Luke 16:15

Luke 16:15, in plain English

Jesus responds: 'You look righteous to people, but God knows your hearts. What people admire, God finds disgusting.'

Why it's here

This is one of Jesus's sharpest rebukes. The Pharisees had mastered looking good on the outside while their hearts told a different story.

Who's speaking

Jesus speaks directly to the Pharisees with unflinching honesty about the gap between their image and their reality.

Where it sits in the story

The mask is off. Jesus sees through the performance and calls out what God sees: hearts that prize the wrong things.

The scholarly reading

Jesus exposes the gap between human approval and divine knowledge: 'you justify yourselves before men' (heautous dikaiountes enōpion tōn anthrōpōn), but 'God knows your hearts' (ho theos ginōskei tas kardias). What humans prize (hypsēlon) is 'detestable' (bdelygma) before God.

Language and setting

The term bdelygma ('abomination') is used in the LXX for idolatry and ritual impurity, making Jesus's condemnation of human pretension extraordinarily severe.

Voice

Jesus directly confronts the Pharisees, penetrating their public piety to expose the heart condition underneath.

Significance

Jesus fires back at the sneering Pharisees: you care about looking righteous in front of people, but God sees your hearts — and what humans admire, God finds detestable.

13No servant can serve two masters. 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 both God and money.”

14The Pharisees, who were lovers of money, heard all of this and were scoffing at Jesus.

15So He said to them, “You are the ones who justify yourselves before men, but God knows your hearts. For what is prized among men is detestable before God.

16The Law and the Prophets were proclaimed until John. Since that time, the gospel of the kingdom of God is being preached, and everyone is forcing his way into it.

17But it is easier for heaven and earth to pass away than for a single stroke of a pen to drop out of the Law.

Read all of Luke 16 — A shrewd manager, a rich man in torment, and Lazarus at his gate. Jesus draws a straight line between how you handle money and where you end up.