Bible Study · Luke 16:19 to 31

Lazarus And The Rich Man: The Man At The Gate

Jesus told this story to men who loved money. It has been read as a tour of the afterlife ever since. Here is what it actually asks of us.

By Pastor Johnny Ova · Sound of Heaven · 9 Min Read

The Short Answer

A Warning About Money, Not A Map Of The Dead

Straight Answer

Lazarus and the rich man is a story Jesus told in Luke 16:19 to 31, aimed at Pharisees who loved money. A rich man feasts every day while a starving beggar lies at his gate. Both die, and their places are reversed.

The point is not the layout of the afterlife. The point is that God sees the man at the gate, and that anyone who will not listen to Moses and the Prophets will not be moved even by a resurrection.

This story has often been used as a photograph of the afterlife. Read in its setting, it is sharper and more personal: it is about what you do with what you have, while you still have it.

“There was a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen and lived in luxury every day. At his gate was laid a beggar named Lazarus, covered with sores and longing to eat what fell from the rich man's table. Even the dogs came and licked his sores.”

Luke 16:19 to 21

The Whole Story

Six Scenes In Thirteen Verses

Most people remember one frame, the rich man in the fire. Jesus told it in six movements, and the last one carries the weight.

Verses 19 to 21

The Gate

Purple, fine linen and a feast every day. A few steps away, a man covered in sores who would be glad for scraps. Only the dogs come near him.

Verse 22

Two Funerals

Angels carry the beggar to Abraham's side. The rich man is simply buried.

Verses 23 and 24

The Reversal

In Hades the rich man looks up and sees Lazarus beside Abraham. He still treats Lazarus as a servant: send him down with water.

Verses 25 and 26

The Chasm

Abraham reminds him of the good things he already received. A great chasm now stands between them.

Verses 27 to 29

Five Brothers

The rich man asks for a messenger to warn his five brothers. Abraham says they already have Moses and the Prophets.

Verses 30 and 31

The Last Word

Surely a messenger from the dead would bring them to repent. Abraham answers that if they will not listen to Moses and the Prophets, a resurrection will not convince them.

Notice that the rich man knows Lazarus by name. He knew exactly who was at his gate. He simply never did anything about it.

Notice too that Jesus names the beggar and leaves the rich man anonymous. Lazarus is the only character in any of Jesus' parables who is given a name. It is the Greek form of the Hebrew Eleazar, which means “God has helped.” The man nobody helped carries a name that says God does.

Takeaway

The story ends with Moses, the Prophets and a resurrection, not with the fire. That is where Jesus put the weight, and that is where we should put it.

The Audience

Who It Was Aimed At

Jesus had just said you cannot serve both God and money (Luke 16:13). Luke tells us how that landed.

“The Pharisees, who loved money, heard all this and were sneering at Jesus.”

Luke 16:14

So this story is Jesus answering men who were laughing at Him about money. The whole chapter is about wealth, and this is its closing scene. You can meet those men in who the Pharisees were.

Those listeners were proud to call Abraham their father, and Jesus seats the beggar beside him. We cover that phrase and its Jewish background in what Abraham's bosom meant.

Reading It As A Tour

Every detail becomes literal fact, and the story turns into a guidebook to the underworld. The money point gets lost.

Reading It As Jesus Aimed It

The scenery is borrowed from pictures His hearers already carried. The target is a heart that loved money. The warning is real.

An Old Story Shape

A Story They May Have Heard Before

Is it a parable or a true event? Luke does not say, but it opens like the parable before it, “There was a rich man” (Luke 16:1 and 16:19), and most scholars read it as a parable. Some sincere Christians take it as literal because Lazarus is named. That is a fair point, but a name does not turn a story into a report.

Since a German study in 1918, scholars have often compared Luke 16 with an Egyptian tale about Setne Khamwas and his son Si-Osire. A rich man is buried with honor and a poor man with none. The son then shows his father the world of the dead, where the poor man is honored and the rich man suffers. Later Jewish retellings existed too.

Hold this as a scholarly suggestion. We cannot prove Jesus knew that tale, and other scholars warn against leaning on one parallel. But it shows that a rich and poor reversal after death was a known story shape. Jesus picked up a shape His listeners recognized and turned it toward them. That is how parables work, as we explain in why Jesus spoke in parables.

The Poor Man Gets A Name

The one the world ignored is the one God knows by name.

No Scales Of Deeds

Abraham points back to what the rich man already had: good things, and Moses and the Prophets.

A Resurrection Ending

The story closes on someone rising from the dead and still not being believed. That ending belongs to Jesus.

According to Luke 16:31, what did Abraham say the five brothers needed to do?

Wait for Lazarus to visit them

Listen to Moses and the Prophets

Give all their money to the Temple

Abraham refuses to send a messenger from the dead. The brothers already have Moses and the Prophets. The answer was already in their hands.

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The Flames

What The Fire Does Not Prove

This is the passage people reach for first to prove that the lost suffer consciously forever. Here is that view at its strongest: the rich man is conscious after death, in agony in a fire, behind a chasm no one can cross, and Jesus told the story.

The question is whether the story was told to teach how punishment works. Look at where it happens. The rich man is in Hades, not Gehenna. Hades is the Greek word for Sheol, the grave, as we explain in what Sheol means. Gehenna is the word Jesus used for final destruction, which we cover in what Gehenna really is.

If the story is literal description, all of it is. Then the dead have tongues and fingertips before any resurrection, and the saved watch the lost suffer and chat across the gap. Almost nobody believes that. We are asking for the same honesty about the flames.

Where We Stand, Plainly

Sound of Heaven reads Lazarus and the rich man as a parable-shaped story aimed at Pharisees who loved money, not a map of the afterlife. Using it to prove eternal conscious torment is a mistake. The rich man is in Hades, and Hades does not last. In Revelation 20:13 and 14, Death and Hades give up their dead and are thrown into the lake of fire. We teach fulfilled eschatology, so we read that as what God did at the covenant climax of the first century.

We hold conditional immortality. God alone is immortal (1 Timothy 6:16), and eternal life is His gift through Jesus, as we explain in what eternal life is. Those who refuse that life are not kept alive forever in pain. They perish.

We refuse the opposite error too. Calling this a parable does not make it soft. A life that hoards and steps over the suffering at its gate is headed for real and final loss.

If This Story Has Frightened You

Some people first heard this passage as children, as a picture of what happens to people they love. If that fear stayed with you, hear this plainly. The story was aimed at men who loved money and mocked Jesus, not at the grieving or the anxious. God came in Jesus to give you life.

Want someone to pray with you? Our team is ready on our prayer page.

A Covenant Reading

The Rich Man And His Generation

There is another layer worth seeing. We offer it as a reading, not the only one. The moral about wealth and mercy stands either way.

In this reading the rich man stands for the leaders of Israel in Jesus' generation. They had the riches of the covenant: the Law, the Temple, the promises. Purple was royal, and fine linen was the fabric of priestly garments (Exodus 28). Lazarus stands for the outcasts those leaders stepped over. Only a chapter earlier, the Pharisees complained that Jesus “welcomes sinners and eats with them” (Luke 15:2).

Crumbs And Dogs

Lazarus longs for what falls from the table. A Gentile woman later asks Jesus for mercy with the words “even the dogs under the table eat the children's crumbs” (Mark 7:28). Outsiders hungered for what insiders wasted.

Five Brothers

Josephus writes that the elder high priest Ananus, the Annas of the Gospels, “had five sons, who had all performed the office of an High Priest to God”. Annas was Caiaphas's father-in-law (John 18:13). Suggestive, not proof.

A Great Chasm

Just before this story Jesus says the Law and the Prophets were proclaimed until John, and now the Kingdom is preached (Luke 16:16). A covenant turning point had arrived, and within that generation the old order the leaders trusted was gone in AD 70.

Then the last line: if they will not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead. Many commentators hear an echo of Jesus' own resurrection there. In John's Gospel a real Lazarus did come back from the dead. The response was not repentance.

“So the chief priests made plans to kill Lazarus as well, for on account of him many of the Jews were going over to Jesus and believing in him.”

John 12:10 and 11

A man rose from the dead, and the answer was to plot his death again. Then Jesus rose, and much of that leadership still refused Him. Abraham's words came true in front of them. You can read about the real Lazarus in Lazarus in the Bible.

The Point For Us

Who Is At Your Gate

You do not need the covenant reading to feel this story. The rich man is never accused of stealing or cruelty. A hungry man lay at his gate day after day, and he kept eating. Comfort made him blind.

Most people on Long Island are not rich by their own reckoning, but by the standards of Lazarus nearly all of us live behind a gate. The question is whether we see the person our money was meant to reach.

Jesus is not teaching that the poor are saved for being poor or the rich lost for being rich. Abraham himself was wealthy. We look at that tension in whether God wants you poor. The problem is a heart that trusts wealth and stops hearing God, the same thing Jesus met in the rich young ruler, and in His words about a camel and the eye of a needle.

Listen Now

The brothers already had what they needed. So do we. Moses and the Prophets said to care for the poor, and Jesus fulfills all they pointed to.

Look At The Gate

The gate is wherever your life touches someone in need: a coworker quietly going under, a neighbor in Deer Park who cannot make rent. Mercy starts with noticing.

Takeaway

The rich man did not lack information about the afterlife. He lacked eyes for the man at his gate, and ears for the God who had already spoken.

Where This Lands

The One Who Rose

It all comes back to Jesus. The story ends by pointing to someone rising from the dead, and Someone did. Jesus is the full word Moses and the Prophets were reaching for. He walked through every gate we build and sat down with the Lazaruses of the world.

The Kingdom is here now. The table is already set, and the call to share it is for today. If you belong to Jesus, do not fear this story. Let it open your eyes.

For related reading, see what happens when you die, to be absent from the body and what we believe. And if you are on Long Island, plan a visit and find a seat at our table.

The Whole Thing In One Line

Lazarus and the rich man is a story Jesus aimed at people who loved money, a warning to see the poor at the gate and to listen to God now, and never a map of endless torment.

Is Someone At Your Gate Tonight?

Maybe that someone is you. Tell us what you are carrying, and someone at Sound of Heaven will pray with you this week.

Questions People Ask

Questions About Lazarus And The Rich Man

What is the story of Lazarus and the rich man about?

Lazarus and the rich man is a story Jesus told in Luke 16:19 to 31. A rich man feasts every day while a starving beggar named Lazarus lies at his gate. Both die, and their places are reversed. Jesus told it to Pharisees who loved money (Luke 16:14). Its point is that God sees the poor at the gate, and that anyone who will not listen to Moses and the Prophets will not be convinced even by a resurrection.

Is Lazarus and the rich man a parable or a true story?

Luke does not label it, but it opens the same way as the parable just before it, and most scholars read it as a parable. Some Christians take it as literal because Lazarus is named. Sound of Heaven reads it as a parable-shaped story that uses pictures of the afterlife Jesus' listeners already knew, aimed at people who loved money, not a literal map of what happens after death.

Does the rich man in Hades prove eternal torment?

No. The rich man is in Hades, the Greek word for Sheol, the grave. That is not Gehenna, and in Revelation 20:13 and 14 Death and Hades themselves are thrown into the lake of fire. The story also has the dead talking across a chasm, a detail almost nobody takes literally. Sound of Heaven teaches that eternal life is God's gift, and those who refuse it perish rather than suffer forever.

Is the Lazarus in Luke 16 the same Lazarus Jesus raised from the dead?

No. The Lazarus of Luke 16 is a beggar in a story. The Lazarus of John 11 is the brother of Martha and Mary, and Jesus raised him from the dead. But the connection is striking. The parable says some will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead. When the real Lazarus rose, the chief priests made plans to kill him as well (John 12:10).

What is the great chasm in Luke 16?

In Luke 16:26 Abraham tells the rich man that a great chasm has been set in place, so no one can cross from one side to the other. It is part of the story's scenery, and it makes a point: a time comes when the chance to act has passed. The rich man had years to cross the few steps to his own gate and never did.