January 6: Matthew 6
Living for reward . . .
I once had a conversation with a woman who was going through unexpected trials in her marriage. Yet she was sticking to her vows, despite it being harder than she imagined it could be. Grieving, suffering people cannot hear much, so when I noticed her slumped under exhaustion I tried to encourage her with brief words. I shared how she could keep going fed by the hope that, for every step she walked by faith and endured, God would remember and reward her in the end. But she replied, “Well, of course we know we shouldn’t live for reward.”
And that was that. It was no time to get into a theological argument. It saddened me that she would not told hold for herself the grace that Jesus repeatedly offers us in Matthew 6. Jesus uses the word “reward” seven times. We all live for reward. Jesus never commands us to turn that off. Instead, he says that we glorify God by making Him the Giver of our reward. It’s not whether we live for reward, but from which source whether horizontally or vertically, whether by our own hands or God’s, whether from the applause of man or that of God.
Hebrews 1:6 echoes the point. Faith, if authentic, means believing two things:
That God exists, and
He rewards those who seek Him.
So if it’s clear that all humanity lives to seek reward, and if God is a rewarding God, then why do some live as though we should not seek reward? Perhaps we are not reading our Bibles closely, or we allow an “overrealized piety” to override what the Bible says. This piety says that God Himself should be enough for us, and that the Christian life involves a renunciation of all enjoyments. But the reality from Scripture is that God reveals Himself in His rewards. We wouldn’t know the God that’s actually there without experiencing and hoping in His rewards.
Thus, for Jesus, living for God and living for His reward is the same thing, because He is a rewarding God. To reverse this: whoever or whatever is the giver of the highest and best reward in your life is your functional g/God. When you pray in public, if you are more concerned about what people think of your prayer (5), then it turns out you are praying to people, even while purportedly praying to God. People are your actual god, in that moment.
The solution is to live for the reward of God, which is another way of saying (33),
“. . . seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness . . .”
Because, if we do,
“ . . . all these things will be added to you.”