The Three Disciplines in Secret (1 of 2)

Matthew 6 — Giving, Prayer, and Fasting Before the Father Alone — Plus the Great Anxiety Command

“But whenever you pray, go into your room, close the door, and pray to your Father in secret. And your Father, who sees in secret, will reward you.”

— Matthew 6:6 (NET)

The Problem With Religious Performance

Matthew 6 addresses something that every person who takes religion seriously eventually faces: the temptation to perform the practices of faith for an audience rather than for the Father. This is not a temptation unique to hypocrites or the morally weak. It is a temptation that intensifies as the disciple grows in genuine faith, because as faith deepens the practices become more visible and the temptation to receive something from the audience becomes harder to resist.

Jesus identifies three specific practices that are most vulnerable to this corruption: giving to the needy, prayer, and fasting. These are the three disciplines that were central to Jewish piety in the first century — the pillars of the devout life. And He says, with devastating precision, that every one of them can be corrupted by the single act of moving the audience from the Father to the crowd.

The Verily statement that seals the warning appears three times in seven verses, once for each discipline: “Verily I tell you, they have received their reward in full.” (Matthew 6:2, 5, 16) This is the cross-reference table entry from Part One. Religious activity performed for human approval is not unrewarded — it is precisely rewarded. You wanted admiration. You received admiration. Account closed. No further payment forthcoming. The eternal account is empty.

Giving in Secret

“So when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be honored by others.” (Matthew 6:2)

The word translated “hypocrites” is ὑποκριτής (hypokrites) — the Greek word for an actor, someone playing a role on a stage. The hypocrite in Matthew 6 is not necessarily a liar. He may genuinely want to help the poor. But he wants to be seen helping the poor even more. He has cast himself in a performance of generosity and the performance requires an audience.

The prescription is complete and unavoidable: “Do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret.” (Matthew 6:3–4) The left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing is not a description of hurried, unconscious giving. It is a description of giving so thoroughly unselfconscious that the giver has removed himself as an audience. He is not watching himself be generous. He is simply doing what the Father’s love produces in people who are filled with it.

The digital age has made this discipline more difficult and more important simultaneously. Social media has created an infrastructure for the public announcement of every act of generosity. The GoFundMe campaign, the charity run with the fundraising page, the Instagram post from the mission trip, the announcement in the church newsletter. None of these are inherently corrupt. But they are all invitations to move the audience from the Father to the crowd. The disciple must ask — honestly, privately, without self-congratulation — who he is giving for. The Father rewards what is done in secret. What is done in public has already received its reward.

The Lord’s Prayer in Context

Matthew 6:5–15 is the most familiar passage in the Sermon on the Mount. The Lord’s Prayer has been memorized, recited, sung, and printed more than almost anything else Jesus said. But in the Sermon, it is not primarily a liturgy. It is a corrective.

Jesus contrasts it with two corrupt prayer practices: the public performance of the hypocrites (6:5) and the “babbling” of the pagans who think they will be heard for their many words (6:7). The Lord’s Prayer is the antidote to both corruptions: a prayer that is addressed to the Father in secret (not the crowd), and a prayer that is compact, relational, and structured around the Father’s priorities rather than an accumulation of demands.

The structure of the prayer is itself a constitution of the disciple’s relationship with God:

6. “Our Father in heaven” — Relationship before request. You come as a child to a Father who knows you and claims you. This is not cold address to an impersonal deity. This is the Abba cry that Romans 8:15 says the Spirit produces in the believer.
7. “Hallowed be your name” — The first request is for the Father’s name to be honored. Before you ask for anything for yourself, you ask for the Father to be glorified. This reorders the disciple’s entire prayer life.
8. “Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as in heaven” — The disciple’s primary kingdom agenda is not the advancement of his own preferences or the success of his own plans. It is the coming of the Father’s Kingdom and the doing of the Father’s will. Everything else is subordinate to this.
9. “Give us today our daily bread” — Not a year’s supply. Today’s. The disciple who prays for daily bread is the disciple who returns to the Father daily. The prayer is structured to produce dependence, not provision in excess of the need for dependence.
10. “Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors” — The petition for forgiveness is inseparable from the practice of forgiving. Jesus reinforces this immediately after the prayer (6:14–15) with the warning that unforgiveness blocks the Father’s forgiveness. This is not works-based salvation. It is the recognition that the unforgiving heart has not understood what it has received.
11. “Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one” — The prayer ends with a request for protection in spiritual warfare. The disciple asks the Father not to lead him into the place of testing where he will fall, and to deliver him from the enemy who is actively seeking to destroy him.