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§6 Sermon on the Mount: Prayer and Anxiety (Matt. 6:1–34)

6:1 / The three most prominent religious obligations of Jewish piety were almsgiving, prayer, and fasting. The first eighteen verses of chapter 6 deal with these acts of religious devotion. In each case there is a wrong way and a right way. The followers of Jesus are to avoid all ostentatious display and to quietly fulfill the obligations in an unobtrusive manner. In carrying out religious duties they are not to make a public display in order to attract attention to themselves. That approach would deprive them of their heavenly reward.

Some scholars find a contradiction between this charge and the earlier advice (in 5:16) that believers are to let their light shine before others “that they may see your good deeds.” The contexts, however, are distinct. In the earlier case, the temptation was to keep one’s religious commitment private in order to avoid persecution; in the later, the tendency is to call attention to one’s act of devotion for personal gain. The biblical doctrine of rewards holds that, since God is absolutely and perfectly just, he must punish evil and reward what is good (cf. Prov. 24:12; 2 Thess. 1:5–10). It need not be thought of in some crassly material way: the reward for holiness is holiness itself.

6:2–4 / The first example related to the giving of alms. To give money for the poor was one of the most sacred duties of Judaism. Tobit says, “It is better to give alms than to treasure up gold. For almsgiving delivers from death, and it will purge away every sin” (12:8b–9a). The Hebrew word ṣedāqâ means both “righteousness” and “almsgiving.” Followers of Jesus are not to give to the needy in the manner of the hypocrites who sounded a trumpet to call attention to their benevolence and thus receive the praise of other people. They are rather to make it a very private transaction, and God, who is fully aware of all that takes place, will provide the proper reward.

The NIV translates, rather literally, Do not announce it with trumpets. The expression should be taken metaphorically, although there is evidence that the ram’s horn announced public fasts during times of drought when almsgiving might be expected. The GNB takes the clause as a figure of speech and paraphrases, “Do not make a big show of it.” That is what the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the street corners. Matthew is fond of the term “hypocrite” (he uses it thirteen times to Luke’s three and Mark’s one), which is derived from the theater and means “play-actor.” To be a hypocrite is to pretend to be someone you are not. It is easier to pose as a righteous person than to actually be one. One second-century rabbi declared that nine-tenths of all the hypocrisy in the world was to be found in Jerusalem.

Those who give to be seen and admired have already received their reward in full (v. 2). No further compensation remains. They got what they bargained for. The Greek apechō was a technical commercial term that was often used in the sense of payment in full, complete with a receipt. Schweizer mentions that only in acts of charity (within Judaism) was there sometimes hope of receiving both honor in this life and a heavenly reward later—the capital remaining invested in heaven while the interest is enjoyed on earth (p. 144).

Rather than calling attention to one’s acts of charity, one should not even let the left hand know what the right hand is up to. It is unnecessary to conjure up some image of how such a transaction might take place in a literal sense. (Gundry makes the interesting suggestion that it may mean to slip in the gift unobtrusively with the right hand alone rather than to use both hands in a manner designed to catch the attention of others, p. 102.) God will see the kindness and provide the proper reward at the proper time.

6:5–6 / A second important religious duty among the Jews was prayer. In the morning and in the evening the devout Jew would recite the Shema (three short passages of Scripture from Deuteronomy 6 and 11 and Numbers 15), and at nine in the morning, noon, and three in the afternoon he would go through the Shemoneh Esreh (the Eighteen Benedictions). Acts 3:1 notes that Peter and John went to the temple “at the time of prayer—at three in the afternoon.” According to Jewish custom, if you were in the streets at this time it was proper to stop, turn toward the temple, and pray (cf. the Moslem practice even today). Apparently the hypocrites would plan their day so as to be in some conspicuous place when it was time to pray. On busy street corners or in the square, they would lift their hands to God and display their “devotion” to all who were passing by. Like those who called attention to their acts of charity, these “playactors” have been paid in full (cf. v. 2).

Jesus tells his followers that when they wish to pray they are to go into some private place (the Gk. tameion may refer to a “storeroom,” the only room in the house with a door, and therefore private) and close the door (cf. 2 Kings 4:33; Isa. 26:20). There they may pray to their Father “who is there in the secret place” (NEB), and he will provide the appropriate reward.

6:7–8 / Do not keep on babbling like pagans. They are wrong in thinking that God hears them because of the length of their prayers. God does not need to be instructed by lengthy prayers, because he already knows what you need before you ask him. The word used to describe the prayers of the pagans is battalogeō, which occurs nowhere else in the New Testament or in secular literature of the day. It is probably an onomatopoietic word constructed by way of analogy with the better known battarizō, “to stammer or stutter” (Delling, TDNT, vol. 1, p. 597). Behind the word is the practice of the heathen who developed long lists of divine names, hoping that by endless repetition they would somehow invoke the name of the true god and receive what they wished. To know and pronounce correctly the name of a god was thought to provide the power to manipulate that god.

6:9–10 / Matthew now expands his teachings on prayer by adding what has come to be known as the Lord’s Prayer. The same prayer, in a somewhat shorter form, is found in Luke 11:2–4 where Jesus responds to his disciples’ request to teach them to pray as John had taught his disciples. The differences between the two accounts argue that the prayer was intended as a guide rather than a liturgical chant to be memorized. Matthew’s version contains three petitions that relate to God and his kingdom followed by four requests for the life of believers here and now. Many scholars interpret the entire prayer in an eschatological setting (Stendahl calls it an “extended Maranatha,” p. 779), the daily bread being the messianic banquet and the temptation a reference to the time of severe persecution at the end of the age (cf. Matt. 24:22). It is better to take the first three petitions as bearing upon the future consummation and the next four as related to God’s action in our lives at the present time (cf. Beare, p. 175). Whatever the primary focus, however, each petition has implications for both the present and the future.

In form, the Lord’s Prayer opens very much like an Aramaic liturgical prayer known as the Kaddish. This prayer speaks of hallowing the name of God, of the coming of his kingly rule, and of the creation of the world according to his will. When Jesus says to pray, our Father, he reveals a dramatic new relationship made possible between God and human beings. The Aramaic ’abbā that stands behind the Greek patēr (“father”) was an intimate and affectionate title that children used when speaking to their father. It became so embedded in the minds of first-century Christians that the Aramaic lingers in the compound “Abba, Father” found in Mark 14:36, Romans 8:15, and Galatians 4:6. That we pray to our Father reminds us that the Christian faith is essentially a family affair.

The first petition asks that the name of God be revered and held in honor. God’s name stands for his character as revealed in history. To hallow God’s name is to treat with high and holy regard the person of God himself. This petition is followed by an urgent request that God will establish in a full and final sense his rule on earth. Although the kingdom came in the life and ministry of Jesus, it awaits the second advent to be complete and final (cf. 1 Cor. 15:28). We live now in those days between the beginning of the age to come and the end of the age that is present. God’s sovereign rule is realized in the hearts of his followers, but it will one day be openly acknowledged (cf. Phil. 2:10–11).

The heart of the prayer is that God’s will may be done here on earth as well as in heaven (v. 10). When the two clauses of verse 10 are taken as parallel, we learn that God’s kingdom comes whenever his will is done. Perfect obedience to his will awaits the final arrival of the King. In the meantime, those who follow Christ can experience his sovereign rule by living lives of obedience. Some writers take the final clause (on earth as it is in heaven) as qualifying all three of the preceding petitions.

6:11–13 / In the second half of the prayer, we find the focus shifted to matters of everyday concern. The first request is for bread. The Greek adjective epiousios (daily) is not found outside the Lord’s Prayer in the New Testament. With the possible exception of one place where epiousi may have been intended to be completed as epiousion, it occurs nowhere in secular literature. Any technical commentary will list the possible derivations of the word and suggest various meanings. Foerster is convincing when he argues that epiousios indicates measure rather than time (thus ruling out the sense “for the coming day/tomorrow”) and offers the rendering, “The bread which we need, give us to-day [day by day]” (TDNT, vol. 2, p. 599). The background is God’s daily provision of manna that could not be stored (except on Friday) for a future day (Exod. 16). God responds to our needs day by day.

The next petition is for forgiveness (v. 12). Since we owe God complete obedience, every failure puts us in debt to him. Behind the Greek opheilēma (“debt/one’s due”) is the Aramaic ḥôbâ, which was used figuratively of sin as a moral debt. The request for forgiveness is based upon our willingness to forgive others. The person who does not forgive is unable to receive forgiveness.

Lead us not into temptation (v. 13) means do not let us fall into a trial so difficult that we will fail. The Greek peirasmos means both temptation and “trial.” When God “tempted” (AV, Gen. 22:1; epeirase, LXX) Abraham by telling him to offer his son Isaac, the clear meaning is that he put him to the test. James’s word on temptation (as seduction to evil) is that “each one is tempted when, by his own evil desire, he is dragged away and enticed” (James 1:14). The two meanings of “tempt” should be kept separate. For interpreters who understand the prayer eschatologically, the period of trial is the intensely difficult time of suffering that immediately precedes the second coming of Christ—“the hour of trial that is going to come upon the whole world to test those who live on the earth” (Rev. 3:10; cf. Matt. 24:22). We have already opted to interpret the final petitions as related to the believer’s life now. Lest anyone misunderstand the first clause of verse 13 as somehow involving God in seducing human beings to evil, Jesus adds but deliver us from the evil one; he is the one who tears down and destroys. The Greek ponēros can be translated “evil” or the evil one. Since in Hebrew thought Satan is not designated as “the evil one,” many interpreters prefer the former meaning (i.e., those difficult circumstances that often plague our lives).

Readers of most modern-speech versions will note the omission of any doxology at this point. (“For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever. Amen.”) It is commonly recognized that this is a later liturgical addition. It is not found in any Greek manuscript before the fifth century. Apparently it was a Jewish practice to end every prayer with a doxology even when there was nothing of that nature in the text (cf. Jeremias, Unknown Sayings of Jesus, p. 28). The doxology reflects the major strands of David’s prayer in 1 Chronicles 29:10–13.

6:14–15 / To round off the teaching on prayer, Matthew adds a saying of Jesus to the effect that God’s forgiveness as it relates to us depends upon our willingness to extend forgiveness to others (cf. Mark 11:25). It expands the concept expressed in the fifth petition of the Lord’s Prayer. It should not be taken as a quid pro quo arrangement in which God keeps tabs on our relations with others and withholds his forgiveness until we have merited it, but as a way of saying that forgiving others who have wronged us follows naturally from our having been forgiven by God.

6:16–18 / A third highly esteemed religious duty among the Jewish people was fasting. In addition to the fast on the Day of Atonement (Lev. 16:31 is interpreted in this way), there were fasts connected with mourning (e.g., 1 Sam. 31:13), with times of distress (e.g., Ps. 35:13), with preparation for a theophany (e.g., Deut. 9:9), and with other times of special significance. Fasting was thought to strengthen prayer by demonstrating how serious was the supplicant’s approach. According to the Didache, the “hypocrites” (by the second century A.D. this derogatory title had become a standard epithet for the Jews) fasted Mondays and Thursdays (market days!), and therefore Christians were to fast Wednesdays and Fridays (8:1).

The hypocrites are said to disfigure their faces to show men they are fasting. The Greek verb aphanizō (“to disfigure”) means to make invisible (the a negates phainō, “to shine/appear”). In this context it suggests that the hypocrites made themselves unrecognizable by putting ashes on their heads that would fall onto their faces and into their beards, thus disguising their identity. It is ironic that in their desperate attempt to be recognized for piety they end up being unrecognizable.

Jesus instructs his followers to fast in such a way as to call no attention to themselves. They are to wash their face and be sure that their general appearance does not reveal that they have gone without food. The hypocrites have been paid in full right now (they want the admiration of others, and they get it). Jesus’ disciples, however, are to practice their religion in private; they will thus be rewarded by their Father who is aware of all that takes place in secret.

6:19–21 / The natural human tendency is to store up material possessions here on earth. Jesus advises laying up treasures in heaven, where the uncertainties of life cannot affect them. Where people put their treasure reveals where their hearts really are. Unless “moth and eating” (the NIV follows Tyndale’s translation of brōsis as rust, which lacks support from the LXX) is a grammatical expression meaning “eaten by moths,” we have three ways in which earthly possessions are destroyed. In the ancient East elaborate clothing was viewed as part of a person’s treasure. Such material was easily devastated by moths. “Eating” could refer to the gnawing of mice and other vermin (McNeile, p. 84) or in a more general sense to what Weymouth calls “wear-and-tear.” Since houses were normally made of mud brick or baked clay, it was relatively easy for a thief to dig through (dioryssō; NIV, break in) and steal possessions. Very little protection existed in the ancient world; this highly contrasts the security of treasures laid up in heaven.

6:22–23 / Throughout chapter 6 Jesus draws a series of comparisons (between the conduct of the hypocrites and that of his own followers in almsgiving, prayer, and fasting; between treasures stored on earth and those stored in heaven; and, in the section yet to come, between the two masters, God and money). Here he contrasts the good eye, which provides light for the entire body, and the evil eye, which leaves the body in darkness.

In the physiology of Jesus’ day the eye was thought of as a window that brought light into the body. An eye could be haplous (“single”) or ponēros (“evil”). The contrast is usually presented in one of two ways: one, “sound” in the sense of clear, able to see distinctly, and “not sound” (RSV), unable to focus clearly; and two, “generous” and “stingy.” The first (and less probable) option notes that haplous in the LXX represents the Hebrew verb tam, which carries the idea of “singleness of purpose” (Hill, p. 142). This would make the saying an expansion of “blessed are the pure in heart” (Matt. 5:8). The second option points out that the “evil eye” is a Semitic metaphor for greediness or a grudging spirit (cf. Matt. 20:15) and takes haplous as it is commonly used, to signify “generous” (cf. Rom. 12:8; James 1:5). In this case Jesus is saying that a generous spirit brings moral health and wholeness, whereas a mean spirit prevents a person from seeing what is really important. This interpretation follows naturally after the words on laying up treasure in heaven and leads on to the mention of money as a master that cannot be served at the same time as God (v. 24). If all the light a person has is darkness, “how intense must that darkness be” (TCNT).

6:24 / Jesus has just taught his disciples that treasures should be stored in heaven, not on earth. This could lead to concern regarding adequate provisions for daily life. Don’t be anxious about these things, says Jesus, because nature itself teaches that God will provide. Make his kingdom your highest priority; tomorrow will take care of itself.

One of Jesus’ most memorable statements is the radical truth that no one can serve two masters. Knox translates verse 24: “You must serve God or money; you cannot serve both.” Māmôn is an Aramaic word that means “wealth/property.” It is probably derived from a root that means “that in which one trusts” (Hauck in TDNT, vol. 4, p. 388). Although the word itself is neutral, it came to be used in a derogatory sense. In the Targums (Aramaic paraphrases of the Old Testament) it was used for dishonest profit gained by selfishly exploiting another person. The “mammon of unrighteousness” (AV) of Luke 16:9 corresponds exactly to an Aramaic phrase meaning “possessions acquired dishonestly” (TDNT, vol. 4, p. 390). In Paradise Lost, Milton personifies Mammon as a fallen spirit who even in heaven admired the golden streets more than the divine and holy.

Slavery requires complete devotion to one owner. It is impossible to be a servant of God and still serve Mammon. A choice must be made. The love-hate contrast does not refer to an emotional relationship but should be taken in the sense of faithful service as opposed to disregard.

6:25–34 / Since serving God rules out serving money, the logical conclusion is that followers of Christ should not be anxiously concerned about food and clothing. God takes care of the birds who neither plant nor gather a harvest into barns. He also dresses the flowers of the field in garments more beautiful than Solomon with all his wealth could secure. Children of the kingdom are certainly of greater value than birds! And wild grass is here today and gone tomorrow. When you worry about such things not only are you like the pagans but you dishonor God as well. He is fully aware of your needs. Worry is practical atheism and an affront to God.

In this passage we see Jesus drawing upon nature for analogies that will illumine and strengthen spiritual truth. Birds rely upon God’s providential care. They do not busy themselves with anxious human pursuits. Flowers do not spin garments for themselves. They just grow, and God adorns them with color and beauty. The argument is from the lesser to the greater: if God does all this for birds and flowers, won’t he also take care of you?

Several specific items need to be mentioned. For Matthew’s more general term birds of the air (peteinon, v. 26) Luke has “ravens” (korakas, Luke 12:24). “Raven” in Aramaic is masculine, and “lily” is feminine. Laboring in the field was a man’s work and spinning at home a woman’s.

In verse 27 Jesus asks whether by worrying about it anyone can add a single cubit to his or her stature. Pēchys (“cubit”) was originally a forearm, then a measure of about eighteen inches. Since hēlikia (“stature”) normally means “age” and pēchys can be used metaphorically as “a span of time,” it is best to take the phrase to mean “to prolong life by even a short period of time” (v. 27; NIV has add a single hour to his life).

Jesus’ disciples are to examine with care (katamanthanō, a compound in which the prefix kata intensifies the verb manthanō, “to learn”) the lilies of the field (v. 28). The flowers are perhaps the purple anemone, whose color would lead naturally to a comparison with the royal purple of Solomon (cf. the “purple garments worn by the kings of Midian,” Judg. 8:26).

Jesus chides his disciples, calling them “you ‘little-faiths’ ” (v. 30, Phillips). The word used, oligopistos, occurs only five times in the New Testament, four of which are in Matthew. It describes the believer whose actual confidence in God falls short of what we could reasonably expect. The pagans of verse 32 are probably those unbelievers outside the circle of the disciples. Anxiety is pagan, in that, apart from a knowledge of the true God, there is ample reason to be anxious about many things.

Instead of nervous anxiety about those basic physical necessities that God in his providence is perfectly able to supply, the disciple is to seek God’s kingdom and that righteousness of life that demonstrates obedience to the divine will (v. 33). These are the genuinely important issues of human existence, not “What’s for dinner?” or “What can I wear?” God will supply all those things when needed. The chapter closes with two proverbial statements that counsel “living in the present instead of crippling the present by fear of the imagined future” (Filson, p. 102). A note of irony runs through the verse: each day provides its own share of anxieties; why add tomorrow’s problems to those we already have today? Things are bad enough as they are. The American essayist and critic Joseph Wood Krutch observes, “Anxiety and distress, interrupted occasionally by pleasure, is the normal course of man’s existence” (The Twelve Seasons).