{8} No man can serve {h} two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and {i} mammon.

(8) God will be worshipped by the whole man.

(h) Who are at odds with one another, for if two agree they are as one.

(i) This word is a Syrian word, and signifies all things that belong to money.

People's New Testament

6:24 No man can serve two masters. He cannot give his heart to two services at the same time. He cannot follow two callings successfully.

Ye cannot serve God and mammon. This is the direct application. The Chaldee word Mammon means money or riches. It is here personified as an idol. Mammon originally meant trust, or confidence, and riches is the trust of worldly men. If God be not the object of supreme trust, something else will be, and it is more likely to be money.

Wesley's Notes

6:24 Mammon - Riches, money; any thing loved or sought, without reference to God. Luke 16:13.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

24. No man can serve-The word means to "belong wholly and be entirely under command to."

two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other-Even if the two masters be of one character and have but one object, the servant must take law from one or the other: though he may do what is agreeable to both, he cannot, in the nature of the thing, be servant to more than one. Much less if, as in the present case, their interests are quite different, and even conflicting. In this case, if our affections be in the service of the one-if we "love the one"-we must of necessity "hate the other"; if we determine resolutely to "hold to the one," we must at the same time disregard, and (if he insist on his claims upon us) even "despise the other."

Ye cannot serve God and mammon-The word "mamon"-better written with one m-is a foreign one, whose precise derivation cannot certainly be determined, though the most probable one gives it the sense of "what one trusts in." Here, there can be no doubt it is used for riches, considered as an idol master, or god of the heart. The service of this god and the true God together is here, with a kind of indignant curtness, pronounced impossible. But since the teaching of the preceding verses might seem to endanger our falling short of what is requisite for the present life, and so being left destitute, our Lord now comes to speak to that point.

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

6:19-24 Worldly-mindedness is a common and fatal symptom of hypocrisy, for by no sin can Satan have a surer and faster hold of the soul, under the cloak of a profession of religion. Something the soul will have, which it looks upon as the best thing; in which it has pleasure and confidence above other things. Christ counsels to make our best things the joys and glories of the other world, those things not seen which are eternal, and to place our happiness in them. There are treasures in heaven. It is our wisdom to give all diligence to make our title to eternal life sure through Jesus Christ, and to look on all things here below, as not worthy to be compared with it, and to be content with nothing short of it. It is happiness above and beyond the changes and chances of time, an inheritance incorruptible. The worldly man is wrong in his first principle; therefore all his reasonings and actions therefrom must be wrong. It is equally to be applied to false religion; that which is deemed light is thick darkness. This is an awful, but a common case; we should therefore carefully examine our leading principles by the word of God, with earnest prayer for the teaching of his Spirit. A man may do some service to two masters, but he can devote himself to the service of no more than one. God requires the whole heart, and will not share it with the world. When two masters oppose each other, no man can serve both. He who holds to the world and loves it, must despise God; he who loves God, must give up the friendship of the world.