You Cannot Serve God and Riches

^24 (A)“No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other. ^(B)You cannot serve God and ^[a]mammon.

Do Not Love the World

^15 (A)Do not love the world or the things in the world. ^(B)If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. ¹⁶ For all that is in the world—the lust of the flesh, ^(C)the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—is not of the Father but is of the world.

^13 (A)“No servant can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon.”

^4 [a]Adulterers and adulteresses! Do you not know that ^(A)friendship with the world is enmity with God? ^(B)Whoever therefore wants to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.

⁹ But those who desire to be rich fall into temptation and a snare, and into many foolish and harmful lusts which drown men in destruction and perdition. ¹⁰ For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, for which some have strayed from the faith in their greediness, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.

¹⁰ For ^(A)do I now ^(B)persuade men, or God? Or ^(C)do I seek to please men? For if I still pleased men, I would not be a bondservant of Christ.

¹⁵ And if it seems evil to you to serve the Lord, ^(A)choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether ^(B)the gods which your fathers served that were on the other side of ^[a]the River, or ^(C)the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you dwell. ^(D)But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.”

¹⁰ Then Jesus said to him, ^[a]“Away with you, Satan! For it is written, ^(A)‘You shall worship the Lord your God, and Him only you shall serve.’ ”

¹⁶ Do you not know that ^(A)to whom you present yourselves slaves to obey, you are that one’s slaves whom you obey, whether of sin leading to death, or of obedience leading to righteousness? ¹⁷ But God be thanked that though you were slaves of sin, yet you obeyed from the heart ^(B)that form of doctrine to which you were ^[a]delivered. ¹⁸ And ^(C)having been set free from sin, you became slaves of righteousness. ¹⁹ I speak in human terms because of the weakness of your flesh. For just as you presented your members as slaves of uncleanness, and of lawlessness leading to more lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves of righteousness ^[b]for holiness.

²⁰ For when you were ^(D)slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness. ^21 (E)What fruit did you have then in the things of which you are now ashamed? For ^(F)the end of those things is death. ²² But now ^(G)having been set free from sin, and having become slaves of God, you have your fruit ^[c]to holiness, and the end, everlasting life.