The Hollow Reward of Ostentatious Piety

When the Pharisees perform their almsgiving before men, Christ pronounces a verdict of stunning brevity: "They have their reward" (Matthew 6:2). This is not blessing but irony—a sentence that cuts to the heart of human motivation.

Joseph Exell's Victorian analysis identifies a propounded truth: man works for reward. Yet the contrast Christ draws is absolute. In Elohim, the noblest aspirations of humanity find their true satisfaction. The Pharisees' reward—public recognition, the praise of observers—is transient and worthless. They have received it completely, exhausted in the moment of acknowledgment.

Canon Liddon's insight refines this: the text does not condemn all public good works, only those performed for public acclaim. The distinction matters. Ostentatious piety carries its own remuneration—the pleasure of pride, the intoxication of human approval. Yet this constitutes the entire payment. Nothing remains.

Henry Ward Beecher sharpens the application: humanity seeks pleasure in many pursuits—pride, wrong-doing, the love of praise. These pleasures are real but finite. The gospel, by contrast, unveils a "great life that lies beyond," calling men to use themselves in this present life to gain the higher reward—communion with Adonai, treasures in heaven, the approval of the Eternal rather than the ephemeral.