Jesus Christ · The Sermon on the Mount
Fasting
Fasting completes the triad Jesus began with giving and prayer — and He never stops to defend it. “Moreover whenye fast” is not “if.” Fasting was already an established practice of God's people, and Jesus assumes His disciples will keep doing it. What He corrects is not the discipline itself but its motive and its display: don't perform your hunger for an audience.
The Text
— Matthew 6:16–18When you fast, do not be somber like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces to show men they are fasting. Truly I tell you, they already have their full reward.The hypocrites' fast — disfigured faces, performed for an audience.
But when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face, so that your fasting will not be obvious to men, but only to your Father, who is unseen. And your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.The disciple's fast — ordinary face, hidden from everyone but the Father.
These three verses close the triad that opened at 6:1 — giving (6:2–4), prayer (6:5–15), and now fasting, the last of the three “acts of righteousness” Jesus refuses to let His disciples perform for men. All three follow the identical shape: the hypocrites' way, then the disciple's way, then the same promise — “thy Father, which seeth in secret, shall reward thee.”
The Two Faces
— Matthew 6:16–18 — the third panel of one triptych“disfigure their faces, that they may appear unto men to fast”
FOR THE FATHER · 6:17–18“anoint thine head, and wash thy face”
What He Is Saying
— assumed as a discipline, corrected only in motiveJesus never says whether to fast — He says when. Fasting was already woven into the life of God's people, and He steps into that stream rather than founding it. What He rules on is entirely the how: not the exhausting face of the hypocrite, sighing and pale for an audience, but the ordinary face of someone whose hunger is a private matter between him and his Father.
“When,” not “if”an assumed discipline
Jesus is not introducing fasting to His followers — He is correcting a practice they already keep. Later, when John's disciples ask why His own do not fast the way the Pharisees do, He answers with a wedding: the guests do not mourn while the bridegroom is with them — “but the days will come, when the bridegroom shall be taken from them, and then shall they fast” (Matt 9:15). Fasting was suspended for the short season the Bridegroom stood in the room. Once He was taken away, it resumed — as this teaching already assumes it will.
The same closet, three timesgiving, praying, fasting
Giving is done so the left hand does not know what the right is doing (6:3). Prayer is done behind a shut door (6:6). Fasting is done with an ordinary, washed, anointed face (6:17) — the same instinct in three different disciplines. Chrysostom hears the fasting instruction as a continuation of the “closet” teaching just given for prayer, not a separate rule: concealment, not the specific gesture, is the point.
“Anoint thine head, and wash thy face” sounds like a command to groom for the occasion, but the commentators below read it as ordinary daily routine — appear as you always appear, so that only God knows what your body is going without.
The Voices on the Hypocrites' Fast
— the church hears Matthew 6:16When ye fast? - Our Lord does not enjoin either fasting, alms- deeds, or prayer: all these being duties which were before fully established in the Church of God. Disfigure - By the dust and ashes which they put upon their heads, as was usual at the times of solemn humiliation.
John Wesley· Explanatory Notes upon the New Testament (1755), Matt 6:16
And are the exhausting fasts of the Church of Rome, and of Romanizing Protestants, free from this taint? Verily I say unto you, They have their reward.
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871), Matt 6:16
For by the pale countenance, the trembling limbs, and the bursting sighs, and by all so great toil and trouble, nothing is in the mind but the esteem of men.
Gregory the Dialogist· Catena Aurea by Aquinas (on Matt 6:16)
But that fasting is not pure, that comes not of reasons of continence, but of the arts of deceit.
Leo the Great· Catena Aurea by Aquinas (on Matt 6:16)
The Voices on the Disciple's Fast
— the church hears Matthew 6:17–18But thou, when thou fastest, anoint thine head, and wash thy face--as the Jews did, except when mourning (Da 10:3); so that the meaning is, "Appear as usual"--appear so as to attract no notice.
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871), Matt 6:17
But thou when thou fastest, anoint ... - That is, appear as you do daily. Do not assume any new appearance, or change your visage or dress. The Jews and all neighboring nations were much in the habit of washing and anointing their bodies. This washing was performed at every meal; and where it could be effected, the head, or other parts of the body, was daily anointed with sweet or olive oil.
Albert Barnes· Notes, Explanatory and Practical, on the Old and New Testaments (1832–1869), Matt 6:17
Fasting ought to be fulfilled not in abstinence of food only, but much more in cutting off vices. For when we submit ourselves to that discipline in order to withdraw that which is the nurse of carnal desires, there is no sort of good conscience more to be sought than that we should keep ourselves sober from unjust will, and abstinent from dishonourable action. This is an act of religion from which the sick are not excluded, seeing integrity of heart may be found in an infirm body.
Leo the Great· Catena Aurea by Aquinas (on Matt 6:17–18)
One Discipline, Kept in Secret
— Chrysostom on the closet, the Didache on the church's rhythmAs therefore, when He said, "Let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth," it was not of hands that He was speaking, but of the duty of being strictly concealed from all; and as when He commanded us to enter into our closet, not there alone absolutely, nor there primarily, did He command us to pray, but He covertly intimated the same thing again … And to convince thee that so it is, He Himself, when by action exhibiting what He enjoined in words, having fasted forty days, and fasted in secret, did neither anoint nor wash Himself: nevertheless, though He did not these things, He most assuredly fulfilled the whole without vainglory.
John Chrysostom· Homily on the Gospel of Matthew 20 (on Matt 6:17–18)
But let not your fasts be with the hypocrites; for they fast on the second and fifth day of the week; but do ye fast on the fourth day and the Preparation (Friday).
The Didache· The Didache, Chapter 8 (c. 100)
What Adam Clarke pointed towardthe fast God chooses
Even inside his note on 6:16, Clarke reaches back to Isaiah for the deeper definition of fasting the New Testament assumes:
When ye fast - A fast is termed by the Greeks νηϚις, from νη not, and εσθειν to eat; hence fast means, a total abstinence from food for a certain time. Abstaining from flesh, and living on fish, vegetables, etc., is no fast, or may be rather considered a burlesque on fasting. Many pretend to take the true definition of a fast from Isa 58:3, and say that it means a fast from sin.
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1832), Matt 6:16
Where It Points
— the same discipline across ScriptureJesus replied, “How can the guests of the bridegroom mourn while He is with them? But the time will come when the bridegroom will be taken from them; then they will fast.The bridegroom saying — why the disciples were not fasting yet, and why they would.
Isn’t this the fast that I have chosen: to break the chains of wickedness, to untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and tear off every yoke?The fast God chooses — loosing bonds, not just going hungry.
While they were worshiping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, “Set apart for Me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.” And after they had fasted and prayed, they laid their hands on them and sent them off.Antioch fasting and praying — the moment Paul and Barnabas are sent out.
Isaiah 58 already warned Israel that a fast which afflicts the body while leaving injustice untouched is not the fast God has chosen — the same inward logic Jesus applies to motive in Matthew 6. And the early church did not treat fasting as private discipline only: at Antioch it accompanies prayer at the very moment the Spirit sets apart Paul and Barnabas for the work He has called them to (Acts 13:2–3), and the two churches Paul later plants commend their elders to the Lord the same way, “with prayer and fasting” (Acts 14:23).
Closing
Jesus never argues for fasting; He assumes it, and then guards it from the one thing that can ruin it — an audience. A disfigured face borrows its reward from the men who noticed. An ordinary face, kept that way on purpose, leaves the reward exactly where Jesus puts it three times in a row: with the Father who sees in secret.