Luke 16:13

No servant can serve 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 mammon.

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers

(13) No servant can serve two masters.—See Notes on Matthew 6:24. Here it obviously comes in close connection with the previous teaching. But its occurrence, in an equally close sequence, in the Sermon on the Mount, shows that it took its place among the axioms of the religious life which our Lord, if we may so speak, loved to reproduce as occasion called for them.

Benson Commentary

Luke 16:13. No servant can serve two masters — See note on Matthew 6:24. As if he had said, You cannot be faithful to God, if you trim between him and the world; if you do not serve him alone. Beware, therefore, of indulging, even in the least degree, the love of the world, for it is absolutely inconsistent with piety: “insomuch that a man may as well undertake, at one and the same time, to serve two masters of contrary dispositions and opposite interests, as pretend to please God while he is anxiously pursuing the world for its own sake. In this manner did Jesus recommend the true use of riches, power, knowledge, and the other advantages of the present life, from the consideration that they are not our own, but God’s; that they are only committed to us as stewards, to be employed for the honour of God and the good of men: that we are accountable to the proprietor for the use we make of them, who will reward or punish us accordingly; and that every degree of covetousness is such a serving of mammon as is really idolatrous, and altogether inconsistent with the duty we owe to God.” — Macknight.

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

16:13-18 To this parable our Lord added a solemn warning. Ye cannot serve God and the world, so divided are the two interests. When our Lord spoke thus, the covetous Pharisees treated his instructions with contempt. But he warned them, that what they contended for as the law, was a wresting of its meaning: this our Lord showed in a case respecting divorce. There are many covetous sticklers for the forms of godliness, who are the bitterest enemies to its power, and try to set others against the truth.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

See the notes at Matthew 6:24.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

13. can serve—be entirely at the command of; and this is true even where the services are not opposed.

hate … love—showing that the two here intended are in uncompromising hostility to each other: an awfully searching principle!

Matthew Poole's Commentary

See Poole on "Matthew 6:24".

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

No servant can serve two masters,.... See Gill on Matthew 6:24.

Geneva Study Bible

{3} No servant can serve 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 mammon.

(3) No man can love God and riches simultaneously.

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Meyer's NT Commentary

Luke 16:13. A principle which does not cohere with what follows (Holtzmann), but proves as indubitable the denial which is implied in the previous question: “ye shall in the supposed case not receive the Messianic salvation.” Ye are, to wit, in this case servants of Mammon, and cannot as such be God’s servants, because to serve two masters is morally impossible. Moreover, see on Matthew 6:24.

Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

13. No servant can serve two masters] God requires a whole heart and an undivided service. “If I yet pleased men, I should not be the servant of Christ,” Galatians 1:10.“Whosoever...will be the friend of the world is the enemy of God,” James 4:4. “Covetousness...is idolatry Colossians 3:5.

Pulpit Commentary

Verse 13 - No servant can serve two masters... Ye cannot serve God and mammon. Very vividly is this experience brought out in the great parable which immediately follows There the rich man was evidently one who observed the sacred ritual of the Law of Moses: this we learn without doubt from his conversation after death with Abraham. Thus he tried, after his light, to serve God, but he also served mammon: this we learn, too, clearly from the description given to us of his life, from the mention of the gorgeous apparel and the sumptuous feeding. The service of the two was incompatible, and we know from the sombre sequel of the story to which master the rich man really held, and whom - alas for him! - in his heart he despised. Luke 16:13

Vincent's Word Studies

Servant (οἰκέτης)

Properly, household servant.

Serve

See on minister, Matthew 20:26.

The other

See on Matthew 6:24.

Hold to

See on Matthew 6:24.