Charles Ellicott Commentary Matthew 6:1

"Take heed that ye do not your righteousness before men, to be seen of them: else ye have no reward with your Father who is in heaven." — Matthew 6:1 (ASV)

From the protest against the casuistry that tampered with and distorted the great primary commandments, the Sermon on the Mount passes to the defects of character and action that corrupted the religion of Pharisaism even at its best. Its excellence had been that it stressed—as the religion of Islam did later—the three great duties of the religious life: almsgiving, fasting, and prayer, rather than sacrifices and offerings. Verbally, Pharisaism accepted the widest and most spiritual teaching of the prophets on this point. Consequently, its home was in the synagogue rather than the temple, and it gained a hold on the minds of the people that the priests never did.

But a subtle evil found its way even here. The love of praise and power, rather than spontaneous love, self-denial, and adoration, was the driving force of their actions. As a result, the very essence of religion was absent even from the acts in which the purest and highest form of religion naturally shows itself.

Your alms—The better manuscripts give righteousness, and obviously with a far truer meaning, as it is the wider word that later branches into the three categories of alms, fasting, and prayer. In Rabbinic language, the whole was often used for the part; “righteousness” was identified with “mercifulness,” and that, in turn, with giving money. The Greek version of the Septuagint often renders the Hebrew word for righteousness as “alms.” In the New Testament, however, there is no such narrowing of its meaning, and here the full significance of the word is established by its use in Matthew 5:20. The reading “alms” probably arose from a misunderstanding of the passage’s real meaning and the resulting assumption that it simply introduced the rule given in Matthew 6:2-3.

To be seen of them—It is the motive, not the fact of publicity, that corrupts the action. The high ideal for a disciple of Christ is to let his light shine before men (the very same words are used here as in Matthew 5:16), and yet to be indifferent to their praise or even their opinion. In most religious people, there is probably a mixture of the two motives, and we dare not say at what precise stage the lower one overpowers the higher. It is enough to remember that this is the small impurity that can taint the whole character until it loses all its life.

Of your Father which is in heaven—More accurately, with your Father, meaning “in His estimation.” The act is not done to and for Him, and therefore (speaking in human terms) He views it as having no claim to reward.