Daily Devotional

Here Jesus reaches His climax, and He is not speaking loosely. The word for serve is the language of slavery, not the flexible arrangement of working two part time jobs. A slave was wholly owned by one master and could not divide his allegiance. The older word mammon is a personification of wealth, not a spiritual being, but it captures the truth that money, however neutral in itself, can become a functioning idol that competes for a disciple’s whole loyalty.

Why does money hold such godlike power over the soul? The theologian Herman Bavinck answers that the remarkable thing about money is that in itself it is nothing, yet it contains the promise to be everything. A bill is only paper; a coin is only metal; in another country it may be worthless. You are not truly attached to the dollar but to what it represents, an unlimited, undefined open door to anything you could ever want. And because the next dollar has not yet been spent, it has not yet disappointed you. Every dollar already spent has failed to fully satisfy, or you would not need to keep spending, but the next one still glitters with endless possibility. That is the deception. The idol is not the gold bar; it is the promise.

God will not accept a divided heart. He is not satisfied with a majority share of your life; He will not split lordship with the world. He will be Lord or He will not be God to you at all. Jesus draws the line as starkly as it can be drawn: not both and, but either or. The question is simply which master actually owns you.