Sermon for The Ninth Sunday after Trinity, August 2, 2026.
Buried in the middle of today’s Gospel reading, the Lord’s parable of the unrighteous steward, is an important sentence that’s easy to overlook. Luke 16:8. Jesus says, “For the sons of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than the sons of light.”
A major part of why this parable is hard to understand is that we can’t fully grasp what this one sentence means when reading it in our English translation. We easily get turned around because it seems that Jesus is affirming the sinful behavior of the unrighteous steward. He’s not.
We’re going to look at the Greek of Luke 16:8 in just a minute, but before we do, this whole parable is about Jesus. He tells us the meaning of the parable in verse 13, saying, “No servant can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon.”
Who is the only servant to ever serve one Master perfectly? Jesus, the suffering servant. God dwelt among us, the light came into the world, and even though He was tempted to become a servant of sin, just like us, He remained faithful to His Father in heaven. This Christ did for you. This is why you are baptized in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. In your baptism, you were given Christ’s perfect service to God. His sinlessness. This is why you come to His altar every week to receive the fruit of His perfectly faithful service to His Father, His one and only master.
And this is why we need to understand Luke 16:8. “For the sons of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than the sons of light.” We are the sons of light. Christians. You are a son of light. And no, ladies, you don’t want to take this phrase to mean son or daughter of light. That’s not what the vocabulary says. Even the women and girls in Christ’s Church are sons of light.
See, the Greek word here for sons is huioi. Huios is the singular. And it specifically means a male descendant, male offspring. A son. There are other words for children that are not gender specific, such as paidion, which is used for young children. There’s also teknon. This is the word for children of any age, and of either gender.
So, whether you’re male or female, if you’re a Christian, you’re a son of light. Praise be to God, because huios refers to the legal standing of the offspring, specifically that the son is an heir. In the ancient world, it was the son who received the inheritance. 1 Corinthians 6:9-11 says, “Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.”
This text moves us to the next part of Luke 16:8 that we need to illuminate. The unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God. Jesus’ parable featured an unrighteous steward as the poster child of the “sons of this world.” Here, you need to know that the word translated “world” in your English Bible is aion, which comes to be pronounced eon in English. The “sons of this eon.” Aion means age or era. The “sons of this age,” the “sons of this era.” Which is connected to another word in Luke 16:8: “generation.” The grouping of people based on the age or era they live. “The sons of this age are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than the sons of light.”
So, now what are we learning from this parable? Jesus is telling us that there are two groups of people, and each acts a certain way. The unrighteous steward was caught being unrighteous, that is, unjust, unfaithful to his master. So, what does he do? He doubles down on being unfaithful to his master. He locks in on cheating his master out of his wealth. And how does the master react to this? He commends him for it. These guys are of the same generation; they are both sons of the same age, same era, of this worldly eon. Their master is wealth, mammon. They’re a case study of what Jesus said, “the sons of this age are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation.”
Unrepentant sinners, our neighbors who double down on their sin, embracing who they are as sons of this sinful age, making the most of who they are as unrepentant sinners… Jesus is using them for our educational purposes, highlighting what they do better than us. They are single-minded in their unrighteousness. They serve one master.
The steward was busted for cheating his boss. He had been serving mammon. He had been a slave to wealth, and now if he deviated from his course and tried to serve two masters, if he repented of his sin, he would be out on the street. He can’t have that, so he keeps serving wealth. He makes friends with other sons of his age by being unrighteous for their gain. I’ll scratch your back, you scratch mine.
This single-mindedness is what Jesus says the heirs of this age of darkness are better at than His sons of light, you, Christians. We think we can serve two masters. We think we can serve both God and self. Both God and mammon, money, wealth, preservation of life as we’ve become accustomed to living it. The common saying that sums up Jesus’ point is we think we can have our cake, hold onto it, keep it, preserve it, and eat it too. We don’t double down on faithfulness. We waffle between two masters. We’re inheritors of Christ’s light, of the kingdom of God, and so Jesus’ lesson is to live in the single-minded manner in which the inheritors of unrighteousness live. They lock in to preserve their temporal life, making friends by means of unrighteous wealth. Cheating the second master out of what would have been his.
Jesus is calling us to lock in on this same behavior, only not in unrighteousness, but in keeping with faithfulness. How can this be done? You know as well as I the truthfulness of what St. Paul says in Romans 7:18-19, “For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing.” Like Paul, you and I can say, “Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?” (Rom. 7:24) I can’t stop serving two masters. Who will save me from my double-mindedness, from my unrighteousness, from my unfaithfulness?
You know the answer. Paul answered the question for us. Romans 7:25. “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!” Jesus Christ is our redeemer. He has already rescued us from serving our other master, sin. And so, Paul continues, “So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin. There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” (Rom. 7:25b-8:1)
Friends, this is why Jesus lived for you and died for you. To serve one master for you, so that you would be baptized into him and receive His faithfulness. And so, listen to St. Paul. He preaches the Gospel of Jesus Christ for your comfort and peace in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. I already read Romans 8:1, but let me start there again, and I’m going to read to 8:17.
“There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. For to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God’s law; indeed, it cannot. Those who are in the flesh cannot please God. You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. But if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness. If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you. So then, brothers, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh. For if you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, “Abba! Father!” The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him.”
Amen!
Rev. Tyrel Bramwell 
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