Daily Devotional

Jesus does not simply tell us to keep our giving hidden from other people. He goes further, into territory that almost sounds impossible. He says do not even let your left hand know what your right hand is doing. This is hyperbole, the same kind of striking image he used throughout Matthew 5. He is not suggesting we develop spiritual amnesia about our checkbooks. He is describing the kind of righteousness that has grown so deep into the fabric of a person that there is no room for self congratulation to grow in it.

R.T. France calls this a vivid picture of inner secrecy. Leon Morris notes that Jesus is moving the disciple past the question of “who knows” to the deeper question of “who am I.” Matthew 25 is perhaps the clearest illustration of what Jesus means. There, on the day of judgment, the righteous do not even remember their own good deeds. They ask the king, when did we feed you, when did we visit you? They are not being modest. They genuinely were not keeping score. Their righteousness had become so natural to them that it no longer required an audience, internal or external, to sustain it.

This is not false humility. This is maturity. Grace Hammond defines pride as the habit of centering ourselves at the heart of the universe. Hidden giving is the slow undoing of that habit. It is the practice of letting God occupy the throne of our story again. Every secret act of obedience is a small refusal to write yourself into the narrative as the hero. As A.B. Bruce wrote, both Matthew 5:16 and Matthew 6:3 aim at the same target. The glory goes to God either way.