Catholic Commentary
The Pharisees Rebuked for Their Love of Money
14The Pharisees, who were lovers of money, also heard all these things, and they scoffed at him.15He said to them, “You are those who justify yourselves in the sight of men, but God knows your hearts. For that which is exalted among men is an abomination in the sight of God.
Luke 16:14–15 records Jesus rebuking the Pharisees for their love of money and self-justification before others, declaring that what humans exalt as honorable is abomination before God, whose knowledge of hearts transcends external appearances. Jesus contrasts human judgment based on outward behavior with God's judgment of interior moral character and desire.
God judges what you hide; the world judges what you display—and they are judging opposite things.
"That which is exalted among men is an abomination in the sight of God" (to en anthrōpois hypsēlon bdelygma enōpion tou Theou estin): This is perhaps the most radical sentence in the passage. The word hypsēlon (exalted, high, lofty) and bdelygma (abomination, a term used in the LXX for idols and cultic impurity — cf. Dn 9:27; Mt 24:15) are placed in sharpest opposition. What men elevate — prestige, wealth, honor, public piety — God calls an idol. The verse does not say that such things are merely unimportant or insufficient; it says they are an abomination. This is language used of Israel's gravest sins against the covenant. The implication is that the Pharisees' entire edifice of social-religious honor has the character of idolatry before God.
The Typological and Spiritual Senses
Spiritually, the Pharisees here function as a type of every religious person who substitutes external conformity and social approval for the interior conversion demanded by the Gospel. The kardia that God examines is the seat of what the Catholic tradition calls the interior life — the life of grace, virtue, and charity that cannot be performed for any human audience. The movement Jesus demands is a reorientation of the whole person from the gaze of men to the gaze of God.
The Catholic Tradition on Interior Disposition and Self-Justification
Catholic teaching consistently holds that the moral quality of an act is determined not merely by its external conformity to law but by its interior intention and the disposition of the heart (CCC 1749–1761). This passage is a scriptural anchor for that principle. The Pharisees perform externally correct religious behavior, yet Christ pronounces their inner life an abomination — precisely because the animating principle is not love of God but love of human esteem.
St. Augustine, in his Confessions, identifies precisely this trap when he reflects on his own early desire for praise: "Thou madest us for Thyself, and our heart is restless, until it repose in Thee" (I.1). The heart oriented toward human approval is a heart that has not yet found its true rest. Augustine further comments on this passage in his Tractates: the Pharisees are lovers of money not only materially but spiritually — they have invested their soul in a currency that God does not honor.
St. Thomas Aquinas (STh II-II, q. 132) treats vainglory — the inordinate desire for honor from men — as the vice directly opposed to magnanimity, and notes that it becomes a capital sin insofar as it generates further vices, including hypocrisy. The Pharisees embody this: their philargyria (love of money) and their performance of righteousness for human eyes are twin symptoms of a soul disordered away from God.
The Catechism (CCC 2559) cites humility as the foundation of prayer precisely because prayer requires acknowledging before God what one truly is, not what one performs for others. This passage also undergirds the Church's consistent teaching against simony and clericalism — the use of sacred office for social prestige — which the Magisterium has repeatedly condemned as a structural form of the Pharisaic disorder Jesus identifies here.
The Pharisees' sin is remarkably contemporary. Social media has created an unprecedented infrastructure for self-justification before a human audience — the performance of virtue, faith, and generosity curated for maximum approval. A Catholic today can attend Mass, post about it, volunteer conspicuously, and signal orthodoxy relentlessly, all while God sees a heart animated primarily by the desire to be seen and admired. This is not hypothetical; it is a spiritual temptation built into the architecture of modern life.
The practical application of these verses begins with examining for whom one's acts of faith, charity, and prayer are performed. The examination of conscience recommended by the tradition (CCC 1454) is precisely the practice of submitting one's interior life to the divine gaze rather than the social one. Concretely: Give anonymously. Pray where no one can confirm it. Serve in ways that earn no recognition. These are not merely ascetic disciplines; they are reorientations of the heart's fundamental audience from men to God — which is exactly the conversion these two verses demand.
Commentary
Luke 16:14 — The Pharisees' Contemptuous Reaction
Luke uniquely identifies the Pharisees as philargyroi — "lovers of money" (φιλάργυροι), a compound Greek word combining philos (love, affection) and argyros (silver). This is not a casual accusation. Philargyria was recognized in the ancient world as a root vice, and Paul would later call it "the root of all evils" (1 Tim 6:10). Luke does not say the Pharisees were simply wealthy; he says their hearts were attached to wealth. This is the interior disorder Jesus has just finished warning His disciples about in the Parable of the Dishonest Steward (vv. 1–13), culminating in the declaration: "You cannot serve God and mammon" (v. 13). The Pharisees have heard that teaching (ēkouon de tauta panta — "they heard all these things") and their response is to ekmuktērizein — literally "to turn up the nose at," a vivid Greek idiom for contemptuous sneering or mockery. The scoff is itself diagnostic: those most stung by a word about money are those most bound by it. They do not argue with Jesus theologically; they dismiss Him socially, which reveals that their primary concern is reputation, not truth.
Luke 16:15 — The Divine Diagnosis
Jesus responds not with anger but with surgical precision, offering a three-part indictment:
"You are those who justify yourselves in the sight of men" (hoi dikaiountes heautous enōpion tōn anthrōpōn): The verb dikaioō carries the weight of legal justification — these are men who construct and perform a legal case for their own righteousness, with the audience being other human beings. This is the essential distortion of Pharisaic practice as Jesus critiques it throughout Luke: religion as reputation management. Cf. Lk 18:9–14, the Parable of the Pharisee and Tax Collector, where the Pharisee explicitly reviews his résumé before God, but Luke notes at the outset he "trusted in himself that he was righteous and despised others" — the same self-justifying posture.
"But God knows your hearts" (ho de Theos ginōskei tas kardias hymōn): The contrast is absolute. Men see the performed exterior; God sees the kardia, the biblical seat of will, desire, and moral identity. The participle form implies continuous, present-tense knowing — God is perpetually examining what lies within. This echoes the great Scriptural principle stated at the anointing of David: "Man looks at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart" (1 Sam 16:7). The Pharisees' whole system has been built on the wrong audience.