whole chapter defines faithful discipleship in a way that brings the use of money right into the heart of things. The value we placed on money and our care for the needy—these are central.
John Wesley on “The Use of Money”
Wesley’s own approach to these questions is famously represented in a sermon that takes Luke 16:9 as its point of departure: “The Use of Money” (available here). Here we find his well-known triad:
“Gain all you can.”
“Save all you can.”
“Give all you can.”
For thinking about wealth with Wesley, we should have the parable before us:
Jesus also said to the disciples, “A certain rich man heard that his household manager was wasting his estate. He called the manager in and said to him, ‘What is this I hear about you? Give me a report of your administration because you can no longer serve as my manager.’
“The household manager said to himself, What will I do now that my master is firing me as his manager? I’m not strong enough to dig and too proud to beg. I know what I’ll do so that, when I am removed from my management position, people will welcome me into their houses.
“One by one, the manager sent for each person who owed his master money. He said to the first, ‘How much do you owe my master?’ He said, ‘Nine hundred gallons of olive oil.’ The manager said to him, ‘Take your contract, sit down quickly, and write four hundred fifty gallons.’ Then the manager said to another, ‘How much do you owe?’ He said, ‘One thousand bushels of wheat.’ He said, ‘Take your contract and write eight hundred.’
“The master commended the dishonest manager because he acted cleverly. People who belong to this world are more clever in dealing with their peers than are people who belong to the light. I tell you, use worldly wealth to make friends for yourselves so that when it’s gone, you will be welcomed into the eternal homes. wealth so that when it is gone, they may welcome you into the eternal homes.” (Luke 16:1–9)
Although the parable of the shrewd manager has puzzled interpreters across time (How could this kind of dishonesty be praised?),2 Wesley discerns Jesus’s focus immediately. People who are guided by the ways of this world know what to do with money. We might say that they read the right newsletters, they study best practices for “making the most of what’s yours,” they excel in pursuing economic gain, they concern themselves with “wealth management.” They know what to do with money. Why, then, are people who are guided by the ways of the gospel so unwise and unpracticed in what to do with money?
Stated more pointedly, why do people who have declared their allegiance to the ways of Jesus and God’s royal rule (βασιλεία) continue to follow the ways of this world when it comes to money? Money, Wesley observes, has become “the grand corrupter of the world, the bane of virtue, the pest of human society.” But this is not the way it has to be. Instead,
in the hands of his children it is food for the hungry, drink for the thirsty, raiment for the naked. It gives to the traveler and the stranger where to lay their head. By it we may supply the place of a husband to the widow, and of a father to the fatherless; we may be a defense for the oppressed, a means of health to the sick, of ease to them who are in pain. It may be as eyes to the blind, as feet to the lame; indeed, a lifter up from the gates of death. (“The Use of Money,” §2)
How can this be? To this end, Wesley sets forth “three plain rules”:
“Gain all you can.”
“Save all you can.”
“Give all you can.”
(If you think this makes Wesley a consummate, unbridled capitalist, read on!)
(1) Gain All You Can
Although Wesley counsels gaining all we can, he immediately rejects ways of making money that are unhealthy, immoral, or harmful to our neighbor. Reflecting his eighteenth-century context and concerns, he draws attention to the wrongdoing of those in the medical profession who prolong the suffering of others so as to boost their own fees, for example, or who trade in hard liquor (for they traffic in poison and murder, he says). He also rejects forms of employment that contribute to sexual immorality or excessive drinking—“which certainly none can do who has any fear of God, or any real desire of pleasing him.” He continues:
It nearly concerns all those to consider this who have anything to do with taverns, victualling-houses, operahouses, playhouses, or any other places of public, fashionable diversion. If these profit the souls of men and women, you are clear; your employment is good, and your gain innocent. But if they are either sinful in themselves, or natural inlets to sin of various kinds, then it is to be feared you have a sad account to make. (“The Use of Money,” §I.6)
But Wesley is as set against laziness and wasting of time as he is against these sorts of jobs. And so by “gaining all you can,” he means to say, “Gain all you can by honest industry: use all possible diligence in your calling. Lose no time” (“The Use of Money,” §I.7).
(2) Save All You Can
After gaining all they can, Wesley urges Christ-followers to save all they can. In today’s parlance, Wesley’s word, “save,” is misleading. He is not interested in high-yield savings accounts or 401(k)s. We would do better to rephrase his counsel with these words: “Rescue all you can.”
What is Wesley after? He urges his readers to purchase food and clothing for themselves and their families, together with “whatever nature moderately requires for preserving the body in health and strength” (“The Use of Money,” §III.3). Apart from this, rescue any and all monies from other expenditures, which are surely unnecessary. He explicitly forbids wasting money on what we might call ostentatious spending or uses of money designed to gratify needs beyond what is needed for day-to-day life.
His advice on leaving an inheritance for one’s children captures well his concerns:
And why should you throw away money upon your children, any more than upon yourself, in delicate food, in gay or costly apparel, in superfluities of any kind? Why should you purchase for them more pride or lust, more vanity, or foolish and hurtful desires? ...Why should you be at farther expense to increase their temptations and snares, and to ‘pierce them through with more sorrows’? ...Have pity upon them, and remove out of their way what you may easily foresee would increase their sins, and consequently plunge them deeper into everlasting perdition. How amazing then is the infatuation of those parents who think they can never leave their children enough? What! cannot you leave them enough of arrows, firebrands, and death? Not enough of foolish and hurtful desires? Not enough of pride, lust, ambition, vanity? Not enough of everlasting burnings! (“The Use of Money,” §§II.6–7)
Nor, he urges, does “saving all you can” mean putting one’s wealth into a bank. Instead, “saving all you can” means liberating one’s money from the fate of sitting idle in a savings account and, especially, rescuing it from habits of spending on what one does not strictly need.
We can almost hear in the background the words of John the Baptist in Luke’s Gospel. Asked what it might mean to demonstrate one’s conversionary life before God, he announces, “Whoever has two shirts must share with the one who has none, and whoever has food must do the same” (Luke 3:11). Notice how low the bar is set on wealth and sharing with the needy: whoever has two coats, whoever has food (and not, whoever has a overflowing closet, whoever has a full pantry). “Save all you can,” Wesley preaches, “by cutting off every expense that serves only to indulge foolish desire, to gratify either the desire of the flesh, the desire of the eye, or the pride of life. Waste nothing, living or dying, on sin or folly, whether for yourself or your children” (“The Use of Money,” §III.6).
(3) Give All You Can
Clearly, then, gaining and saving are not for the purpose of achieving “the good life” or for achieving the status of the upwardly mobile. Rather, both gaining and saving have this aim: giving all you can.
How much? “Give all you can, or in other words give all you have to God” (“The Use of Money,” §III.6). After caring for the immediate needs of one’s family, what does one do with the surplus? First, “do good to them that are of the household of faith”; then, if there is more, “‘as you have opportunity, do good to everyone.’ In so doing, you give all you can; indeed, in a sound sense, all you have. For all that is laid out in this manner is really given to God” (“The Use of Money,” §III.3).
On Stewarding
Basic to Wesley’s economic strategy is the image of the steward. When inquiring about how money might be used, he says, we should ask whether we have begun erroneously to imagine that what we have belongs to us, forgetting that all we have actually belongs to God. If so, then we have these mottos: “No more sloth!” “No more waste!” “No more envy!” Then, “give all you have, as well as all you are, a spiritual sacrifice to him who withheld not from you his Son, his only Son; so ‘laying up in store for yourselves a good foundation against the time to come, that you may have eternal life’” (“The Use of Money,” §III.7).
Unless otherwise noted, all scriptural citations follow the Common English Bible. I have adapted this essay from my book, Reading Scripture as Wesleyans (Nashville: Abingdon, 2010).
See Dennis J. Ireland, Stewardship and the Kingdom of God: An Historical, Exegetical, and Contextual Study of the Parable of the Unjust Steward in Luke 16:1-13, Supplements to Novum Testamentum 70 (Leiden: Brill, 1992).