In the great Sermon on the Mount, preached by our Savior, Jesus Christ, He exhorts us to make sure we practice righteousness properly.

Matthew 6:1 (ESV)
¹  “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.

The word “beware” is an attention grabber.  It causes one to immediately be on alert because it always signifies some kind of danger.  The danger Jesus is signifying here is missing out on rewards from our Father in heaven.  We do this by giving in to the fleshly desire to please or impress man, even more than wanting to please God.  This is manifested by practicing righteousness just to be seen by others.

Vine says the Greek word for righteousness refers to “religious duties.”  In verse one, Jesus is referring to righteousness in general.  He then gives us three examples (almsgiving, prayer, and fasting) that were being abused by hypocrites, namely, the Pharisees.   He is telling us that in the kingdom of God, we must be careful not to carry out our religious duties just to be seen by men.  We do this by refraining from the degradation of self-promotion.

As Christians, we have duties to perform and responsibilities to meet, and Jesus assumes that we will do these things.  He does not say if we are involved in the practice of righteousness, but when we are involved because that is what citizens of the kingdom of God do—they let their light shine by participating in good works.  Jesus is telling us that when we participate in the work of God, our hearts must be sincere.  We must serve God, not to be praised by man, but for the praise of God.

Does this mean that we serve God in absolute secret?  No, at least not all the time.  While there are times that we do perform our religious duties in secret, there are also times when we serve our Lord very publicly.  Jesus is talking about motive here.  I know this because earlier in this Sermon on the Mount He indicated that we should want man to see our works.

Matthew 5:16 (ESV)
¹⁶  In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.    

We should want men to see our service to God and labor for the Lord.  Our motivation, however, should always be the glorification and exaltation of God, and if our motivation is anything less than that; if we allow our works to degenerate into nothing more than an attempt to be exalted by man, Jesus tells us that we shall receive no reward from our Father after a while.

While we must let our lights shine, there are some kinds of righteousness that should be kept as private as possible.  The three examples that Jesus gives us in Matthew six are examples of this.  If you give to the poor or someone who is in need, there is no one else who needs to know that it was you who helped, sometimes not even the recipient of your benevolence.

When the hypocrites helped the poor, they made sure, in one way or the other, that as many people as possible were going to know about it.  Why?  Because they wanted people to believe that they were full of compassion and mercy when in reality they were more concerned about their reputations than anything else.  This is exactly what we must avoid in our own practice of righteousness.  Is it easy?  Not always.  Sometimes the flesh wants as many people as possible to know that we have done a good deed.  It should be enough, however, that God knows.  His rewards are far better than man’s.

As you wind down for the night, think about these things.