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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadBob Utley You Can Understand the Bible - Matthew 6:24 - 6:24
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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
NASB (UPDATED) TEXT: Mat_6:24
24"No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.
Mat_6:24 "No one can serve two masters" This puts the world in stark reality. This is the reduction of true life to one simple choice. Humans are not really free. They serve one of two masters (cf. 1Jn_2:15-17).
▣ "he will hate the one and love the other, or" These are in a parallel relationship. The Hebrew terms "hate" and "love" were idioms of comparison (cf. Gen_29:30-31; Gen_29:33; Mal_1:2-3; Mat_21:15; Luk_14:26; Joh_12:25, and Rom_9:13). It does not refer to hate in the traditional sense, but one's priority.
NASB, NRSV "You cannot serve God and wealth"
NKJV "You cannot serve God and mammon"
TEV "You cannot serve both God and money"
NJB "You cannot be the slave both of God and of money"
The term "wealth" was from the Hebrew root "to store up" or "to entrust." It was used originally to denote a person putting his trust in another by investing money with him. It came to mean "that in which one trusted." It seems to emphasize the object on which one bases his security. A. T. Robertson asserted that this term was used by the Syrians for the name of a money god. Although this has been denied by more recent scholarship, it would seem to be a logical analogy. William Barclay, in his Daily Study Bible, on Matthew, vol. 1 p. 252, asserts that in the ancient Mediterranean world mammon came to be spelled with a capital "M," a way to designate deity.
Money itself is not the problem, but the priority of money (cf. 1Ti_6:10). The tragedy of money is that we never have enough and soon it possesses us instead of us possessing it. The more we have, the more we are worried about losing it, and thereby, we are consumed with protecting it. See Special Topic below.
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