Matthew 6:1 Commentary and Bible Study

(Synoptics: Matthew 6:1-4) With this warning – ‘Take heed’ – Christ does several things at once. He talks about the character God requires: not religious show-offs, but those with a genuine inner religion which gives praise to God in secret and really serves him; it is the portrait of a true believer. But see how he also disassociates himself from the religious establishment. Christ always does this by implication. The world fails to distinguish true and false religion. The world often identifies true believers with a religious establishment, which comes across as cumbersome, ludicrous, hypocritical. They see religion on the TV and think that is the totality of religion. We must distance ourselves from this nominal and powerless faith, for confusion about this holds them up from any true understanding. Christ holds up great contrast between the hypocrite and the true believer, teaching the people, ‘Don’t you know, there are two kinds of religion. There is hollow sham, playact religion, giving no personal satisfaction, and having nothing to do with God, but there is also true religion. There is real living relationship with Christ in the secrecy of your heart. The worldling thinks all religion is the same and this needs to be explained. Chapter 6 is about three different approaches to making this distinction – the giving of alms, prayer, and fasting. Each of these will form part of the disciple’s life, but each of them is capable of being distorted so that they become a snare by which he is further entangled in sin; Satan can turn even what is wholesome into a spiritual trap for the unwary. The great danger in all three cases is hypocrisy and the remedy against this is the same in each case: we must take steps to exclude the possibility that our reward comes from men. Instead we must seek our reward from God and, as a result, our Father who sees in secret will reward us openly.Christ stresses that his people have an altogether higher morality and spirituality than the scribes and the Pharisees. Hypocrites always focus on the visible aspects of religion, and these three were marks of religion to them that outshone all else. What would Christ say about this? Everyone knew that the Pharisees excelled at these. How would he handle this? In fact even today all humans approve of almsgiving; they put almsgiving at the top of the list. Even unbelieving Gentiles would say these are good men. Almsgiving will always be commended. In the Talmud almsgiving is made equal to everything else – it equals the whole law. It is just right for the hypocrite. Of course the true believer will want to be good at this. Most of our giving is compassionate – it is almsgiving only for external needs. If you want to test religion this is very helpful.‘Take heed that ye do not your alms before men, to be seen of them.’ The Greek word ‘seen’ is related to our English word ‘theatre’. Their alms giving is almost an act of theatre to put on a show. They do it with a deliberate aim to be seen. They would give and give, but why, if they were hypocrites? Surely the hypocrite is a selfish man. Yes, but there is something he wants even more than to keep all he has for himself. This is a matter of making a purchase; he is ready to exchange some of what he owns for something else. For what? For admiration from other people – he wants them to admire him for his generosity. To secure superiority – this is very important to the Pharisees, and also to many nonreligious persons and sometimes famous in the world. To get some advantage – a food manufacturing business was founded by a Quaker who gave vast sums for the ‘betterment of poor ‘, but he did it ostentatiously. He wrote in his memoirs that there is no better way to recruit the buying public to your cause than to give charitably. Some give to atone for some sin – they believe they can earn God’s forgiveness. Humans are interested in this to ease their consciences. Some do it because it is expected of them – they do not really want to give, but neither do they not want to lose their reputation as philanthropists. Some think it will gain the favour from God – the scribes and Pharisees did not grasp that God only deals with fallen men and women by grace.