This truth—that our Lord is giving us principles, not laws—will appear only more conspicuously now, when we pass to the next great section of the Sermon; because it will be obvious that our Lord can only be dealing with motives of action—motives such as belong to the secret heart of the individual. He proceeds to inculcate the abandonment of a worldly temper by prohibiting, literally, such religious actions as other men can see. But His own example, His own institution of a corporate religion, His special promises to common worship, His countermaxim “Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works,” force us to recognize the proverbial character of these prohibitions, and to look for the principle rather than the law.
And indeed this sixth chapter of St. Matthew’s Gospel has one subject throughout. It teaches us one great principle—that the new righteousness, the righteousness of the citizens of the kingdom, looks throughout towards God. God is its motive, God is its aim, God is its object; God, and nothing lower than God. No man is truly a citizen who is not in all his conduct and life looking directly God-ward.
We will attend first to verses 1–18, omitting the positive directions about prayer. Their theme does not vary: The Christian righteousness, in all its departments, looks for divine praise; never for human praise. Our Lord lays this down first of righteousness generally, then of its different branches. Thus, in the first place, of righteousness generally:
“Take heed that ye do not your righteousness before men, to be seen of them: else ye have no reward with your Father which is in heaven.”
We may observe here, once for all, that our Lord in no way disparages the seeking a reward, only the seeking it in a wrong place. There are “altruists” who regard the seeking of even an eternal reward from God as ignoble; they would find the true religious motive only in such an utterance as that of St. Francis Xavier, “My God, I love Thee, not because I hope for heaven thereby,” and would recall the mediæval story of the man who would quench with water the flames of hell and burn up with fire the joys of heaven, that men might seek God for His own sake. But indeed these philosophers ignore indestructible and necessary instincts in human nature. We cannot separate lovefor God from a desire to find our own happiness in God. This is inseparable from personality. We must crave for ultimate satisfaction, recognition, approval. The point is that we should seek it in the right place, that is from God. For coming from Him it can never involve any spoiling of our own capacity for usefulness to others, or narrowing of our own selves. Thus there is a true self-love: and a true self-love seeks satisfaction in the fellowship of God in the eternal world. If “other-worldliness” or the seeking of the divine reward has done harm in religion, that is because the character of the God whom we seek, as revealed in the character and teaching of Jesus Christ, has not been attended to. Granted that we seek God as He is, there can be no possible peril of our undervaluing this world or the bodies of men, nor of our tolerating selfishness in religion. He that said “What is a man profited if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own life (soul)?” said also, “He that saveth his life (soul) shall lose it.”
Then our Lord applies the general principle of seeking only God’s approval to the three great branches of humanconduct. Christian, and indeed human conduct generally, looks in three directions. There is a duty to God, there is a duty to one’s neighbour, and there is a duty to one’s self. And each of these great departments of human conduct has one typical form of action, one form of action in which it specially expresses itself. Our duty to God expresses itself particularly in prayer. Our duty to man expresses itself in works of mercy, or alms. Our duty towards ourselves expresses itself in self-subdual, self-mastery—that is, fasting. And so our Lord applies the general principle to each of these typical duties. In your prayers, in your alms, in your fastings—in each case you are to look to nothing lower than the praise of God.
And, before we study these passages, let me ask you to notice how simply our Lord does always regard human life as bound to move in these three directions. There is our duty to God. That He puts first, not to be merged in our duty to our neighbour. There is our personal duty to God as a person, and it is the first and chief commandment to love the Lord our God. Then there is ourduty towards our neighbour; and then, also, there is our duty towards ourselves. “Thou shalt love thy neighbour—as thyself!” Our duty towards ourselves is, in a word, to make the best of ourselves. Each one is an instrument, divinely created by God, with that sum total of faculties which the Bible calls his life or soul. Well, he is to make the best of himself. Considered as a spiritual being, capable of right spiritual activity, each man is to love himself and his neighbour and God; himself, by bringing his whole being into good order and efficiency, which cannot be without fasting or the subdual of the flesh to the spirit: his neighbour, by considering his true interests like his own, which cannot be without almsgiving or actual gifts out of his substance to supply the other’s needs: and God, which cannot be unless he deal with Him as a person by way of actual personal requests in prayer. And in each direction he is to seek only the praise of God.
ALMSGIVING
“When therefore thou doest alms, sound not a trumpet before thee, as the hypocrites do in thesynagogues and in the streets, that they may have glory of men. Verily I say unto you, They have received their reward. But when thou doest alms, let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth: that thine alms may be in secret: and thy Father which seeth in secret shall recompense thee.”
Our Lord is clearly using a metaphor. We cannot suppose that the Jews, when they went to give alms, caused their own trumpet to be blown in a literal sense; and in the same way, when our Lord speaks of the left hand not knowing what the right hand doeth, it is clearly a metaphor; but a metaphor vividly descriptive. For what our Lord is here forbidding is obviously ostentation in doing good.