The rich man had heard an accusation: his steward "had wasted his goods" (Luke 16:1). His question brings the report before the steward and asks him to explain it. Matthew Henry hears disappointment in it: "I expected better things from thee." The question comes with a command, "give an account of thy stewardship," and a verdict, "thou mayest be no longer steward." Barnes explains the command as "Give a statement of your expenses and of your conduct while you have been steward." The master is not asking for information so much as calling the steward to answer for what he has done with goods that were never his own.

The text records no reply from the steward to his master. Instead, "the steward said within himself, What shall I do?" (Luke 16:3). Matthew Henry observes that "The steward cannot deny it." He makes a plan so that when he is put out, "they may receive me into their houses" (Luke 16:4), and he calls in his lord's debtors to lower their bills (Luke 16:5-7). In the end, "the lord commended the unjust steward, because he had done wisely" (Luke 16:8).

A steward managed another person's property. Barnes defines him as "One who has charge of the affairs of a family or household." The word for "stewardship" is oikonomia, management or administration, and the phrase "give an account" (apodos ton logon) means to hand over the reckoning of what one has managed. Gill reads the parable as a picture of God calling Israel's religious leaders to account, saying the call came "By the prophets, sent one after another; by John the Baptist, by Christ himself, and by his apostles." Barnes, by contrast, warns that this detail "is not to be referred to the day of judgment," since it belongs to the story Jesus is telling.

Jesus told this parable "unto his disciples" (Luke 16:1), and He draws the lesson Himself: "He that is faithful in that which is least is faithful also in much" (Luke 16:10), and "Ye cannot serve God and mammon" (Luke 16:13). The master's question rests on a simple fact: the goods belonged to the master, not the steward.

That fact shapes how Jesus wants His followers to see what they have. Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary puts it this way: "Whatever we have, the property of it is God's; we have only the use of it, according to the direction of our great Lord." Henry adds, "And we are all liable to the same charge."