Thursday
Thursday
Religious Practices
Be careful not to do your “acts of righteousness” before men, to be seen by them.
Matthew 6:1
Jesus evidently assumed that his disciples would engage in the common practices of giving, praying, and fasting. For this trio of religious obligations expresses our duty to God (prayer), to others (giving), and to ourselves (fasting). The three paragraphs at the beginning of Matthew 6 follow an identical pattern. In vivid and humorous imagery Jesus paints a picture of hypocrites who practice their piety before men in order to be applauded by them. If you do this, he says, you will have received your reward in full, namely the applause you are hungry for. Instead, practice your piety in secret, for then your heavenly Father, who sees in secret, will reward you.
Jesus’s first example is giving. He pictures a pompous Pharisee on his way to make a donation. In front of him march the trumpeters, blowing a fanfare, anxious to assemble an audience. For the hypocrite is an actor engaged in a theatrical performance. Instead, don’t let your left hand know what your right is doing. That is, we are not even to be self-conscious in our giving, dwelling on it in a spirit of self-congratulation.
Jesus’s second example is prayer. We are not to make a parade of our prayer habits but rather to enter our room, shut the door, and pray to our Father in secret. As nothing destroys prayer like side glances at human spectators, so nothing enriches it like a sense that God is watching. Our Father will reward us—not with some inappropriate reward but with what we most want, namely access into his presence.
Jesus’s third example is fasting, which he took for granted in his disciples. The Bible suggests that fasting is not to be an isolated practice but is to be associated now with penitence, now with self-discipline, now with concern for the hungry, and now with special times of prayer for special needs. When we do fast, we are not to look dismal or disfigure our faces but to look normal, so that nobody will suspect that we are fasting.
The contrast is stark. Pharisaic piety is ostentatious, motivated by vanity, and rewarded by men; Christian piety is secret, motivated by humility, and rewarded by God.
For further reading: Matthew 6:1–18