Luke Ch. 8 vs. 16 - What the?

I have been reading in the Gospel of Luke recently, mainly in the interest of further familiarizing myself with the Biblical text rather than undertaking an comprehensive study of each book. Nonetheless I cannot help but want to understand everything that is happening, and sometimes this leaves me contemplating a perplexing verse for long periods of time. This happened today as I came across verse sixteen in chapter eight of Luke. The context is that Jesus has just explained a parable to his disciples which had been told to a fair amount of people in a crowd, some being confused apparently (this I infer from Christ’s quotation of Scripture, which you will need to read in order to understand the reference) but what Jesus said. After explaining the parable to his disciples, he seems to add a sort of explanatory note – or perhaps, a cautionary one – onto his elucidation of the parable in order that the disciples understand that he has no come to confuse people, or to create an secret-knowledge religion, but to reveal something. The NET Bible (www.netbible.org) has this translation for verses 16-18:

“8:16 ‘No one lights a lamp and then covers it with a jar or puts it under a bed, but puts it on a lampstand so that those who come in can see the light. 8:17 For nothing is hidden that will not be revealed, and nothing concealed that will not be made known and brought to light. 8:18 So listen carefully, for whoever has will be given more, but whoever does not have, even what he thinks he has will be taken from him.’”

Now, I was particularly confused by this last line, because on the surface it seems an odd statement, one of many in the N.T. On the assumption that these three verses are in fact clarifying the nature of how/why Christ is telling parables, however, then I might have a possibly correct interpretation. I might also be totally wrong, so you will have to judge.

The first question I asked myself is, “Why would God want to give to those that already have, and take from those that don’t have?” It is natural to ask such a question, I think, given what I believe to be true about God and that this verse seems to be referring to Him as the agent of giving and taking – although it is possible that I have misinterpreted that as well. But after asking myself this, another question came to me, “But what is he [Jesus] talking about? What is this thing that will be taken away from those that do not have, and given to those that already do have?” After pondering this for awhile, I reached the conclusion that Christ is most likely talking about revealed truth from God both about Himself, and about what He has done and is doing (i.e. truth regarding the Resurrection, the nature of Christian living, the outworking of ministry, and other items related to living as if we believed our religion to be true). To me this seems the best way to make sense of something which will be given to those that already have it, and taken from those that do not.

Hence I understand this verse as such: If people who already have a true knowledge of God (a personal knowledge, not a theological knowledge, an understanding which shows them how to relate to God through their lives) are active with it and receive it appropriately, then God will reveal more of Himself to them. If they do not receive knowledge of God in the appropriate way, that is they receive the knowledge and then alter it in their minds and believe the product of this alteration because it suits their desires, then God will withdraw Himself from the lives of these people. Thus, even though they think that they have knowledge of God and they continue to grow in a false “knowledge,” they are in fact becoming further distanced from Him and the truth is taken from them.

Now, one obvious difficulty with this interpretation is that I believe God is always active in trying to reach out to people – that is, in speaking to them however it is that He does so through the Holy Spirit – and I do not like the idea that God is actually speaking to people less because of how they respond to Him. However, this desire that I have for God to be acting in a certain way is not really grounded in any kind of Scripture, so if my interpretation of this verse is correct then I must either alter this other belief, or perhaps try to harmonize it with this set of verses.