Run With It: You Can't Have it Both Ways

Sunday, July 26, 2026

You Can't Have it Both Ways

Matthew 6:22-24 BSB (Berean Standard Bible)

“22The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are good, your whole body will be full of light. 23But if your eyes are bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness! 24No 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.”

The Eye is Discernment

The human eye is not just representative of our body part which helps us to see or which might hinder us from seeing physically. The “eye” is also a word having to do with wisdom, judgment, discernment, and common sense, either excelling in it or failing in it. So this has to do also with spiritual insight with regard to good and to evil. Either we make right, just, and godly choices and decisions, or we make unrighteous, wicked, sinful, and ungodly choices with regard to how we live, and what we say, and who we obey.

If Your Eyes are Good

So, if our eyes (insight, judgment, discernment, wisdom) are good, of God, and not of our flesh, then our whole being will be full of light. And our whole being has to do with mind, body, heart, words, behaviors, attitudes, and values, i.e. the things we crave, and watch, and listen to, that they would not be against God; that they would not be sinful and evil. And light is Jesus/God, and light is truth and righteousness, and it is the gospel of our salvation and holy living and obedience to our Lord’s commands, in practice.

If Your Eyes are Bad

But if our eyes (wisdom, judgments) are bad (evil, wicked, sinful, immoral), then our whole being will be full of darkness (the opposite of light, i.e. what is evil and sinful). The evil will permeate our whole being, what we think, what we speak, how we respond to people and to situations, the choices that we make, and what we take into our minds and hearts and ears and eyes. For this all comes down to what we obey – God? Or sin? God? Or self? Righteousness and obedience to God? Or selfish and fleshly desires?

You Can’t Serve Two Masters

No one can serve two masters (rulers, leaders, bosses). We can’t serve (bow to, obey, follow) both God and mammon (the treasure a person trusts in). So this isn’t limited to just God and money, but God and anything we treasure and obey and serve above God or in place of God in our lives. So Jesus is not our Lord if what we obey is sin, immorality, selfish desires, etc., and if we do not obey his commands (New Covenant and moral). And addiction (slavery) to sin will lead to hell and not to life eternal with God.

Choose, But Choose Wisely

For Jesus Christ taught that to come to him we must deny self, take up our cross daily (die daily to sin), and follow (obey) him. For if we hold on to living in sin and for self, we will lose our lives for eternity. But if we deny self, die daily to sin, by the Spirit, and we walk in obedience to our Lord and to his commands, in his power, then we have eternal life with God. For not everyone who calls him “Lord” will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one DOING (obeying) the will of God (see Luke 9:23-26; Matthew 7:21-23).

For by God-gifted faith in Jesus Christ, which is not of our own doing, we are crucified with Christ in death to sin and raised with Christ to walk in newness of life in him, no longer to live as slaves to sin but as slaves to righteousness in walks of obedience to God’s commands. We are no longer to permit sin to reign in our mortal bodies to make us obey its desires. For if sin is what we obey, it results in death. But if obedience to God is what we obey, it results in sanctification, and its end is eternal life with God (see Romans 6:1-23).

[Matthew 7:13-14,21-23; Luke 9:23-26; John 10:27-30; Acts 26:18; Romans 1:18-32; Romans 2:5-10; Romans 3:23; Romans 6:1-23; Romans 8:1-14; Romans 12:1-2; 1 Corinthians 6:9-10,19-20; 1 Corinthians 10:1-22; 2 Corinthians 5:10,15,21; Galatians 5:16-24; Ephesians 2:8-10; Ephesians 4:17-32; Ephesians 5:3-6; Titus 2:11-14; Hebrews 3:1-19; Hebrews 4:1-13; Hebrews 10:19-39; Hebrews 12:1-2; 1 Peter 2:24; 1 John 1:1-10; 1 John 2:1-6; 1 John 3:4-10; Revelation 2:1-29; Revelation 3:1-22]

You Can’t Have it Both Ways

An Original Work / July 26, 2026

Christ’s Free Servant, Sue J Love

As the Deer

By Martin J. Nystrom

Based off Psalm 42:1

As the deer panteth for the water

So my soul longeth after You

You alone are my heart's desire

And I long to worship You

You alone are my strength, my shield

To You alone may my spirit yield