Luke 16:13 MEANING

(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.

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.

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