Luke 16:13

No servant can serve two masters: 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.

This contrasts God and Mammon (personified) as deities between whom every soul must choose. Any attempt to serve both is actually the service of Mammon. Summers pointed out that Luke here used a word for "servant" which actually means "house servant";[23] and this gives an equivalent meaning that "nobody can be a house boy in two different mansions at once!"

For the attention of some who always insist that a parable has only one point, it should be observed that Jesus made no less than four, basing them all upon this parable. Barclay summarized these thus: (1) children of this world are wiser than children of light (Luke 16:8); (2) material possessions should be used to cement ... eternal friendships (Luke 16:9); (3) a man's way of fulfilling a small task is proof of his fitness for a larger one (Luke 16:10-11); and (4) no slave can serve two masters.[24]

[23] Ray Summers, op. cit., p. 191.

[24] William Barclay, op. cit., pp. 216-217.