Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus

“ For example, in the next parable, it was sin and not wealth that ruined the rich man; many richer men than he have walked with God on earth, and entered rest when they departed. Wealth was not his destroyer, yet he so used his wealth as to permit the wicked one to bind his soul with it as with chains over to the second death. On the other hand, it was neither the poverty nor the sores of Lazarus, nor both together, that saved him; many as destitute of money and as full of sores as he are never saved. Christ was this man’s Saviour,—Christ alone ”

“ But even when we take the whole of Jesus’s teaching rather than any fraction thereof, and after we have given full consideration to the personal element in his method, there is still a sobering remainder with which we must deal. The attempt to make the parable of Dives and Lazarus a straight contrast between the final fate of a rich man and that of a poor man cannot succeed. Lazarus was not sent to heaven because he was poor. He was not given a place in Abraham’s bosom on the ground of his poverty of circumstances, but on the ground of his wealth of character. ”

“ Blessed truly is he, "though he be insignificant, and feeble, and obscure;" and he is truly rich with the greatest of all riches. "Though a man, then, be richer than Cinyras and Midas, and is wicked," and haughty as he who was luxuriously clothed in purple and fine linen, and despised Lazarus, "he is miserable, and lives in trouble," and shall not live. Wealth seems to me to be like a serpent, which will twist round the hand and bite ”

“ To all men it was said—yes, to Lazarus as to Dives—'Judge not, that ye be not judged.' But think not, O rich man, that we preach only to the poor. If it be their duty not to grudge thee thy substance, it is thine to do all that may sweeten their labour. Remember that when our Lord said, 'How hardly shall they that have riches enter into the kingdom of heaven,' He replied also to them who asked, 'Who then can be saved?' 'The things which are impossible with men are possible with God,' that is, man left to his own temptations would fail ”

“ The people were bribed into quiescence under poverty by promises of reward in a future life, and when beggars grew clamorous the parable of Dives and Lazarus smoothed them back into passivity. Like other Eastern fanatics Jesus denounced the mere possession of wealth as a crime: "A rich man shall hardly enter into the kingdom of heaven. ”

“ If men who claim to be his disciples have deified worldly success, and made temporal prosperity a sufficient test of the truth of his religion, they cannot plead any word of his in excuse.
He certainly never paid court to the great, or stooped to flatter the rich. Was it not he who said, “Woe be to you rich: ye have received your reward”? and again, “It is harder for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven than for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle”? Did he not take Lazarus to his bosom when Dives was in hell? ”

“ He calls the poor man to sacrifice as well as the rich man. He was the Son of Man, not the son of a class of men. But His denunciation is unsparing of those men who make wealth at the expense of souls; who find in capital no incentive to further fraternity; who endeavor so to use wealth as to make themselves independent of social obligations, and to grow fat with that which should be shared with society;--for those men who are gaining the world but are letting their neighbors fall among thieves and Lazarus rot among their dogs. ”

“ Then Jesus showed the two men in the next world, Lazarus the beggar now in Abraham's bosom, and the son of good fortune enduring torment.
There is no hint that the Rich Man had gained a penny of his wealth wrongfully; no charge of lying or theft, of murder or adultery is laid at his door. He was damned not by the wicked things he had done, but for the lack of that generous and humane service which he had left undone. His sin was that of selfish indifference. The way to perdition is paved with moral neglect. The debt of privilege can no more be escaped than death or taxes. ”

“ But I am afraid it will be said of some of those, as was said of the rich man, "Thou in thy lifetime received thy good things and likewise Lazarus his evil things, but now he is comforted and thou art tormented." We do not want anything to cling to us but what is right, and honest, and truthful, and whenever we can act for the benefit of all, then we are doing right, free from this narrow contracted feeling and this personal, selfish, aggrandizing spirit. ”

“ In this view, surely more creditable to the intellect of our Saviour, mere material wealth ceases to signify; the Dives of spiritual reality may be the actual beggar rich in faith yet indifferent to the soul-hunger of the faithless; while poor Lazarus may be the millionaire, thirsting, hungering, aspiring, day after day, for crumbs of spiritual comfort that the beggar, out of the abundance of his faith, would never miss. ”

“ The rich man's fate was not the effect of riches, nor was the rest into which Lazarus entered the resultant of poverty. Failure to use his wealth aright, and selfish satisfaction with the sensuous enjoyment of earthly things to the exclusion of all concern for the needs or privations of his fellows, brought the one under condemnation; while patience in suffering, faith in God and such righteous life as is implied though not expressed, insured happiness to the other. ”

“ He had known that he had led such a life, in regard to purity and uprightness, as the Nazarene preached; but this, to give up his possessions—for Lazarus was a rich man—this would mean ceasing to be a ruler of the Synagogue, a lawyer, and a great man in Bethany and Jerusalem. Was this then the spirit of a little child, to be the possessor of nothing, to look to the Father for everything?
Surely this thing was not so easy. A life of believing and uprightness, yes; but poverty? pitiful poverty, to a man who had worn purple robes and been greeted in the market place with the cry of Rabbi, Rabbi! ”

“ Had Lazarus in his life-time afterwards grown rich, and he poor, Lazarus would have thought it his duty to relieve him, and not to have upbraided him with his former unkindness; but, in the future state of recompence and retribution, those that are now dealt with, both by God and man, better than they deserve, must expect to be rewarded every man according to his works. ”

“ But now, although this be thus, in respect of the riches and the poverty compared together, yet if a rich man and a poor man be both good men, there may be some other virtue beside in which the rich man may peradventure so excel that he may in heaven be far above that poor man who was here on earth in other virtues far under him. And the proof appeareth clear in Lazarus and Abraham.
Nor I say not this to the intent to comfort rich men in heaping up riches, for a little comfort will bend them enough thereto. ”

“ The poor man, lacking the rich man’s goods, has comforted himself with the story of Lazarus. But the moral man has found equal consolation when denying himself the pleasures of the flesh, in picturing the eternal torments which awaited those who refused to be bound by his inhibitions. ”

“ We may find the rich man in this land to-day as certainly as in the circle that listened that day to the preaching of Jesus. We find the counterpart of this picture, not only in individuals, but in associated churches; and if Christians, both in their private and corporate capacities, are rich both in temporal means and spiritual privileges, they need not go far to seek for the Lazarus who is laid at their gate. Lazarus lies in the streets and lanes of our opulent cities; and, oh, he is full of sores! For his sake, for Christ’s sake, for our own sake, we must go out and show him kindness. ”

“ The poor can offend Him; the poor man can neglect his divinely appointed mission as well as the rich. Do not suppose, my brethren, that what I have said against the upper or the middle class will not, if you happen to be poor, also lie against you. Though a man were as poor as Lazarus, he [223] could be as guilty as Dives. If you were resolved to degrade yourselves to the brutes of the field, who have no reason and no conscience, you need not wealth or rank to enable you to do so. Brutes have no wealth; they have no pride of life ”

“ Nothing that is good is left unrewarded, and nothing that is sinful is left unpunished. Thus the fate of Dives ought to serve as a grave warning to the rich not to forget God or the care of their souls, and to make a right use of their riches, especially by alms-deeds. And the everlasting reward of Lazarus ought to bring consolation to the poor and suffering and teach them not to murmur or lose courage, but to endure all in patience and resignation, fixing their hope on God and His everlasting riches. ”

“ Lazarus must leave his dunghill, so that the poor need no longer exult in the death of the rich. All must be made happy, that the good fortune of a few may not be a crime and a curse. As the laborer sows his wheat, he must know that he is helping forward the work of life, instead of rejoicing that Death walks at his side. We may no longer consider death as the chastisement of prosperity or the consolation of distress, for God has decreed it neither as the punishment nor the compensation of life. ”

“ Consider also some of our Lord's parables in this regard. The well-known one of Dives and Lazarus at once occurs to mind. The rich man is not accused of any particular evil; but simply he lived trusting in his riches, the selfish life of which they are so often the foundation. ”

“ After this life there is, we learn, a future state — a life where everything is quite different from what it is on earth. Lazarus was poor, despised, racked with pain and hunger while he was on earth; but when he died, angels carried his soul to the abode of the just, where he received consolation, and whence, when our Lord ascended into heaven, he would pass to everlasting happiness. On the other hand, the rich man, when on earth, led what was apparently a magnificent life. ”

“ The patriarch Abraham said to him, "My son, be thou mindful that thou receivedst riches in thy life, and Lazarus misery." This saying is rather to be feared than expounded. The rich man was requited with transitory prosperity, if he did aught of good; and the poor man was requited with misery, if he had perpetrated aught of evil. ”

“ Abraham was also, you know, a man of great substance, and so continued all his life in honour and wealth. Yea, and when he died, too, he went unto such wealth that when Lazarus died in tribulation and poverty, the best place that he came to was that rich man's bosom!
Finally, good uncle, this we find before our eyes, and every day we prove it by plain experience that many a man is right wealthy and yet therewith right good, and many a miserable wretch is as evil as he is wretched. ”

“ It bases a demand for mutual help and love, upon the fact that we are all on a pilgrimage—high, low, honored, degraded, master, slave, we go forth together, and these earthly distinctions all drop away. Rich man with rows of real-estate, with money safe in bank, with solid securities walled [247] around you—you will carry no more away than Lazarus yonder—in God's eyes you are no richer than he. ”

“ Infinitely better, that you be honestly poor than dishonestly rich. Infinitely better to "do justly," and be a Lazarus; than to become a Croesus, by clinging to and accumulating ill-gotten gains. Do you add to the fear of poverty, that of losing your honors--those which are anticipated, as well as those, which already deck your brow? ”

“ If a man grows up in ignorance and vulgarity, shut out from the world of art, literature and science, and all that refines and elevates the mind—a rude, uncultured boor—he pays too great a price for any money he may scrape together. (d) Humanity is better than money. The rich man who leaves Lazarus untended at his gates, who builds about him walls so thick that no cry from the suffering world ever penetrates them, who becomes mean and stingy, close-fisted and selfish, pays too great a price. Of such a man it is said in Scripture that "in hell he lifted up his eyes." ”

“ The poor man sees daily and hourly all the vast disparities produced by civilized society; and reversing the divine parable, it is Lazarus who from afar, and from the despondent pit, looks upon Dives in the lap of Paradise: therefore, his privations, his sufferings, are made more keen by comparison with the luxuries of others. Not so in the desert and the forest. There but small distinctions, and those softened by immemorial and hereditary usage—that has in it the sanctity of religion—separate the savage from his chief. ”

“ Thus we see that Lazarus was supposed to have undergone the very worst indignities to which poverty could bring a man, and the contrast between himself and the other personage of the parable receives additional strength. ”