Be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven….
When you fast, do not look somber as the hypocrites do, for they disfigure their faces to show others they are fasting. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. But when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face, so that it will not be obvious to others that you are fasting, but only to your Father, who is unseen; and your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.
— Matthew 6:1, 16-18
Following the Call—Chap. 25: From the Heart
The warning. The self-life. God’s fast. Your turn.
We are more than what we do. What we do is spiritually a minimum of what we are. Deeds are outpourings, not the essence of the self. They may reflect or refine the self, but they remain the functions, not the substance of the inner life. It is the inner life, however, which is our most urgent problem.
— Abraham Joshua Heschel
The Warning
Here Jesus addresses the meaning of righteousness with regard to certain acts of religious piety. He doesn’t disparages them, but neither does he emphasize them. He does, however, sound a warning. “Be careful…” Or in some translations, “Take heed…” “Beware…” “Be on guard…” Why the warning? F. B. Meyer puts it well, “We are all tempted to put better goods in the window than we have anywhere else in the shop, and to show better samples than we can supply in bulk.”
Whether we engage in acts of religious piety or not, we are all tempted to display our “righteousness” before others. Our problem is that we live more before people than we do before God. Our reward? A never-ending and never satisfying quest for human approval. If our aim is to impress others, God will pay no attention to us. If human recognition is what we want, Jesus says, we’ll surely get it—but no more than that!
All the more, we must be on our guard against letting our virtue become our downfall. Christ’s followers will invariably shine a different light (Eph. 2:15), but any light we happen to shine must lead others to glorify God, not us (Matt. 5:16). This is why we must “be absolutely impervious to praise,” says Clarence Jordan. Christ’s followers must understand
the power of applause to make men drunk, to rob them of their self-respect, to make them whimpering, blubbering idiots groveling before the shrine of publicity, to make them use their very souls as coins to operate the jukebox that will sing their praises. For it is easy indeed to join the ranks of those for whom the sweetest music is the sound of their own name on the lips of men and the most beautiful sight is their photograph in the newspapers. (Clarence Jordon, Sermon on the Mount)
If we are to withstand the power of the applause, our inner life, not just our outer deeds, must have real substance. Deeds, Heschel says, “are outpourings, not the essence of the self.” In God’s eyes, we are always more than what we do. But deeds done for God will be outpourings of a life lived before him alone.
The Self-Life
Under the guise of religious piety, we often change our behavior yet hold on to our old self. The following humorous illustration from E. Stanley Jones makes this point quite clear. A table server once brought a customer an egg in an eggcup. Breaking the top, the customer found that the egg wasn’t exactly fresh, and so he asked for another egg, which was brought to him. The customer began eating the egg, only to find that when he had gotten to the bottom that it was the same egg as before, just turned upside down. Despite appearances, says Jones, “the same old self still governs our lives. The only difference is that it is now religious” (A Working Philosophy of Life).
A religious life can be as far from God as an irreligious one, perhaps even further away. As long as the self-life remains, the veil that Jesus’ death tore in two in the temple, giving us access to God, remains in one piece. What veil is that? A.W. Tozer describes it this way:
It is the veil of our fleshly fallen nature living on unjudged within us, uncrucified and unrepudiated. It is the close-woven veil of the self-life, which we have never truly acknowledged, of which we have been secretly ashamed, and which for those reasons we have never brought to the judgment of the cross. (The Pursuit of God)
The “self-life” is hard to detect, especially when we are in a habit of performing good deeds. It is a life of “self-righteousness, self-pity, self-confidence, self-admiration, self-love, and a host of others like them” which manifest themselves as “egotism, exhibitionism, self-promotion.” What are we to do? Brutal self-honesty is a good place to start. In the end, however, “we must invite the cross to do its deadly work within us.”
“I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me,” exclaims the apostle Paul (Gal. 2:20). This is the crux of the matter. The question is: Do we want Christ, and his righteousness, to live in us or not?
God’s Fast
We’re in the season of Lent. In many Christian traditions people fast from “this or that” until Easter. I ask myself, however, what fasting actually means when my general lifestyle is already quite lavish compared to the rest of the world? Besides, isn’t self-sacrifice one of the essential marks of discipleship, not just an occasional act? “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me” (Luke 9:23). “Any of you who does not give up everything he has cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14:33).
I believe fasting, whether from food and drink or from some pleasure or some useless distraction, should be congruent with a lifestyle that embodies God’s kingdom and his righteousness here and now. There is a saying, “Live simply so that others can simply live.” This isn’t just a matter self-discipline and charity, but a matter of living justly—of living in a way that makes it possible for us to be sisters and brothers, to be one in Christ, where there are neither rich nor poor. In the words of Isaiah:
Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen:
to loose the chains of injustice
and untie the cords of the yoke,
to set the oppressed free
and break every yoke?
Is it not to share your food with the hungry
and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter—
when you see the naked, to clothe them,
and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?
Then your light will break forth like the dawn,
and your healing will quickly appear;
then your righteousness will go before you,
and the glory of the Lord will be your rear guard.
Then you will call, and the Lord will answer;
you will cry for help, and he will say: Here am I.If you do away with the yoke of oppression,
with the pointing finger and malicious talk,
and if you spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry
and satisfy the needs of the oppressed,
then your light will rise in the darkness,
and your night will become like the noonday.— Isaiah 58:7-10
Your Turn
How can we do a better job of combatting the kind of hypocrisy Jesus warns against? Just reply to this email to leave a comment.
Take Heed
I'm glad to know I'm in good company! God help us to live a truly integrated, authentic life--before him and others!
Am I the same person in private as I am in public, especially when I am among other Christians or members of my church? This excerpt from Sinclair Ferguson really convicted me: "Unfortunately, he prays more in public than he does in private. Also, he prays more eloquently, more fervently, more intimately in public than he does in private." I am afraid I am guilty of hypocrisy in this area. I am not always the same person in private as I am in public, and I need to remind myself of the danger of this.