Luke 16:13, commentary and pictures

No one can serve God and wealth at the same time, for devotion to one excludes devotion to the other. Mammon is wealth treated as a competing master that claims loyalty against God. Divided loyalty is impossible, for loyalty to one master leads to loving and holding to the chosen one while hating, despising or disregarding the other, and there is no neutral position between them. Earthly possessions are God's loan given on probation to test faithfulness, and faithfulness in unrighteous mammon and in what belongs to another conditions being trusted with true riches and one's own. God will not accept a divided heart but requires the whole heart and whole person in wholehearted service, for covetousness and selfishness are idolatry that leaves no place for love of the Father.

Words and Context

Mammon is wealth treated as a competing master that claims loyalty against God, so that devotion to wealth and devotion to God are rival allegiances that cannot be given at the same time. No servant can give wholehearted service to both, for loyalty to the one leads to hating, despising, rejecting or disregarding the other while holding to or loving the one chosen. Those who set the heart on earthly treasure hold to mammon and despise Christ's claims, and one who makes the pursuit of money and material gain the master cannot at the same time give powers to building Christ's kingdom. Earthly possessions are lent by God to test whether a person is faithful to God and fit to receive the immortal inheritance, so that freely using them to advance God's cause shows loyalty to Him while withholding what is lent shows unfaithfulness, and love of the world leaves no place for love of the Father.

There is no neutral position and no middle class who neither love God nor serve the enemy of righteousness. The saying was spoken to the covetous Pharisees who derided Christ and justified themselves before men, while God knows the heart and judges rightly even when people justify themselves before others. It belongs with faithfulness in the least as the measure of faithfulness in much, and with faithfulness in unrighteous mammon and in what belongs to another as the condition for being trusted with true riches and with one's own. It belongs also with the exposure of covetous derision and self-justification, with the declaration that what is highly esteemed among men is abomination to God, including wealth gained through oppression, deception, fraud or other dishonesty however highly people esteem it, and with the preaching of the kingdom of God since John and the permanence of the law by which heaven and earth would sooner pass than one tittle fail.

It is illustrated by the Gadarenes, who rejected Jesus and drove His Spirit from their hearts because following Him threatened pecuniary loss and worldly interests. They feared pecuniary loss and chose financial security and protection of property over Christ, refusing His teachings to protect worldly interests.

Two Masters Incompatible

No one can serve God and wealth at the same time, for devotion to one excludes devotion to the other. Serving God cannot be joined with serving mammon as a competing master, and loyalty to one leads to rejection or disregard of the other. Love for worldly treasure leaves only partial belief in the truth, and when gaining wealth becomes the ruling passion and money-getting becomes an object of worship, the person enslaved to money and bound more tightly to the world cannot at the same time serve God. Serving God means not serving wealth as master but using entrusted means to advance His kingdom and lay up treasure in heaven, rather than keeping money for selfish purposes. That service must be wholehearted and free from self-seeking.

Serving God requires having the Spirit of Christ the self-sacrificing Redeemer, denying self, lifting the cross and following Jesus, representing Jesus, and living by every word from His mouth. Serving mammon is loving worldly treasure, being led away to self-pleasing and self-indulgence, spending money on needless things like bicycles and dress, and making only feeble and sleepy efforts to send the truth to regions beyond. That selfish course brings shame on Christ, and its money spent must be accounted for and answered for in the great day of judgment. Seeking pre-eminence and the highest wages for service reflects ambition that blurs the line between church and world, while God's people are united through the power of the Holy Spirit.

The same incompatibility forbids joining service to God with service to the world for its esteem, honor, applause and profits. A person must choose Christ even if following Him brings reproach and hatred from the world, for worldly influence separates people from God and cannot be joined with God's work. A person cannot successfully serve both God and worldly pleasure or gain, and trying to unite with pleasure-loving influences while resisting temptation spoils a person for both Christian faithfulness and worldly success. The safe course is to follow what is right regardless of the consequences. Serving fashion and the world with time and talents is incompatible with keeping mind and body fit for God's work, including training children and supporting their healthy development. Choosing God means separating from the service of Baal and forsaking sin and evil rather than lowering the Lord's standard, and as people follow the path to eternal life Christ's yoke is easy and His burden is light.

When the world rules thought, principle and action, God cannot be honored. Its ambitions and attractions oppose the interests of God and crowd heaven and Christ out of the mind and affections, for devotion to God and devotion to mammon as worldly interests and wealth cannot be joined, each claiming loyalty against the other. Those who make worldly business, social attractions, or possessions their trust serve mammon rather than God, for they cannot give themselves to worldly interests while honoring God's requirements. Their choice leads them to treat God's gracious provision with contempt.

A person is either a Christian or a sinner in word, in action, in spirit, in home life, in business dealing, and in church relations, for divided loyalty between God and worldly gain is impossible. Professing to serve the Lord while denying Him in words and works is a denial of faith that scatters from Christ instead of gathering with Him. Such a life confuses believers and deceives some into praising good works and excusing evil, and it exerts a more harmful influence than open sin. Christ's righteousness covers no soul that remains polluted by sin. Believers and unbelievers serve two masters and therefore cannot properly be linked together in the Lord's work. God forbids His people to unite with unbelievers in building up His institutions, especially in so important a matter as the establishment of a sanitarium.

Wealth as Sacred Trust

Earthly possessions are not owned outright but lent by God on probation to test whether a person is faithful to God and worthy of eternal life and the immortal inheritance. Faithfulness in the least is the measure of faithfulness in much, and faithfulness in unrighteous mammon and in what belongs to another is the condition for being trusted with true riches and with one's own. Freely and judiciously using entrusted means to advance God's cause and save souls proves a person true to profession and lays up treasure in heaven.

Those faithful in that least trust will be entrusted with the immortal inheritance and received by Jesus and angels into everlasting habitations, while those who withhold what is lent them prove unjust and unfaithful in all spiritual things and will never be given the true riches. Property and money are entrusted tools for doing good, for glorifying God, and for deeds of benevolence, with an account to be rendered to Him for their use. They are not to be worshiped or relied on for independence, peace, healing or restoration, but to remain subordinate to eternal interests and be used wisely for God's glory and the greatest good.

Money becomes a rival master when it charms and captures the heart and is valued above God's favor or obedience. It becomes that rival when possessions take too strong a hold on the mind, when wealth comes between a person and obedience to God, or when it is used to gratify passions and foster pride and extravagance. So misused, it becomes a snare that endangers the soul and eternal interests.

Covetousness Is Idolatry

Covetousness and selfishness are idolatry, and the warning against serving mammon applies as directly as the command that forbade Achan to take the spoils of Jericho. Loving the world leaves no room for love of the Father, because divided loyalty between God and wealth is impossible. Those who make money, houses, or lands their ruling concern worship those possessions and render to them the homage due to God, even without literally bowing before them, so that profession of belief in God and the Bible is false when works show earthly goods are their god.

When gaining wealth becomes the ruling aim of life it captures thoughts and powers, turns money into an object of worship, and leads to sacrificing eternal interests for earthly treasure. Money-getting as the ruling passion binds the person more tightly to the world, and one enslaved to money cannot at the same time serve God. Serving mammon means putting farms, money, houses, lands and worldly financial success first and storing up treasure for self instead of being rich toward God. Those who treat such things as their highest good give them the homage due to the Creator and exclude God from the heart, holding to mammon and despising Christ's claims.

Those ruled by love of riches make money their god and serve the world, sacrificing honor and even violating God's law to advance their own interests and increase earthly wealth. Wealth so gained through oppression, deception, fraud or other dishonesty is an abomination to God, however highly esteemed among men. Love of riches can gradually turn professed Christians from God, truth and self-denial until money functions as their god, and when money rules life it resists the influence of God's Spirit. Serving mammon is following Satan into false paths that deny present truth, seen when those claiming to obey God belittle or disparage the gospel ministry in thought, word or deed because it does not sustain them in erratic movements, mistaking their disobedience for obedience.

Wholehearted Allegiance Required

God will not accept a divided heart but requires the whole heart and the whole person — soul, spirit, heart and affections — rendered to him in wholehearted service free from self-seeking. The whole salvation offered through Christ calls for this entire surrender, for devotion cannot be given to God while serving mammon as a competing master. Those who divide loyalty cannot be relied on to answer calls for missionary work in cities, villages or foreign countries, nor to possess the Christ-shaped character that work requires.

Serving God requires giving self wholly to him, submitting the will to his will and acting with his Spirit, so that it is no more the person that lives but Christ that lives in him, working through faculties and acting through capabilities. It requires having the Spirit of Christ the self-sacrificing Redeemer, denying self, lifting the cross and following Jesus, representing Jesus, and living by every word from his mouth. The heart must cast away mammon and every other idol, because serving evil while thinking one is serving God is false service.

Serving mammon is loving worldly treasure, being led away to self-pleasing and self-indulgence, spending money on needless things like bicycles and dress, and making only feeble and sleepy efforts to send truth to regions beyond. That selfish course brings shame to Christ, and money so spent must be accounted for, with those who love worldly treasure to answer for it in the great day of judgment. Half-and-half service places a person on the enemy's side as a successful ally of the hosts of darkness. Claiming to be Christ's soldier while engaging with Satan's confederacy and helping his side betrays sacred trusts and forms a connecting link through which the enemy constantly works to steal away hearts, while cherishing the world's spirit leads to defiance of God, faultfinding with bearers of truth, derision of truth, and opposition to his work through misuse of talents.

Wavering and repeatedly stopping short of surrender make religious life fail, for a person is wholly on the Lord's side or on the enemy's side. When clear duty is neglected and the Spirit's warnings and convictions are disregarded, conscience hardens and becomes less responsive, and neglected light becomes darkness. Whose side is served is shown by who has the heart, thoughts, affections and best energies, with service to God meaning consecration of all one has and is to him in seeking his will and pleasing him. Trying to serve both makes a person double-minded, unstable and untrustworthy, with outwardly fair and righteous words able to conceal a deceptive, rebellious heart. Such divided profession cannot be depended on for missionary work or for Christ-shaped character.

A person in an uncertain condition of mind cannot rescue himself by his own efforts while trying to serve the world and the Lord at the same time. Without commitment to the moulding and fashioning of the Holy Spirit and surrender of the will to God, the Word becomes uncongenial, worldly policy and schemes become supreme, and natural impulses ministering to the natural man are chosen to control, revealing enmity to God. Trying to serve God while pursuing one's own way and interests leaves a person divided in continued mistakes and failures. Freedom and a restored course require complete and decisive surrender to God, not halfway surrender.

Faithfulness in Daily Life

Divided service is impossible, so loyalty cannot be split between God and wealth but must be given wholly to God, and all workers, including those doing practical work on land and buildings, are to give a true representation of Jesus through kindness, sympathy and goodness, without sharp abrupt rebukes and without making wrong impressions. This belongs with faithfulness in the least as the measure of faithfulness in much, and with faithfulness in unrighteous wealth and in what belongs to another as the condition for being trusted with true riches and with one's own. It belongs also with exposure of covetous derision and self-justification before men while God knows the heart, that what is highly esteemed among men is abomination to God, and with the preaching of the kingdom of God since John and the permanence of the law by which heaven and earth would sooner pass than one tittle fail.

Service to God cannot be joined with service to wealth or worldly gain, and seeking pre-eminence and the highest wages for service reflects ambition that blurs the line between church and world and conflicts with laboring together with God. God's people are united only through the power of the Holy Spirit. Those who choose the Master's work should unite abilities to doing good and blessing others rather than pursuing high wages and ambitious projects for personal gain. In the temple work grasping for high wages spread covetousness, weakened self-denial, and helped lead to extravagance, oppression and apostasy, for serving wealth means giving self to selfishness and the pursuit of riches in conflict with service to God.

Men devoted to the sacred publishing work could not also pursue separate business enterprises or merchandise there, for giving strength fully to the work left no reserve for successfully carrying on another business. Selfish interests and love of worldly gain showed lack of deep devotion to God's work. In restaurant work, making money must not displace prayer or the work of presenting truth, but serving physical needs is to remain a means to the greater purpose of preparing people for the day of judgment. In Christian institutions the choice is between obedience to God and compromise for worldly gain, for trying to serve both is halfway work. This means refusing to adopt worldly principles or seek patronage at the cost of duty to the Bible standard.

Institutions seeking donations must not follow worldly wisdom or conform to worldly standards to obtain money, since that would bind the work to worldly interests. God owns all wealth and can move wealthy people to give freely without conditions or restrictions. As Solomon was blessed while separate from the world but displeased God through idolatrous alliances, God's people are blessed when they remain distinct. Business interests that lead to breaking the Sabbath put a person on wealth's side, for trying to serve both means choosing between them. The Sabbath is to be kept regardless of convenience or cost, trusting God even if keeping it requires changing business.

Serving fashion and the world with time and talents is incompatible with keeping mind and body fit for God's work, including training children and supporting their healthy development. Giving the mind and attention to theatrical performances can weaken love for Bible religion and leave no soul hunger for God, peace, joy or hope, for service to God requires an undivided heart not given to competing pursuits. Service to God required severing connection with Freemasonry, which had absorbed time and blunted spiritual perception, in order to be wholly on the Lord's side. A person must leave associations that claim rival allegiance and stand wholly on the Lord's side, for full allegiance to God cannot remain bound to a rival.

Christians must reveal a character distinct from unbelievers, for divided loyalty is impossible. God's spiritual people are few in number and prove faith by works, refusing worldly policy and standing apart from the world in the whole tenor of pursuits and the current of affections as light-bearers. Friendship with the world is hostility to God, and the faith that overcomes the world works by love and purifies the soul, while obedience to God's law is reasonable service and fully possible because God promises to dwell and walk in His people as their God. Serving God is incompatible with serving the world for its esteem, honor, applause and profits, so a person must choose Christ even if following Him brings reproach and hatred from the world. Worldly influence separates from God and cannot be joined with God's work, and choosing God means separating from the service of Baal and forsaking sin and evil rather than lowering the Lord's standard, with Christ's yoke easy and burden light on the path to eternal life.

A person is either a Christian or a sinner in word, in action, in spirit, in home life, in business dealing and in church relations. Professing to serve the Lord while denying Him in words and works scatters from Christ instead of gathering with Him. Such a divided profession confuses believers and deceives some into praising good works while excusing evil, and exerts a more harmful influence than open sin. Christ's righteousness covers no soul that remains polluted by sin.