Matthew 6:24 (CSB) – “No one can serve two masters, since either he will hate one and love the other, or he will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.”
Sunday comes along, we wake up, have some coffee, and get dressed. We dress according to the style and trend of our theological camp. For some, that might be a suit and tie, for others, it’s jeans and an oxford shirt; whatever is expected. Then we drive to church and take our seat. We listen to the sermon and piously nod. But our lives, our churches, and our cultural values tell a different story. We try to serve two masters — and most of the time, we convince ourselves we’re doing just fine. But Jesus wasn’t offering a helpful tip that will simply ensure we have “a healthy relationship with money”, he was drawing a hard line. And we don’t like hard lines today. But, there’s no such thing as divided loyalties in the kingdom of God. You cannot serve both God and wealth.
Jesus treats money as a rival god for a reason: mammon doesn’t just tempt us — it competes for dominion over our lives! It shapes our decisions, commands our attention, captivates our trust, and promises us security and comfort. And far too often, it gets what it wants. We sacrifice marriages for careers. We overlook injustice to protect our investments. We withhold generosity to maintain our lifestyle. And somehow we’ve managed to baptize all of this so that we label material success as blessing, we preach “wisdom” while justifying hoarding, we use our platforms to defend wealth and power as tools for good — but in so doing we sound far more like the Pharisees than Jesus! They were deeply committed to a theology that protected privilege, status, and tradition. But they missed what God truly desired: mercy, not sacrifice (Matthew 12:7). In fact, in most churches today, we’ve adopted the same mentality as the Pharisees, that if we sacrifice a little (we call it “tithe”), then we’re relieved of our obligation to show mercy to those in need and assume the rest of our wealth is ours to enjoy.
We need to ask afresh what it means to follow Jesus. Have we become content to defend orthodoxy while ignoring the poor? Have we taken comfort in quoting doctrine while neglecting love? It seems a large portion of the church has become confident in their ability to transform Jesus’ teachings into abstractions that can’t threaten their comfort, but, I fear in so doing, have betrayed the kingdom to serve another master. Following Jesus is not about religious form and dogma – the thing that many have made it – it’s about a transformed life that realizes the will of God as a citizen of the Kingdom to come!
I want to make it clear that this post isn’t about our economics. It’s about allegiance. The heart of the gospel is not prosperity. It’s not about personal success. Not even stewardship. It’s about surrender to the rule and reign of Jesus. And he made it plain: you cannot serve God and money. If our question is how to balance mercy with personal prosperity, we’ve already betrayed Jesus. Our only question should be: what does he will?
So the question really isn’t about whether we believe what Jesus said, it’s about whether we hear
A Dedicated Faith 