<p>6:24&nbsp;<em>No one can serve two masters</em>- It would be too simplistic to interpret this as meaning that we are either totally serving the Lord, or not serving Him. Paul seems to have thought a lot about this verse because he refers to it several times in Romans, basing his entire Romans chapter 6 around the idea that we do not serve sin as a Master (Rom. 6:6). But he goes straight on to lament that in reality, he does serve &quot;the law of sin&quot; with his flesh, but &quot;I myself&quot; serve the law of God (Rom. 7:25). And he concludes the letter by warning that some do not serve the Lord Jesus (Rom. 16:18). Perhaps Paul is writing partly in response to confusion about the Lord's words- for we keep on sinning, yet He taught we can only serve Him alone. And his perspective is that we ourselves as believers are totally devoted to Him as our only Lord and Master. But the flesh, which we do not identify as the real self of the believer, continues to serve the sin principle.&nbsp;</p>
<p><em>For either he will hate the one-&nbsp;</em>The Lord wasn't just trying to shock us when He offered us the choice between hating God and loving Him (Mt. 6:24 cp. James 4:4); He was deadly literal in what He said. The Lord hammered away at the same theme when He spoke of how a tree can only bring forth one kind of spiritual fruit: bad, or good (Mt. 7:18,19). James likewise: a spring can either give sweet water or bitter water (James 3:11). We either love God, or the world. If we love the world, we have&nbsp;<em>no</em>&nbsp;love of God in us (1 Jn. 2:15). The man who found the treasure in the field, or the pearl of great price, sold&nbsp;<em>all</em>&nbsp;that he had, in order to obtain it. If he had sold any less, he wouldn't have raised the required price. These mini-parables are Christ's comment on the Law's requirement that God's people love Him with&nbsp;<em>all</em>&nbsp;their heart and soul, realizing the logic of devotion. Samuel pleaded with Israel: &quot; Serve the Lord with all your heart; and turn ye not aside: for then should ye go after vain things [i.e. idols]&quot; (1 Sam. 12:20,21). If we don't serve God whole-heartedly, we will serve the idols of this present age. There's no third road. If we are God&rsquo;s people, we will flee from the false teacher (Jn. 10:5). If we do anything other than this, we reflect our basic attitude to God&rsquo;s truth.</p>
<p><em>And love the other-&nbsp;</em>Because Israel were in covenant with God,&nbsp;<em>therefore</em>&nbsp;they were not to make covenants with the other nations, and marriage is mentioned as an example of this (Ex. 34:10,12). In his repetition of this part of the law in Deuteronomy, Moses gave even more repeated emphasis to the fact that our covenant with God precludes any covenant relationship with anyone else: &quot;Thou shalt make no covenant with them... neither shalt thou make marriages with them... for thou art an holy people unto the Lord thy God: the Lord thy God hath chosen thee to be a special people unto himself, above all (other) people that are on the face of the earth. The Lord ...set his love upon you ...chose you... because the Lord loved you, and because he would keep the oath which he had sworn unto your fathers... the Lord hath brought you out (of the world) with a mighty hand, and redeemed you out of the house of bondmen... know therefore that the Lord thy God, he God, the faithful God, which keepeth covenant and mercy with them that love him and keep his commandments... and repayeth them that hate him to their face, to destroy them; he will not be slack to him that hateth him. Thou shalt therefore keep the commandments...&quot; (Dt. 7:2-11). The wonder of our relationship with Yahweh is stated time and again. To marry back into Egypt, the house of bondmen from which we have been redeemed, is to despise the covenant, to reverse the redemptive work which God has wrought with us. In this context of marriage out of the Faith, we read that God will destroy &quot;him that hateth Him&rdquo;, and repay him to his face. On the other hand, not marrying Gentiles was part of&nbsp;<em>loving</em> God (Josh. 23:12,13).&nbsp;So according to Moses, whoever married a Gentile was effectively hating God. It is possible that the Lord had this in mind when He taught that we either serve God and hate the world, or we love the world and hate God (Mt. 6:24). This isn't, of course, how we see it. We would like to think that there is a third way; a way in which we can love God and yet also love someone in the world. Yet effectively, in God's eyes, this is hating Him. Doubtless many Israelites thought Moses was going too heavy in saying that those who married Gentiles were hating God. And the new Israel may be tempted to likewise respond to the new covenant's insistence that our love of God means a thorough rejection of this world. Whoever even&nbsp;<em>wishes</em>&nbsp;to be a friend of the world is an enemy of God (James 4:4).</p>
<p><em>Or else he will be loyal to the one- </em>There are only two masters whom we completely serve; we hold to either mammon, or God&nbsp;(Mt. 6:24). The idea of loyalty or &ldquo;holding to&rdquo; in Greek implies holding&nbsp;<em>against</em>&nbsp;something else; the result of holding to God is that we are against everything else. &quot;He that is not with me is against me; and he that gathereth not with me scattereth abroad&quot; (Mt. 12:30)- rather than being passively indifferent. Men reacted to the Lord in ultimately one of two ways- they either truly believed on Him, or supported the Jews in murdering Him (Jn. 11:45,46). Those who apparently believed on Him but kept it quiet were forced by the cross and resurrection to make their commitment one way or the other [and serious reflection on the memorials of these things in bread and wine leads us to the same decision]. So much for the philosophy of balance! The Hebrew word for vacillate (translated &quot;dissemble&quot; in AV) also means to go astray; indecision and indifference are effectively decisions against God's way. The Hebrew language often reflects God's characteristics and attitudes.</p>
<p><em>And despise the other</em>- The Greek word is usually used elsewhere about despising other believers (Mt. 18:10; 1 Cor. 11:22; 1 Tim. 4:12; 6:2; 2 Pet. 2:10). Loving God involves loving our brother, and despising our brethren means we do not love God but rather despise Him.</p>
<p><em>You cannot serve God and money-&nbsp;</em>When the Lord spoke of the impossibility of serving two masters, He personified the one as &quot;Mammon&quot; (AV), the antithesis of God. He goes on to define what he meant: &quot;Therefore... take no&nbsp;<em>thought</em>&nbsp;for your life... which of you by&nbsp;<em>taking thought</em>... why&nbsp;<em>take ye thought</em>&nbsp;for raiment... therefore take no&nbsp;<em>thought</em>&nbsp;saying, What shall we eat?... seek ye first the Kingdom of God... take therefore no&nbsp;<em>thought</em>&nbsp;for the morrow&quot; (Mt. 6:24,25,27,28,31,33,34). Clearly the Lord saw &quot;Mammon&quot;, this personified anti-God, as an attitude of&nbsp;<em>mind</em>. He had the same view of 'Satan' as we do: a personification of sin in the human mind. He also saw seeking &quot;the Kingdom of God&quot; as somehow parallel with serving God rather than mammon. We would wish there were some third category, God, mammon and something in between; as we may idly speculate that it would suit us if there were three categories at judgement day, accepted, rejected, and something else. But both then and now, this very minute, this isn't the case. A deep down recognition of this will have its effect practically. If we are serving God, let's not give anything to mammon, let's not play games, juggling and using brinkmanship.&nbsp;</p>
<p>There is fair evidence that in God's eyes, our attitude to materialism is the epitome of our spirituality. The Lord places before us only two possible roads: the service of God, or that of mammon (Aramaic for riches / wealth, Mt. 6:24). We would rather expect Him to have said: service of God or the flesh. Indeed, this is the choice that is elsewhere placed before us in the NT. However, the Lord evidently saw &quot;mammon&quot; as the epitome of all the flesh stands for. It is probably the view of many of us that while we have many areas of spiritual weakness, materialism is not one of them. But according to the Lord, if we are reading Him rightly, our attitude to the flesh generally is reflected in our attitude to wealth. This is why the Bible does have a lot to say about the sacrifice of 'our' material possessions; not because God needs them in themselves, but because our resignation of them to His service is an epitome of our whole spirituality.<br />
Mt. 6:24 is alluded to in Tit. 1:9. Holding to God as your master rather than mammon is achieved through holding on to His word. Paul sees one application of serving mammon as acting in a hypocritical way in order to please some in the ecclesia (Mt. 6:24 = Gal. 1:10).</p>