Matthew 6:25 Commentary and Bible Study

(Synoptics: Matthew 6:25-34) Christ instructs us in stark terms: ‘Do not be anxious about your life’, or ‘Take no thought for your life’ as the KJV very beautifully renders it. ‘Take no thought’ – the phrase occurs twice, and the translation has been questioned. People translate it – ‘Do not worry’, but actually that is not as good as ‘Take no thought’. ‘Do not worry’ is not strong enough. In the time of our King James translation, the word ‘thought’ meant rather more than it does today. In Jacobean literature you could die of thought, and that gives you a hint. Thought could mean undue concern, more even than worry. What this passage is not about is this: the Lord is not saying to his people, ‘Do not worry; do not fret; do not worry about a thing. Just be calm and tranquil and trusting.’ Well, that may be a good message. If we have faith in the Lord we will not worry excessively. What the passage is saying is, do not be over concerned and immersed in the nuts and bolts and the earthly aspects of life, so that they consume you, rule you, and take over you thinking. Do not be immersed in earthly things at the expense of the soul, at the expense of your love and commitment to the Lord. The reason we are to take no thought for even the essentials of life is that we are to serve God and not mammon. Excessive thought or anxiety about even food and drink is how service to mammon, or material wealth, begins. If we believe that he is Lord of heaven and earth, then it is easily within his power to supply our daily needs. If we choose God as our master, we choose one who can take care of us in heaven and in this life also.The Lord might be understood to mean that we should make no plans, no provision, store nothing up for tomorrow, and live as if there is no tomorrow, but this would be wrong. We are to take responsibility for our lives. He expresses himself this way because the opposite danger is so great and men so easily fall into it, that nothing less than these strong terms are sufficient to deliver us from unbelieving anxiety. Scripture teaches that it is right for parents to ‘lay up ... for the children’ (2 Corinthians 12:14) and for adult children to ‘provide for’ aged parents (1 Timothy 5:5) (Pink). It is not possible to do this without a certain amount of planning for the future. This is not what Christ forbids, but rather an anxiety about the future based on lack of trust in God. No one lives in the present only. We know that the same needs that we have today, will also be there tomorrow. Man is a dependant creature and a creature of need. The question however is this: who provides for our physical needs? Is it us alone, depending on our own skill and resourcefulness, succeeding or failing entirely on our own, or is it the Lord who provides? Many aspects of our lives are outside our control, and must be received from the hand of our God. We may make plans for the future, but, realistically, we cannot be certain how they will fall out. But if God loves us and cares for us then he will not abandon us knowing we are so vulnerable. The situation which we face in life is designed to develop our faith, and it is God’s will that we are obliged to walk through the world and seeing the hand of God through the things that he provides. Our mouths are filled and our bodies clothed, but how he achieves this is often beyond our ability to trace. The worldling wrongly believes that there is no limit to what he can provide for himself, and that if he does not do it, no one else will. This idea he cynically sums up in the proverb, ‘God helps those who help themselves.’ But Christ teaches us not to be overly concerned about even the most essential requirements of life, food and clothing, because though death reigns over our bodies, God supplies our needs throughout our allotted time on earth. If we are not to worry even about the essentials of life, far less is it right to be overly concerned about storing up riches on earth. ‘Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment?’ What is the argument here? Christ’s remedy is to take out of our hands what we are not capable of doing so that we do not burden ourselves with what only God can do. It is to remind us that we have already received something far greater than the things we are inclined to be anxious about. If he has provided us with life, does he lack power to sustain that life? After we have done all that we are capable of doing, we have still not secured our life, or the food on our table, or the clothing on our back. A man can have peace only if he trusts God and it is to encourage faith that Christ says these last words. You cannot create your own life, he says, and nor can you supply the food that sustains it. What good is it to worry on God’s behalf about the work he does; what is that going to achieve? Are you more diligent than the Lord in carrying out his own work? Does he need someone like you to take over the job of making sure he does not forget to help you? We cannot make a single plant germinate, or flower, or bear fruit. We cannot send the sun to rise on it and the rain to water it. But because we cannot do all these things, we must trust God to do them. The solution to over anxiety is to trust God. But anxiety over earthly needs is the cousin of covetousness and earthly-mindedness; it is another form of over concern about material things.