“No one can serve two masters. For you will hate one and love the other; you will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.” (Luke 16:13 NLT)
An idol is anything that demands God’s rightful place in your life. It can be something material or an idea. The word translated “money” in the above verse speaks to wealth, riches, or what we treasure. It’s essentially anything to which we devote our life. It’s that which we pursue with our time, talent, and energy. It’s what gets us up in the morning and the last thing on our mind before we go to sleep.
Jesus used strong words to convey a critical message. When He said: “No one can serve two masters,” the word “serve” literally means “slave.” And the word for “masters” is the same word used in reference to God the Father and Jesus when referred to as “Lord.”
In Jesus’ day when someone was purchased as a slave, they became the exclusive property of their owner/master. In much the same way, when we yield our life to Jesus, we give Him total control of our lives. Baptism by immersion illustrates our death to self and our resurrection to new life fully devoted to serving our new Master, Jesus.
That’s so foreign to the way we think today it’s difficult to understand. We’re so used to doing what we want, when we want, to think of even Jesus telling us what to do is like a slap in our face. We rebel against anyone commanding us to do anything against our will. Yet, Jesus was clear that we have to choose.
We can choose our own way. He won’t stop us. But to choose our way is to walk away from Jesus and His offer of eternal life. We can’t serve Jesus and anything else. Either Jesus calls the proverbial “shots” in our life, or we’re ruled by Satan. To believe we rule ourselves is to believe a lie.
The bottom line for each of us is this – we allow the Holy Spirit to reign and rule our life – our thoughts, our actions, our desires, our plans, our future, our present, our hopes, our dreams, our everything, or we’re allowing sin and Satan to rule. We can pretend to be in control, but we’re only fooling ourselves.
And I understand, we’re not perfect and we can never be perfect in this life. Yielding our life to Jesus initiates a process of transformation that isn’t immediate, but it is definite. What does that mean? It means we’re immediately viewed differently by God. He sees us in ways that we likely will never understand completely this side of heaven. He sets us on a track to be what He envisions we can be, but it takes time.
He sees us through the lens of Jesus’ sacrifice on the Cross; He sees us clean and pure and completely forgiven; He sees us as what will one day be a reality when we get our new body; He sees us through the robes of righteousness that only Jesus deserves to wear. But in the meantime, there is a creative tension between what we are as a human being and what we’re becoming as a child of God.
The battle for us is to determine who is going to be Lord and to whom we will be slave – every day! And the reality is we are, have been, and always will be a slave to some lord – either Jesus or Satan, there is no other choice. Our spiritual roots will go down deep in our love for Jesus or our love for this world, owned and operated by Satan and his devilish emissaries.
Tim Keller gives us insight when he wrote: “Money, itself, isn’t usually an idol. What you put your money towards does show you where your idols are usually.” Every day our lives reveal whom we serve and to whom we’re enslaved. It’s ironic that Jesus is the only Master who sets us free to be everything He designed and desires us to be.
In my mind and heart, I have no option but to seek with everything within me to yield everything I am or ever hope to be to Him.
Food for thought.
Blessings, Ed 😊
Walking With Jesus 