Some Musings on Matthew 6:24
The
idea of someone having a master is really politically incorrect and repugnant
to our modern sensibilities. Yet, the
reality is that we cannot escape having one.
We all have a master or a lord.
The question is who or what is your master? If the word master is unacceptable to us the
word slave is even more so. Yet we all
are slaves to some particular master in that we are either in bondage or
beholding to some ruling power or influence.
Bondage
is the condition of being under some kind authority that is abusive and of
course oppressive and destructive. Yet,
we must not confuse the bondage of abusive or tyrannical authority with being
under obligation to inherently righteous and infinitely good authority.
Jesus
teaches here that as his followers we must be sure that our wills come under
the influence and shaping authority of the kingdom of God . He makes it very clear that God is the
ultimate and rightful authority. This
means that we are not to see God’s authority as abusive, harsh, unpleasant or
oppressive. Yet this is exactly how we
tend to see it through the lens of our sinful hearts and minds. The grace God offers you in Christ gives you
the true understanding of God’s inherent kind and righteous sovereignty. Jesus lays this before us in the previous two
images he gives of the kingdom. God with
his kingdom is the superlative treasure.
When one comes to see this then his whole life is flooded with light. So
the kind of service one renders to God is not coerced or the response to
threats or based on fulfilling certain conditions. Rather the kind of service one renders to God
rises from a transformed grace-filled heart that treasures God and whose mind
is illuminated by the value of the kingdom and focuses on it as the ultimate
goal for one’s life.
So
let’s take a closer look at what Jesus teaches about the impossibility of you
serving two masters.
First
Jesus states emphatically the impossibility of you serving two masters. Now why does he do this? He wants to address all those professing
Christians who either consciously or unconsciously try to do this. We all have tried to do this. We have made attempts to serve God and
something else with the same degree of allegiance and loyalty. It can’t be done. It is psychologically, morally and
spiritually impossible.
Then
Jesus tells us why: “for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he
will be devoted to the one and despise the other.” You cannot serve two masters who call for
equal loyalty and obedience. You must
decide, you must choose and you will.
Yet you will decide and you will chose the master that your heart
treasures and on which your mind and thoughts are fixed. You will willingly give yourself to that
master that best reflects the true nature of your heart and mind. You will give yourself to what you want the
most and what you want the most will rule your heart. There can be no neutrality here. If you are pressed between two competing
masters who call for equal loyalty then sooner or later you will hate the one
and love the other, or you will be devoted to one and despise the other. There are no half way measures here.
It
is important that you understand that you ought to serve God as your greatest
treasure. Yet you cannot and will not do
this unless your entire nature is transformed.
In our sin we abandon our rightful master but we don’t become free. In fact being under the sovereign, benevolent
rule of the gracious Creator/Owner is exchanged in our rebellion for the
bondage of sin and idolatry. Though in
our sin we rebel against the authority of God we come under the bondage to
false gods – we come into the bondage of sinful desires and passions that rule
over us and lead us toward ruin and death.
Do
not fool yourself. If you profess faith
in Jesus Christ does that faith come from a regenerated and renewed heart? Have you been born from above and thus by the
grace of the Holy Spirit been given a new nature, one that finds growing
appreciation for the value and priorities of the Kingdom so that it is this
relationship you now have with Christ that is your greatest treasure? What Jesus stresses here is that it is one
thing to say that you treasure the kingdom and that you have a single devotion
and appreciation for the kingdom but what do you do with your life? How do you spend your time and what
preoccupies your thoughts? What kind of
choices, decisions and actions do you carry out? Your choices are the product of your will and
these choices shape your behavior and your behavior determines the way you
actually live – your lifestyle or manner of life.
Jesus then makes a particular application that in
essence becomes a case study for all masters that would usurp the place of the
kingdom in your heart and mind. He says
you cannot serve God and mammon. Now
mammon is material wealth, possessions, property and money. How do you serve mammon? By giving yourself to the pursuit of mammon
and living in such a way as to guard and keep what you have. It spawns such heart sins as covetousness,
greed, selfishness, uncharitableness, worry and care. You serve mammon by giving yourself to mammon
and the security, comfort that material wealth and possessions afford. Well how do you serve God? You serve God by giving yourself to God
through faith and obedience. The focus
is on obedience – you serve God by obeying him but the only obedience that God
accepts is that which rises from saving faith in Jesus Christ. So what master you serve will be the
master/treasure that ultimately shapes your will – your choices, your behavior,
habits and then way of life.
So
Jesus wants you to really consider what he is saying. Don’t fool yourself into thinking that you
are really serving God when in reality you are trying to serve God and mammon
or for that matter any other treasure that has sway over your affections, mind
and will. Sooner or later the master you
really have affection for will become evident and you will hate and despise the
other (if not to you then to others and always to God).
Another
point that needs to be made is that what these two masters want from you is
contradictory. They want different
things yet both call for ultimate allegiance.
Serving
any other master than the True and Living God is bondage that leads to
death. Yet such bondage produces deceit
in the heart and many think that they are free when in fact they are in servile
bondage to their passions and desires.
Serving
God places you before the One who has inherent creative rights over your heart
and life and who is the caring, gracious, kind, righteous, holy sovereign
Master. We are certainly beholding to
Him but never under bondage to him. We
submit to his rightful authority only when we come to see how gracious his
authority and rule really are.
Now
I do not want any one who may read this to become discouraged and
distraught. You may say I struggle with
this matter. I know that there are times
in my life when I have tried to serve God and other masters. It grieves me that I have and still do. Okay, listen.
Every true believer has this problem.
One of the marks that you are indeed a genuine believer is that you
struggle with this. It grieves your
heart. The hypocrite on the other hand
deceives himself- he thinks he is serving God but in reality the overall
landscape of his manner of life shows that he is taken up with other
concerns. He does not see and he is not
troubled in the least. Jesus wants this
one to wake up and to see how truly deceived that one is.
This
does not mean that you will be free from temptations from remaining and
competing masters. You may even at times
experience great turmoil inside your heart and your mind over who you will
serve. Your renewed heart will press
you to do what you ought, yet the remaining sin that abides within will press
you to give your allegiance to other masters who lie to you and promise the
passions and desires of your flesh fulfillment in a variety of ways.
Yet
you cannot serve two masters. You just
cannot. If you are truly born again by
the Holy Spirit, while there remains a conflict and while you may have to do
battle daily, you will not allow the masters of sinful desires to rule over
your heart, mind and thus govern your will, priorities, choices and
behavior. In Christ you are not under
the law any longer. You are now under
grace and Paul writes: For sin shall not have dominion over you for you are not
under law but under grace.
As
believers in and followers of the Lord Jesus Christ we are also citizens of the
Kingdom of God and as such that Kingdom and the way
of life we should live as its citizens must take ultimate priority over our
affections, our minds and our wills.
Our
affections are to be enamored with the Kingdom as our greatest treasure and
this will be seen by storing up treasures in heaven and not on earth.
Our
minds are to be illuminated by the reality of the Kingdom so that the darkness
within us in minimized and the light is maximized.
Our
wills are to be increasingly shaped by the Kingdom. We must see God as the kind, gracious and
holy Master that he truly is. So that
through faith in Jesus Christ we see the true freedom that serving Him in
obedience brings. His authority is never
bondage but a coming to terms with how we were created – to be under his kind,
gracious, loving, righteous, holy and sovereign mastery. It is only when we come to this mastery of
the rightful creator and now redeemer that we really now freedom. That is the paradox of the Kingdom! To be free you must come under the gracious
and holy authority of God, which is never bondage but a treasure worth
possessing!
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