'Moreover, when ye fast, be not, as the hypocrites, of a sad
countenance: for they disfigure their faces, that they may appear
unto men to fast. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward.
17. But thou, when thou fastest, anoint thine head, and wash thy
face; 18. That thou appear not unto men to fast, but unto thy
Father which is in secret: and thy Father, which seeth in secret,
shall reward thee openly.'--MATT. vi. 16-18.
Fasting has gone out of fashion now, but in Christ's time it went along
with almsgiving and prayers, as a recognised expression of a religious
life. The step from expression to ostentation is a short one, and the
triple repetition here of almost the same words in regard to each of the
three corruptions of religion, witnesses to our Lord's estimate of their
commonness. We are exposed to them just as the Pharisees of His day
were. If there is less fasting now than then, Christians still need to
take care that they do not get up a certain 'sad countenance' for the
sake of being seen of men, and because such is understood to be the
proper thing for a religious man. They have to take care, too, not to
parade the feelings, of which fasting used to be the expression, as, for
instance, a sense of their own sinfulness, and sorrow for the nation's
or the world's sins and sorrows. There are deep and sorrowful emotions
in every real Christian heart, but the less the world is called in to
see them, the purer and more blessed and purifying they will be. The man
who has a sidelong eye to spectators in expressing his Christian (or any
other) emotion, is very near being a hypocrite. Expressing emotion with
reference to bystanders, is separated by a very thin line from feigning
emotion. The sidelong glance will soon become a fixed gaze, seeing
nothing else, and the purpose of fasting will slip out of sight. The man
who only wishes to attract attention easily succeeds in that shabby aim,
and has his reward, but misses all the true results, which are only
capable of being realised when he who fasts is thinking of nothing but
his own sin and his forgiving God.