Practicing Righteousness Before the Father | Matthew 6:1-18
Brian Hedges | February 22, 2026
Let me invite you to turn in your Bibles this morning to Matthew 6. We’re going to be reading Matthew 6:1-18 in just a moment.
My daughter’s school recently had a “virtuous character” day. It’s a Christian school, and students were invited to come dressed as a virtuous character. We found it kind of interesting what some of the choices were. One kid came as Frodo from The Lord of the Rings. That’s a good choice; I approve of that. There was also a Jo March from Little Women and other interesting characters from literature.
But there were some surprising choices, even some kind of humorous choices. One kid came dressed as Roderick from Diary of a Wimpy Kid. If you know Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Roderick is not really a virtuous or admirable character. A couple of kids actually came dressed as former President Joe Biden. It was probably more a political statement than it was a statement about virtue. And some simply came dressed as themselves! I’m not sure that authenticity is a virtue.
It does kind of beg the question, what is a virtue? I mean, how do we define virtue? Is virtue something that you wear? Is virtue something that you project, something that you put on, something that you signal? Or is virtue something that you become in the hidden places of your life?
Beneath that, there’s a deeper question: Who is our audience? Before whose face do we seek to live? We live in an age that is very comfortable with virtue signaling, with public displays of righteousness online, social media, which allows us to curate our convictions and our beliefs in order to get likes. Jesus directly addresses those instincts in the passage before us this morning.
We have been seeing together in this series and the Sermon on the Mount that two themes converge in Jesus’ teaching here. This is Jesus as the wise sage who is giving us virtue ethics, where he is calling us to a vision of the good life. And this is Jesus, the King and the Savior, who gives us a manifesto for life in the kingdom of God.
Once again, those themes converge in Matthew 6, which has to be one of the most heart-searching passages in all of Scripture. Martyn Lloyd-Jones said he thought it was one of the most uncomfortable chapters in all the Scriptures to read. The reason it’s uncomfortable is because it doesn’t merely examine our actions, it goes deeper than that to the very motivations of our hearts.
We’re going to see that this morning as we begin this new section, Matthew 6:1-18. Today I want to give a broad overview of this section, and then we’ll dig into this passage in deeper detail in the weeks to come. Let’s read the passage, Matthew 6 beginning in verse 1. Jesus says,
“Beware of practicing your righteousness before other people in order to be seen by them, for then you will have no reward from your Father who is in heaven.
“Thus, when you give to the needy, sound no trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may be praised by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.
“And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites. For they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, that they may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.
“And when you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him. Pray then like this:
“Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name.
Your kingdom come,
your will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread,
and forgive us our debts,
as we also have forgiven our debtors.
And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil.
“For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.
“And when you fast, do not look gloomy like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces that their fasting may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face, that your fasting may not be seen by others but by your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.”
This is God’s Word.
This is a stunning passage from Jesus that shows us the true heart of righteousness, righteousness that seeks to not make an impression on other people but seeks to live in simplicity and in humility before the face of the Father.
I think we can understand the broad structure and the focus of this passage by looking at three key words. Those words are righteousness, hypocrisy, and reward. I want to structure each of the three points around those words.
1. Righteousness: The Practices of Religion
Number one, righteousness, or what we might call the practices of religion. I mean religion here in a neutral sense: religion that involves certain embodied practices, things that we do, like giving and praying and fasting.
Notice verse one. Verse one begins, “Beware of practicing your righteousness before other people in order to be seen by them.” Now, we’ll focus on the warning in that passage in the next point, but here I just want you to focus on that phrase, “practicing your righteousness.” The word “righteousness,” of course, connects us directly with Matthew 5. Jesus there speaks of those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, and then in Matthew 5:20, Jesus spoke of the greater righteousness of the kingdom. He said, “Unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and the Pharisees, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven.”
What follows in both Matthew 5 and Matthew 6 is Jesus’s teaching about what this greater righteousness entails. In chapter 5, Jesus addresses righteousness in relation to Torah observance. This is the realm of morality. This is the realm of the law, of ethics. And Jesus gives us six case studies, six examples, as he talks about murder and adultery and divorce and oaths and retaliation and enemies.
In each one of those examples, as we’ve seen in the last several weeks, Jesus goes beneath surface-level behavioral conformity to the law to a deep understanding and application of that law at the heart level.
Now, in chapter 6, Jesus shifts to righteousness in relation to religion, or what we might think of as worship or devotion or personal piety. So you have this comprehensive approach to righteousness: morality and religion, ethics and spirituality. Chapter 5 asks, how do you treat others? Chapter 6 asks, how do you relate to God?
So Jesus here speaks about the practice of righteousness, and this whole passage that we have read is looking at three different examples of that in terms of almsgiving (or giving to the poor), verses 2-4; prayer, verses 5-15; and then fasting, verses 16-18.
Now, it’s just worth noting that all the great religions of the world embrace these practices in some form or another. These were the three pillars of Judaism: giving, prayer, and fasting. In Islam, the five pillars include almsgiving and daily prayer and fasting during Ramadan. And of course in Christianity, these are also practices that we are called to.
Notice here that Jesus just assumes that his disciples will be involved in these practices. He does not say, “If you give,” he says, “When you give.” “When you give, when you pray, when you fast, do it in this way.”
This is important for us, because it just shows us that there’s no category in Jesus’ teaching for a disciple who claims allegiance to him without any kind of embodied discipleship. Jesus assumes that we will be involved in these kinds of practices. I think one of the faulty modern assumptions that is current in the church today is that you can be a sincere Christian and yet have no regular pattern of embodied religious life, no regular prayer or generosity or self-denial.
Jesus assumes this practical spirituality. He assumes that faith will express itself in habits, that love will give an order to the rhythms of our lives, the practices of our lives. The issue isn’t whether we will do these things, the issue is why we will do these things.
Let’s just try to make that concrete for a minute. It is possible for us to have strong theological opinions and to listen to Christian podcasts and to discuss cultural issues, even framing it from a somewhat biblical perspective, and yet to go weeks on end without setting aside any real time to spend in the presence of God. It’s possible for us to post about issues of justice online and yet never quietly give in a way that is costly. It is possible for us to identify as a Christian and yet have no regular pattern of seeking God when no one is watching.
Jesus assumes that will not be the case. He assumes an embodied life of devotion to God, not just ideas about God, but habits before the Lord.
Imagine two people who are sitting in the same worship service. Both people sing the songs of worship and praise. Both people nod along with the public prayers. Both of them listen to the message, they take the sacraments. But one of them leaves, and as soon as they’re out of the church, they’re checking the latest sports scores on their phone, they’re busy with plans about lunch, getting on with their errands for the afternoon; and they go the rest of the day and the rest of the week without ever thinking about what happened in church again.
The other person actually seeks out the quiet place and sometime following that public worship will seek to spend time alone with the Father.
They look very much the same on the outside, but the inner life is actually quite different. It’s important for us to wrestle just with this, that Jesus calls us to a certain practice, a certain set of practices in our life, the practices of righteousness.
Let me just ask you, if someone followed you around for a week, would they see any embodied practices of devotion? Would they see generosity? Would they see prayer? Would they see self-denial in any shape or form? Or is your Christianity mostly just an idea? We need to answer that question. Jesus assumes the practices of religion, which he calls righteousness.
2. Hypocrisy: The Danger of Theatricality
But there is a danger to these practices, and that’s really where Jesus’ focus is here, and that danger is signaled by the key word “hypocrite” in this passage.
So, secondly, hypocrisy, or what we might call the danger of theatricality. Look again at verse 1 and notice the note of warning. “Beware of practicing your righteousness before other people in order to be seen by them.” There’s the danger. The danger is to practice your religion in such a way as to be seen.
Now, this is not a contradiction of what Jesus had said earlier in the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5:16, where he said, “Let your light so shine before me that they may see your good works and glorify your Father who is in heaven.” There, I think Jesus is talking about the obviously public-facing aspects of our faith, and he wants our light to shine, but it’s all about motivation. Do it so that your Father will be glorified.
But here, Jesus is speaking about those things that are actually very personal and private and should be taking place in the privacy and the secrecy of our homes, and he says if you’re only doing this to impress other people, you’re missing the real heart of it. Again, the issue is motivation, and the key word is the word “hypocrite.” You see this three times in the passage.
Verse 2: “Thus, when you give to the needy, sound no trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may be praised by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward.” Then again in verse 5: “When you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites.” Again in verse 16: “When you fast, do not look gloomy like the hypocrites.”
This is a word—Sinclair Ferguson in his commentary points this out—this is a word that comes from the world of the theater in the ancient world. A hypocrite was literally an actor who took the stage and put on a mask. The actors didn’t have makeup and do the kinds of things that actors do today, but they would wear a mask, and so this is literally what the word hypocrite meant. And Jesus takes this word, this word of the theater, and he applies it to those whose religion is theatrical, whose religiosity is a mere performance, who give and pray and fast in order to be seen by others.
This is always a potential problem with us, for us in the Christian life.
A few nights ago, I heard Dr. Carl Trueman give a lecture at Notre Dame University. Trueman, whom I’ve quoted before, is one of the great theologians and I think cultural apologists of our day. He’s doing a guest lectureship, kind of a visiting professor at Notre Dame this year, and so I heard him speak a few nights ago.
One of the things he mentioned is how institutions of education have shifted from being places of formation to being places of performance. And he talked about how at one time there were certainly very high expectations of a school. You would conform to this school or this university in terms of dress; you couldn’t even graduate from some places unless you were wearing the appropriate dress. And these were places where you were expected to embody the values of the school. These are places where students went to be taught, to be informed, to be shaped in their character and in their ethics and in their society, their lives in society. Trueman makes the point that that has largely shifted, so that now these institutions are places of personal achievement, climbing up the rung of self-advancement and self-realization.
I think in the same way, the church can suddenly become a place that values performance more than it values real formation of the heart and the soul, where visibility becomes more important than depth. We can quietly reward that in the life of the church in the way we platform things, the way we think about things, the things that we celebrate, when we celebrate those who are obviously gifted in public ways, but we don’t really celebrate the quieter gifts. This is a perpetual danger for people like me, for people who stand behind a podium, for people who take a stage, who lead in a public way.
Jesus’ words have to be carefully considered. We have to wrestle with these words. Even think about something as simple as praying in public, whether that’s praying in a public worship service or praying in your small group. How easy it is for us to think about our public prayers mainly about how they’re going to affect other people.
Now, public prayer is a gift. We should pray in public, and we should pray in such a way that leads other people into worship, but we must never forget that our primary audience is God himself. We’re not asking mainly, “How do I sound?” But we are asking, “Is this pleasing to the Lord?”
I think this principle can be applied more broadly. Ask yourself, when no one notices your service, are you restless and discontent? Or when your obedience goes unseen, does that offend you? When you give, are you giving in order to really meet the needs of others, or are you doing that simply for the sake of image?
I mean, we know how easy it is to curate our spiritual lives in ways that get us applause. Just think about the Instagram post—it’s got perfect lighting. Here’s a Bible. Here’s a cup of coffee. And underneath there is this caption, “Just enjoying spending time in the word today.” And then the rest of the day, you’re looking to see how many likes you get.
You see how subtle it is. All of us have probably been guilty of this.
Listen, theatrical religion seeks the spotlight; true devotion seeks the Father. So again, the question is, who is your audience? Are you practicing your Christianity before others, or are you practicing your Christianity before the face of God?
3. Reward: The Gaze of the Father
That leads to point number three. The key word is reward, and here our focus is on the gaze of the Father.
Look at this refrain that shows up three times in this passage. Jesus says, “...and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.” In fact, we could say that the Father is actually the dominant figure in Jesus’ teaching in Matthew 6. Ten times Jesus speaks of the Father. Here are some examples.
Verse 4: “Your Father who sees in secret will reward you.”
Verse 6: “Pray to your Father who is in secret, and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.”
Verse 8: “Your Father knows what you need before you ask him.”
Verse 14: “If you forgive others…your heavenly Father will also forgive you.”
Verse 18: “Your fasting,” Jesus is saying, “may not be seen by others, but it is seen by the Father who is in secret, and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.”
The center of our spiritual lives is meant to be the Father. We live before him, and he sees, he gazes upon us. Jesus says, that’s your reward. You seek the reward of the Father’s gaze.
Now, I know for many Protestants, the word “reward” makes us nervous. After all, we embrace a theology of grace, where we are saved by grace and not works, and we do not trust in our merit to earn anything with God. So you might wonder, “How is this language of reward compatible with a doctrine of grace?” We don’t want to smuggle works back in through the side door.
I think the clue to understanding what Jesus is saying here is just that Jesus here speaks of the Father. He speaks of the Father!
I appreciated the comment and insight from Frederick Dale Bruner in his commentary, where he just said that the family language takes the language of reward out of the commercial realm and puts it into the relational realm, the realm of family. This is familial language; this is not commercial language. This is relational language; it’s not transactional language.
When a parent lovingly rewards their child, the child’s not earning anything from the parent. But a parent may reward and praise and show their favor to that child and do so out of love. The language of reward doesn’t contradict grace.
It doesn’t even contradict the apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 3. He talks about believers building on the one foundation of Christ, but he says that that work will be tested by fire, and he says, “If the work that anyone has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward.” Yet you’re building on the foundation of Christ. Christ is the foundation. Yet there is an appeal to reward.
So Jesus here is not saying to earn your salvation. He is saying, rather, there is a greater joy in living before the face of your Father than in living for the praise of other, and God is glorified when you seek that.
I found so helpful for so many years that wellknown saying now of John Piper, who said, “God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him.” So we should seek that. We seek our joy in God, our satisfaction in God. We seek reward.
Why does Jesus, then, appeal to reward at all? Why does he use this language? And again, I think the answer is that Jesus here speaks as a sage. He speaks as a teacher of wisdom who is presenting to us the good life, a vision of human flourishing under the saving reign of God. What does it look like to live a good life within the kingdom of God?
Part of this vision is the vision of the kingdom. And Jesus knows that we are all living for some vision of the good life. He knows that we’re all seeking for joy, for satisfaction. We’re seeking a reward. The question is, are we seeking it in the right place?
One of the best scholars to articulate this in recent years is James K.A. Smith, professor of philosophy at Calvin. And in his book Desiring the Kingdom, Smith explains it in this way. He says,
“To be human is to desire the kingdom, some version of the kingdom which is the aim of our quest. Every one of us is on a kind of Arthurian quest for the ‘Holy Grail’: that hoped-for, longed-for, dreamed-of picture of the good life, the realm of human flourishing that we pursue without ceasing. Implicitly and tacitly, it is such visions of the kingdom that pull us to get up in the morning and suit up for the quest. However, to say that all humans desire the kingdom does not mean that we all desire the same kingdom. There are very different versions of what the kingdom looks like. The shape of the kingdom is contested, generating very different stories and thus different kinds of peoples, citizens who see themselves as subjects of rival kings. There are many roundtables.”
So here’s the question: Which vision of the kingdom are you pursuing? Where do you see human flourishing? What is it that actually brings you the deepest joy and satisfaction? Is it the praise of other people? Is it likes on Instagram? Is it being well-regarded by others? Jesus says those who seek that have received their reward. If human applause is what you seek, human applause is all you will get. But Jesus holds out something better. He says, “Your Father sees you in the secret place, and he will reward you.”
I think Jesus is essentially appealing to us to trust in the goodness of the Father and the promise of the kingdom. In other words, Jesus here is calling us to the life of faith.
You actually have the language of faith and reward together in that well-known verse, Hebrews 11:6, which says, “Without faith it is impossible to please him, for he who would come to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him.”
The life of faith seeks the reward of the Father. And such a life is God-centered in its focus, and that very God-centeredness leads to a kind of simplicity in our devotion, a kind of humility in our lives, a simplicity in motivation and practice, so that when we give, we don’t announce it to others, and when we pray, we’re not doing it to be seen by others. We do it in the secret place. We do it in our room, away from others. We’re not posting our devotions on Instagram. When we fast, we’re not explaining to people why we skip a meal. We’re not promoting ourselves. There are no theatrics, there’s no virtue signaling, there’s no curated spirituality. There’s just a life that is lived faithfully before the face of God. And our reward is the communion and the fellowship and the friendship and the joy that we find in relationship with God himself.
I’ve quoted this dozens of times in 20-plus years of ministry, but it fits so well, I want to read this quotation to you again from C.S. Lewis’s sermon, “The Weight of Glory.” Lewis said,
“If there lurks in most modern minds the notion that to desire our own good and earnestly to hope for the enjoyment of it is a bad thing, I submit that this notion has crept in from Kant and the Stoics and is no part of the Christian faith. Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that our Lord finds our desires not too strong but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”
The problem, so often, in our hearts and in our lives when it comes to our spirituality is that we settle for too little. We settle for human applause when Jesus offers us fellowship with the Father. We settle for visibility when Jesus invites us into intimacy with God. We settle for performance when Jesus offers us a life lived in God’s presence. To live coram Deo, before the face of God, that is our reward.
Listen, Jesus does not merely teach us this; Jesus himself is the one who revealed the Father and who modeled this kind of life. When you look at the life of Jesus, you see that he obeyed the Father even in secret. He sought out communion with God in the secret place. He prayed alone. He practiced righteousness, not in order to be seen by men but in order to save them. And Jesus was rejected publicly so that we could be accepted into the life and fellowship of God. On the cross, Jesus took the condemnation we deserved so that we could be welcomed into the family of God and relate to God as our Father.
At the end of the day, we are not saved by the flawlessness of our sincerity; we are saved by depending on the perfection of Jesus Christ and depending on him for the relationship with the Father that Jesus offers us in the kingdom of God. But from that place of secure acceptance with God, we are free. We are free from the need to be approved by others, and we are free to pursue a life of fellowship with God.
Here’s the choice, friends: We can live our Christian lives on the public stage, or we can live it in hiddenness before the face of God. The question is, who is your audience: the crowds or your Father?
Let’s pray.
Gracious, merciful God, we thank you that by your grace and through the work of Jesus your Son and the Holy Spirit we can have a personal and intimate relationship with you; that we can seek you in the secret place and be sure that we will flourish and thrive, that there is a reward, a joy, and a satisfaction that far outstrips anything that any other person can give us.
Lord, we have to confess this morning that so often we have not sought that. We have been content with something so much less. We have lived in the fear of man rather than the fear of God. We have sought to impress others rather than to know the intimacy of relationship with you. So, Lord, we ask you to forgive us for that. Forgive us for the neglect, forgive us for the hypocrisy. Forgive us for being theatrical in our whole approach to the Christian life. Give us, instead, an authentic humility and simplicity in our relationship with you that, as disciples, as learners of Jesus, we would really learn what it means to walk in your presence and to live before your face.
We pray that your word today would be a means of grace leading to that kind of transformation, and we pray that the table now would be the same. May your Spirit draw near to us in these moments to so fill us and to so focus our affections and our hearts and minds, our thoughts, on Christ and what he has done for us, that receiving the elements as a means of grace that leads to deeper transformation in our lives. We ask you now to search our hearts, to show us the changes that you want to make, changes that actually will lead to flourishing and joy in our lives. And give us the grace, Lord, to obey anything that you tell us to do. Draw near to us now, we pray in Jesus’ name and for his sake, amen.
Brian G. Hedges
