Commentary: The Rich Man and Lazarus

I often hear TV Christians teaching that The Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus is not a parable. Instead, they teach that it is a true story. Their reasoning is that Jesus uses a name in this story, but He doesn't do that in other parables; therefore, this must be an actual account. Apart from being a ludicrous assumption, it is an incredibly weak argument. In John 21:25, the apostle states, "there are also many other things that Jesus did, which if they were written one by one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that would be written." There is much we don't know about Jesus' ministry. Certainly it is possible that Jesus did relate other parables that included names. But, more importantly, these Christians fail to mention that the story of the Rich Man and Lazarus may already be several centuries old at the time of Christ. It appears to have come from Jewish oral traditions dating back to the Babylonian captivity -- traditions that were later written down in the "Gemara." Josephus, speaking of the Pharisees of Jesus' day, said: "They believe that the wicked are detained in an everlasting prison [eirgmon aidion] subject to eternal punishment"
Such doctrines, in regard to Hades, are not from any Old Testament teaching. We must either reject such ideas as myths, or we must admit that other cultures, long before Christ, discovered something that God had never revealed to Moses. Either these nations announced the fate of mankind centuries before God's Word did, or else these stories are myths that crept into Jewish thinking through contact with other nations.

Did Jesus endorse any of these beliefs? The Greeks believed in a mythological Hades that is similar to the Hades in the parable. In Greek mythology, Hades is divided into two parts. Erebus, the first part, is where the souls of the dead live. The other deeper part is Tartarus, where the Titans are held prisoners. A closer example is found in Good's "Book of Nature." It was believed in most countries that "this Hell, Hadees, or invisible world, is divided into two very distinct and opposite regions by a broad and impassable gulf; one is a seat of happiness, a paradise or elysium, and the other a seat of misery, a Gehenna or Tartarus; and there is a supreme magistrate and an impartial tribunal belonging to the infernal shades, before which the ghosts must appear, and by which they are sentenced to the one or the other, according to the deeds done in the body. Egypt is said to have been the inventor of this important and valuable part of the tradition; and undoubtedly it is to be found in the earliest records of Egyptian history."

Now to our parable. Since The Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus is often the hinge on which the door to the afterlife swings, it would be a good idea to take a serious look inside of it.

There are three things to keep in mind as you read this parable. 1) Jesus was speaking to the Pharisees who believed in such an afterlife. 2) The parable has Lazarus going to Abraham's bosom and not to God or Heaven, yet Jesus came to reconcile us to God. In John 14, Jesus tells us He is going to prepare a place for us in the Father's house. He says that if He prepares a place for us, He will come again and receive us to Himself, that where He is, there we may be also. That place is the Father's house. It is not Abraham's bosom; and 3) Jesus does not endorse the Pharisees beliefs in the afterlife with this parable; He is in fact using their own teaching to condemn them. Jesus utilized this story to convey a moral to his audience, just as Aesop used fables in the sixth century B.C. The Pharisees felt the full brunt of Jesus' words and understood that this parable was directed toward them, as were the preceding ones. We know Jesus did not accept the doctrines of the Pharisees from His comments, especially in Mark 7:13 and Luke 12:1, where Jesus says: "[You have made] the word of God of no effect through your tradition which you have handed down;" and, "Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy." We learn in the scriptures that the leaven of the Pharisees was their doctrine or their teachings.

At any rate, what was Jesus teaching in the parable of the rich man and Lazarus? To understand the point being made, we have to look at this in context. Just prior to beginning this parable, Jesus had said, "No servant can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon [worldly riches]." And, as we shall see, the Pharisees served worldly riches.

Luk 16:14 Now the Pharisees, who were lovers of money, also heard all these things, and they derided Him.

Luk 16:15 And He said to them, "You are those who justify yourselves before men, but God knows your hearts. For what is highly esteemed among men is an abomination in the sight of God.

Luk 16:16 "The law and the prophets were until John. Since that time the kingdom of God has been preached, and everyone is pressing into it.

Luk 16:17 "And it is easier for heaven and earth to pass away than for one tittle of the law to fail.

Luk 16:18 "Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery; and whoever marries her who is divorced from her husband commits adultery.

Immediately after making these comments Jesus relates the parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus. How can we connect these seemingly unrelated statements?

Luk 16:19 "There was a certain rich man who was clothed in purple and fine linen and fared sumptuously every day.

Luk 16:20 "But there was a certain beggar named Lazarus, full of sores, who was laid at his gate,

Luk 16:21 "desiring to be fed with the crumbs which fell from the rich man's table. Moreover the dogs came and licked his sores.

Luk 16:22 "So it was that the beggar died, and was carried by the angels to Abraham's bosom. The rich man also died and was buried.

Luk 16:23 "And being in torments in Hades, he lifted up his eyes and saw Abraham afar off, and Lazarus in his bosom.

Luk 16:24 "Then he cried and said, 'Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus that he may dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue; for I am tormented in this flame.'

Luk 16:25 "But Abraham said, 'Son, remember that in your lifetime you received your good things, and likewise Lazarus evil things; but now he is comforted and you are tormented.

Luk 16:26 'And besides all this, between us and you there is a great gulf fixed, so that those who want to pass from here to you cannot, nor can those from there pass to us.'

Luk 16:27 "Then he said, 'I beg you therefore, father, that you would send him to my father's house,

Luk 16:28 'for I have five brothers, that he may testify to them, lest they also come to this place of torment.'

Luk 16:29 "Abraham said to him, 'They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them.'

Luk 16:30 "And he said, 'No, father Abraham; but if one goes to them from the dead, they will repent.'

Luk 16:31 "But he said to him, 'If they do not hear Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded though one rise from the dead.'"

Like the parables in the preceding chapters, the parable of Lazarus and the Rich Man seems designed to rebut the criticism against Jesus for associating with sinners. In the preceding parables, Jesus speaks of a search for a lost sheep and for a lost coin. He tells about the prodigal son, and how the son is received by his father but rejected by his brother. Jesus draws a parallel between divorce and remarriage and the Pharisees unfaithfulness to God. God was a husband to the Jewish people, and it would have been adultery to abandon the law before it was done away with. But Jesus says, "The law and the prophets were until John. Since that time the kingdom of God has been preached, and everyone is pressing into it." (Luke 16:16) And by so saying, He announces the end of the law. Because of their failure to realize this, and because of their rejection of the Messiah, blindness, in part, was about to come upon the Jewish nation. But only until, as Paul puts it, "the fullness of the Gentiles has come in." Not long after this, the Good New would go forth to the Gentiles. Gentiles were about to be grafted in to the true olive tree. Gentiles were also to become children of Abraham, and like Lazarus, would now "go to Abraham's bosom."

But, to return to the words of our parable, we see how Jesus has directed this toward the Pharisees. The Pharisees, like the rich man, were clothed in purple and fine linen and ate well every day. We know that the rich man is Jewish because Abraham is called his father and Abraham calls him his son. We see that Lazarus is also Jewish since he has also gone to father Abraham's bosom. We see that, like the Jewish sinners and tax collectors whom Jesus associated with, Lazarus is held in contempt by the rich man because of his sinfulness and his poverty. [To the Pharisees, poverty was seen as a punishment for sinfulness.] Lazarus is a disgusting figure to the rich man. Jesus is using Lazarus as a symbol of the sinners whom He associated with. Jesus had previously told the religious leaders in Mat 21:31, "Assuredly, I say to you that tax collectors and harlots enter the kingdom of God before you." Here Jesus is telling them the same thing in the form of a parable.

Universalists, from whom some of this teaching comes, claim, among other things, that Lazarus is symbolic of the Gentiles; yet they fail to remember, like all others who believe in replacement theology, that Jesus was Jewish. He came, first of all, to the nation of Israel. All of His disciples were Jewish. Those who were in His audience were Jewish; all of the early Christians were Jewish. And when He returns, He will be returning to Israel. Which means that, as the Bible predicts, the Jewish people have to be back in the land of Israel. Which they are. Obviously, as the Bible says, God is not finished with the Jewish people. With all that said, it was not until after the resurrection that the Gospel even went to the Gentiles. However, there is an important element in the parable that does seem to point to the Gentiles. That element, unflattering as it is, is the dogs that licked the sores of Lazarus. This appears to be symbolic of those Gentiles who truly wanted to know God, and were, in fact, so desperate for salvation that they would have done anything to obtain it. [See Matthew 15:22-28.] http://www.blueletterbible.org/cgi-bin/tools/printer-friendly.pl?book=Mat&chapter=15&version=NKJV#22

Since this parable is being directed to the Pharisees, those who were the religious leaders in Israel, we see that their unfaithfulness as religious leaders had left the people in spiritual poverty, reduced to beggars and dogs. It is important to remember that salvation is of the Jews, which is why the "dogs" had gone to Lazarus. These unfaithful Pharisees, whom Jesus was speaking to, had failed to provide the religious leadership which was entrusted to them. In fact, as already stated, they had even taken on traditions and beliefs of other nations. Jesus wanted to show them, in the language of their own oral traditions, that they were the ones who were truly in need of salvation. The hell that they preached, (which came from the nations that surrounded them and not from the Word of God), would have been filled with people from their own ranks if it had existed -- not the sinners whom they condemned but Jesus embraced. These religious leaders had the law and the prophets, yet they ignored them and had even corrupted them with their traditions. They had the law and the prophets, yet they had failed to recognize Jesus as their Messiah. And even if one were to be raised from the dead (which of course is exactly what happened) they would not believe. That is the point of the parable. It is not a description of the afterlife.

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Commentary: The Rich Man and Lazarus

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Commentary: The Rich Man and Lazarus

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