Berean Standard Bible
No one can serve two masters: Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.
King James Version
No man 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.
About this verse
The claim is about capacity, not permission: "No one can serve two masters" — cannot, not may not. Divided ultimate allegiance is not forbidden so much as declared impossible; one loyalty will quietly eat the other. And then Jesus names the rival: "You cannot serve both God and money." Of every candidate for God's competitor — power, pleasure, nation, self — he chooses money, and speaks of it as a master: something with a will, that seeks servants and issues orders.
The verse comes from the Sermon on the Mount, in a tightly built section on wealth and worry: treasures in heaven just before it, "do not worry about your life" just after. The placement is diagnostic — Jesus treats serving money and being eaten by anxiety as related conditions, two symptoms of trusting the same fragile provider.
The verse does not forbid having money, earning it, or managing it well; Scripture elsewhere assumes all three. It forbids serving it. The test of a master is simple and uncomfortable: what do you obey when the two give conflicting orders? When integrity costs income, when generosity threatens security, when rest reduces output — whichever voice wins those arguments is, functionally, the master.
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