No one can serve two masters. He will either hate one and love the other, or be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon.
Mt 6:23-34
The parallels to these verses in Matthew
are spread out in three different chapters of Luke: Mt 6:22-23 = Luke 11:-35; Mt 6:14 = Luke 16:13; Mt 6:25-34 = Luke 12:22-31.
v. 22-23. The lamp of
the body is the eye. If your eye is sound, your whole body will be filled with
light; but if your eye is bad, your whole body will be in darkness. And if the
light in you is darkness, how great will the darkness be.
We have already been reminded that the lamp
gives light to all in the house (5:15); similarly, the eye gives light
(insight) to the whole body: whether you
are a seeing man or a blind man depends entirely on your eyes. In what sense is Matthew using this
parable? “Sound” is “haplous”, which as we have seen means both single and
generous; “not sound” is “poniros”, and
“the evil eye” means “grudging”, “mean”, “stingy”. If the disciple is generous towards God, he
will be full of light (perfect, as his heavenly Father is perfect 5:48). If he
is mean, he will be full of darkness (like
the devil). The next saying expounds the other sense of “haplous” = single or simple. The disciple must keep his
eye on one master, not on two.
v. 24. No one can
serve two masters. He will either hate one and love the other, or be devoted to
one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon.
The man with the eye which is not sound is
attempting the impossible—to serve two masters; the man with the sound eye has
chosen God. Mammon is an Aramaic word,
meaning “wealth”, “property”. Devotion to God cannot be combined with devotion
to mammon, because, as we have seen already, there will be occasions when the former
will demand the sacrifice of the latter
(5:29. 30. 40). A choice is therefore necessary between God and mammon; or
between faith and anxiety (see following verses).
v. 25. Therefore I
tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat [or drink], or about
your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food and the body more
than clothing?
The disciple who is told not to serve
mammon may well reply, “But I must have enough to live and to clothe myself. To
this, Jesus replies that God who has made life and the body will certainly look
after those things which are less than these - viz. food and clothing.
v. 26. Look at the
birds in the sky; they do not sow or reap, they gather nothing into barns, yet
your heavenly Father feeds them. Are not you more important than they?
Moreover, he feeds the birds: how much more
will he feed men.
And anxiety cannot increase a man's span of
life (or stature [margin], “helikia” can mean both). Cf. 5:36 for our inability
to control the colr of our hair. These things are in the hands of God.
vv. 28-30. Why are
you anxious about clothes? Learn from the way the wild flowers grow. They do
not work or spin. But I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was
clothed like one of them. If God so clothes the grass of the field, which grows
today and is thrown into the oven tomorrow, will he not much more provide for
you, O you of little faith?
The same type of argument as that in v. 26
above is used with regard to anxiety
about clothing. God clothes the lilies, even better than man can clothe himself; the lilies are of less value
than man: therefore God will take care
of man's clothing. To think otherwise is to be men of little faith (“oligopistoi”, a rare word, which
Matthew uses four times: here and 8:26,
14:31, 16:8; the only other occurrence of it in the New Testament is Luke 12:28, the parallel to this passage: did
Luke take it from here?).
v. 31. So do not
worry and say, ‘What are we to eat?’ or ‘What are we to drink?’ or ‘What are we
to wear?
Repeats v.25 in order to round off' the
passage - an example of Matthew's use of
inclusio.
v. 32. All these
things the pagans seek. Your heavenly Father knows that you need them all.
The Gentiles (who live without faith in
God, cf. 5:47) are anxious about these
things. The disciples, on the other hand, are to trust God as the Father who
knows all their needs before they ask (cf 6:8).
v. 34. Do not worry
about tomorrow; tomorrow will take care of itself. Sufficient for a day is its
own evil.
The final futility is to be anxious about
tomorrow: tomorrow is completely outside our possible control today (cf. 5:36
and, 6:27). There is a possible set of verbal links common to vv. 33, 34, and
vv. 10, 11 in the Lord's Prayer: kingdom, righteousness, tomorrow, this day;
kingdom, [God's] will, this day, and tomorrow.
