Mammon: Jesus' Teachings on the Love of Money

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily match my own. - Dr. Bart D. Ehrman

Have you ever heard the term “Mammon” in the Bible? Each time I encounter it, I am reminded of the powerful words of the Italian poet Francesco Petrarca, who, while witnessing the wealth and moral corruption of the papal court in 14th-century Avignon, wrote with striking bitterness:

Petrarch’s outrage was not merely about luxury itself, but about what wealth had come to represent: power, spiritual compromise, and a dramatic distance from the radical simplicity associated with Jesus and his earliest followers.

To talk about the Mammon meaning in the Bible is to enter a much broader discussion about the influence and significance of money within Judeo-Christian traditions. The word isn’t simply a poetic or archaic descriptor for money.

In the New Testament, it appears in one of Jesus’ most memorable and uncompromising sayings: “You cannot serve God and Mammon” (Matt. 6:24; Luke 16:13). The force of the statement lies precisely in the way wealth is presented: not merely as a practical necessity or social reality, but as a rival object of loyalty, something capable of demanding service, devotion, and trust.

This is why the term has continued to resonate far beyond its biblical context, becoming a symbol of greed, corruption, and the dangerous seduction of material security.

In this article, we’ll first examine what “Mammon” meant linguistically and where it appears in the biblical tradition. 

We’ll then situate Jesus within the scholarly framework of apocalyptic Judaism before turning to a closer analysis of his teachings on Mammon in Matthew 6:24 and Luke 16:13, asking what these famous sayings reveal about wealth, loyalty, and the urgency of the coming Kingdom of God.

If you are interested in Jesus’ teachings about wealth, you might want to dig deeper into the sources about Jesus’ life and the texts that preserve his words.

The four New Testament Gospels provide virtually everything we know about Jesus: his birth in Bethlehem, his baptism by John the Baptist, his miracles, parables, Sermon on the Mount, triumphal entry into Jerusalem, Last Supper, crucifixion, and resurrection. But how historically reliable are these accounts? Can they be corroborated, or do some reflect later legend and theological interpretation?

In his eight-lecture online course, The Unknown Gospels: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, Bart D. Ehrman explores these very questions from a historical-critical perspective. The course examines what scholars can (and cannot) know about the historical Jesus by analyzing the Gospels as ancient sources, helping readers move beyond tradition and ask what these texts actually reveal about the man behind them.

What Is Mammon? Meaning, Language, and Biblical Occurrences

Before we can understand the teachings of the historical Jesus regarding the issue of wealth, we need to first explain what the term “Mammon” actually means.

In his book Essays on the Semitic Background of the New Testament, Joseph A. Fitzmyer explains:

(Affiliate Disclaimer: We may earn commissions on products you purchase through this page at no additional cost to you. Thank you for supporting our site!)

This linguistic background is significant because it helps explain why the term was preserved rather than simply translated as “money” or “wealth” in many Christian traditions.

The Greek New Testament uses the transliterated form μαμωνᾶς (mamōnas), and the Latin Vulgate similarly preserves mammon, allowing the word to retain a distinct conceptual force. 

Rather than functioning merely as an economic term, it carries a stronger sense of material possessions as something capable of commanding confidence, loyalty, and dependence.

This is one reason why later readers often sensed in the word an almost personified quality, as though wealth itself could become a rival power.

At its most basic level, however, Mammon refers to property, riches, or material resources.

In Jewish and early Christian contexts, it wasn’t necessarily a negative word in itself. What gave it moral and theological weight was the question of orientation: whether possessions remained practical necessities of life or became the object of trust and devotion. 

This distinction is crucial, because biblical discussions of wealth are rarely about money in abstraction. Instead, they are about the human relationship to wealth, the love of money, and the danger of allowing material security to displace reliance on God.

The term appears most clearly in the New Testament, especially in sayings attributed to Jesus in Gospel of Matthew and Gospel of Luke. 

The best-known example is Matthew 6:24: “You cannot serve God and Mammon,” paralleled in Luke 16:13. Luke also includes additional references in 16:9 and 16:11, where the phrase “unrighteous mammon” (or “dishonest wealth”) appears.

These passages establish Mammon as a concept placed in direct tension with divine allegiance. Even before interpretation begins, the literary framing itself signals that wealth occupies a (potentially!) spiritually dangerous space.

This lexical and textual foundation is essential, but vocabulary alone doesn’t explain why Jesus spoke about wealth with such urgency. To understand that, we must move beyond the word itself and situate Jesus within the social, religious, and apocalyptic world of first-century Palestine.

The Historical Jesus and His Apocalyptic Message

Ever since the Enlightenment, scholars have pursued what is commonly called the “quest for the historical Jesus,” an effort to reconstruct what Jesus of Nazareth actually said and did within the context of 1st-century Palestine. 

Because our sources about Jesus (the canonical Gospels above all) were written by later followers (in a different language) who were deeply invested in theological interpretation, historians cannot simply take every tradition at face value.

Instead, they employ critical methods and historical criteria to distinguish, as far as possible, between what probably belongs to Jesus’ own lifetime and what reflects the developing beliefs of the early Church. 

This is neither the place nor the moment to enter the full methodological debate surrounding the historical Jesus. For our purposes, it’s enough to note that most scholars today place Jesus within the worldview known as Jewish apocalypticism, a perspective especially prominent during the period of Second Temple Judaism.

Jewish apocalypticism was rooted in the conviction that the present world was under the power of evil, injustice, and oppressive political forces, but that this condition would not last much longer. 

God would soon intervene decisively in history, overthrow the powers of evil, judge the wicked, vindicate the righteous, and establish his kingdom on earth. 

This wasn’t merely a vague hope for moral improvement of the society, but an expectation of imminent divine action and dramatic reversal of the entire world! Within this framework, questions of justice, poverty, wealth, and social hierarchy took on urgent significance because the existing order was understood as temporary and soon to be replaced by God’s rule.

In their book The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings, Hugo Mendez and Bart D. Ehrman note:

This scholarly framework helps explain why Jesus’ ethical teachings were so often framed in terms of urgency, repentance, and radical reorientation rather than abstract moral philosophy.

With this broader apocalyptic framework in place, we can now turn more closely to the specific passages in Matthew and Luke where Jesus addresses Mammon directly and consider what these sayings reveal about loyalty, wealth, and divine allegiance.

Mammon in the Bible: Gospel of Matthew

The most famous reference to Mammon in the New Testament appears in the Gospel of Matthew, within the Sermon on the Mount.

In Matthew 6:24, Jesus declares: “No one can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.” 

Many English translations preserve the older term “Mammon” instead of the more interpretive “wealth,” precisely because the original expression carries a force stronger than simple financial possession.

Here, wealth is presented not merely as property one owns, but as something capable of demanding service and allegiance. How, then, should we understand this verse in the context of both the Gospel of Matthew and the historical Jesus?

The first point to recognize is that Matthew 6:24 doesn’t stand in isolation. It belongs to the larger literary unit of Matthew 6:19–34, where Jesus moves from the contrast between treasure on earth and treasure in heaven (6:19–21), to the imagery of the good and bad eye (6:22–23), and finally to the declaration that one cannot serve both God and Mammon (6:24). 

This progression is crucial. The issue isn’t simply money, but the orientation of the whole person: heart, vision, and loyalty. 

William W. D. Davies and Dale C. Allison Jr., in their highly acclaimed Commentary on Matthew, conclude:

Jesus isn’t offering advice about financial moderation as though the issue were simply learning to balance religious devotion with economic responsibility.

The key verb is “to serve” (douleuein), the language of slavery and total obligation. The image reflected here is of a slave whose loyalty cannot be divided between competing masters. 

As Davies and Allison note, the point isn’t literally that no person can ever have two masters in a social sense, but that one cannot serve two masters well when their demands fundamentally conflict. 

In other words, God demands exclusive allegiance, while Mammon pulls in an entirely different direction: toward self-preservation, accumulation, and trust in earthly security.

This is precisely where John Nolland’s Commentary is especially helpful. He writes:

Nolland’s observation captures the sharpness of Jesus’ saying: the danger lies precisely in the illusion that one can quietly harmonize devotion to God with ultimate trust in wealth.

Within the apocalyptic framework of the historical Jesus, this point becomes even stronger. If Jesus believed that God’s kingdom was about to arrive and that the present age was passing away, then attachment to Mammon represented more than personal greed.

It reflected misplaced trust in a doomed order. Wealth offered security, status, and social power within the present world, but that was precisely the world Jesus proclaimed would soon be overturned. 

To serve Mammon, therefore, was to anchor oneself in what was temporary rather than in the coming reign of God. The contrast here is between two fundamentally opposed allegiances: trust in divine rule, or trust in earthly possessions within the world that will soon end!

Matthew 6:24 thus presents one of Jesus’ most radical demands. Yet Matthew isn’t the only Gospel to preserve this teaching. The Gospel of Luke takes the same saying and places it within an even broader and sharper concern for wealth, poverty, and social reversal. It’s to Luke’s presentation of Mammon that we now turn.

Mammon in the Bible: The Gospel of Luke

In Luke 16:13, Jesus declares: “No slave can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.”

Unlike Matthew, where the saying appears in the Sermon on the Mount, Luke places it at the conclusion of the parable of the dishonest manager (Luke 16:1–13), a passage explicitly concerned with money, accountability, and the proper use of possessions. 

This literary setting is significant because it frames the saying as the climax of a larger reflection on how wealth should be handled in light of final judgment.

Luke’s emphasis is especially visible in his repeated use of the expression “unrighteous mammon” or “dishonest wealth” (Luke 16:9, 11). 

As Michael Wolter explains in his Commentary on Luke, this doesn’t merely refer to money acquired through fraud or injustice. Rather, the term characterizes wealth itself within the structures of the present world. 

Mammon belongs to the sphere of what is passing away, and, for that reason, it carries an inherent spiritual danger. Yet Luke doesn’t suggest that money must simply be rejected. Instead, wealth must be used properly: by benefiting others, by creating solidarity, and by demonstrating faithfulness rather than greed.

The dishonest manager is praised precisely because he understood the urgency of acting decisively in view of the future.

This is where Luke’s theological language becomes particularly striking. Wolter notes:

This observation is crucial. Mammon isn’t simply money as an economic reality, but wealth imagined as a rival lord. To “serve Mammon” means, therefore, to grant wealth the kind of trust, dependence, and ultimate loyalty that belong to God alone.

Luke pushes the saying beyond ordinary ethical reflection and into the realm of worship and allegiance. The real issue isn’t possession, but mastery: who or what ultimately governs one’s life.

This perspective also explains why the Pharisees immediately appear in the following verse as “lovers of money” (Luke 16:14). Luke is attacking the human tendency to seek security, status, and righteousness through possessions rather than through God.

Throughout his Gospel, this concern appears repeatedly: in the rich fool who stores up goods for himself, in the rich ruler who cannot part with his possessions, and in the story of Lazarus and the rich man, where wealth becomes a symbol of moral blindness.

Taken together, Luke’s presentation is remarkably consistent with what many scholars reconstruct about the historical Jesus. 

If Jesus was, as most scholars argue, an apocalyptic prophet announcing the imminent arrival of God’s Kingdom, then his sharp warnings about Mammon make historical sense.

Wealth was dangerous not because possessions were inherently evil, but because attachment to them reflected trust in the present age rather than in God’s coming reign.

Luke intensifies this perspective by portraying Mammon almost as a false god, a rival master demanding service. In that sense, Jesus’ critique of wealth was, first and foremost, about allegiance, eschatological urgency, and the radical claim that one cannot prepare for the Kingdom of God while remaining devoted to the security offered by Mammon.

Appendix: Is Mammon a Demon?

A common modern question is whether Mammon should be understood as an actual demon or demonic being in biblical tradition. 

Strictly speaking, the New Testament itself doesn’t present Mammon as a demon in the formal sense. In both Matthew 6:24 and Luke 16:13, the term refers primarily to wealth, possessions, or material security personified as a rival master. 

Jesus doesn’t describe Mammon as a supernatural spirit with an independent personal existence, but rather as wealth treated as an object of trust and service.

This is why many modern translations simply render the term as “wealth,” although the older transliteration “Mammon” perhaps preserves the stronger rhetorical force of personification.

The later idea of Mammon as a demon developed largely in post-biblical Christian imagination, especially in medieval moral theology, literature, and art, where abstract vices were often personified as spiritual powers.

Church writers and later popular tradition increasingly treated Mammon as the embodiment of greed, avarice, and corrupting wealth, sometimes listing it among infernal powers associated with the deadly sins.

A good example appears in the work of Peter Lombard, the influential 12th-century theologian whose Sentences became one of the foundational textbooks of medieval scholastic theology.

Reflecting the developed medieval tradition, he writes:

Here Mammon is no longer treated merely as a rhetorical personification of wealth, but as the proper name of a demonic figure associated with avarice and corrupting riches.

This development, however, reflects interpretation rather than the original historical context of Jesus’ teaching. From the perspective of historical scholarship, it’s more accurate to say that Jesus used Mammon as a powerful personification of wealth’s capacity to rival God than to say he was referring to a literal demon.

The symbolic force, however, is precisely what made later demonological interpretations so compelling: if wealth can function like a master, it’s not difficult for later religious imagination to portray it as one.

Conclusion

As we conclude our exploration of Mammon in the Bible, I am drawn again to the powerful words of Francesco Petrarch with which we began this article.

His outrage at the wealth and luxury of the Avignon papacy was a deeper recognition that riches can reshape religious identity itself. 

When the successors of the “poor fishermen of Galilee” became “loaded with gold and clad in purple,” Petrarch saw not merely prosperity, but the danger of spiritual displacement: the replacement of trust in God with trust in power, status, and material security. 

In many ways, this is precisely the danger that Jesus was addressing when he spoke of Mammon. Wealth was never merely about coins, property, or financial success. Rather, it was about allegiance, about what ultimately claims the human heart.

Read within the apocalyptic framework of the historical Jesus, the saying “You cannot serve God and Mammon” becomes far more than a general warning against greed.

It’s a radical call to reorient one’s entire life in light of the coming Kingdom of God. Both Matthew and Luke preserve this demand, though each develops it in distinctive ways: Matthew emphasizes the incompatibility of divided loyalty, while Luke sharpens the warning by portraying Mammon almost as a rival lord, a false object of worship.

In both cases, however, the core message remains the same: wealth becomes dangerous when it ceases to be a tool and becomes a master.

That is why the question of Mammon remains enduringly relevant, not only for the ancient world or for medieval theologians such as Peter Lombard, but for every age in which material security threatens to take the place of ultimate and absolute trust.