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“No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.”

Matt 6:24

As the second most frequently addressed topic in the Bible, money is a complicated spiritual issue, It certainly touches more than matters of comfort and wellbeing. For some people the amount they make is a metric of value on the importance of their time and effort to society. For others it is a font of security and control, that makes them feel empowered on a level deeper than material comfort. Still others consider it a a mechanism of control by a hostile society. In any case it's important not to undersell the complexity of the role money takes in our lives.

The sermon on the mount shows us the logic of the kingdom of heaven, a way of living that confounds the common sense of the world. For instance, the idea of loving your enemies and praying for those who persecute you doesn't make sense with the apparent logic of the world, but calls the listener to a more redemptive way of being. In the company of these verses, Jesus' instructions regarding our relationship with money should be treated with careful devotion, because chances are these six verses call us to change more of our life than we might think.