Verse of the day · October 8
What does it mean to pray in your closet in Matthew 6:6?
Some men loved to pray at the corner where two streets crossed. It was not the praying they loved.
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But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly.
Matthew 6:6
A sentence earlier, Christ had described the men his disciples were not to copy. Thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are, he told them, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. He names nobody there, but the men meant are especially the scribes and the Pharisees. The word behind hypocrite is a stage-player: a man acting under a mask, playing somebody other than himself. The charge names three things — how they stood, where they stood, and what they had in view — and the first two are about a body in a place.
There were rules about how a man held his body while he prayed. Standing was the usual posture, and their canons established it: a man should not pray except standing, and if he is sitting in a ship or a cart and is able to stand, he must stand — only if he cannot may he stay in his seat and pray. It was the old practice in the Jewish assemblies and the early Christian ones alike, and there is nothing wrong with it. It is also a conspicuous posture, and that opened the way to display. Kneeling would not have answered their purpose: a man who knelt might have gone unnoticed.
There were rules about where he stood, too. A synagogue was built and appointed for prayer, and wherever there were ten Israelites a house was to be provided for it. It was held that no prayer is heard at any time except in the synagogue, and that a man who had a synagogue in his city and did not pray in it with the congregation was called a bad neighbour. A street was a different matter. A city street has no holiness in it, one of their teachers wrote, because it is accidental, and not appointed for prayer. Praying in the streets was common enough all the same. But a street was only used out of necessity — or by such of the Pharisees as chose to be seen.
The hours were fixed as well, and the prayers set down for them were long. Those hours obliged a man to say those prayers wherever he happened to be when one of them fell due. Some of the Pharisees arranged to be caught out in the street when an hour came, so that the people would see them and praise them for their great care about religion. Better still was a corner where two broad streets met, where a man stood within view of both, and every passer-by coming close by him would look at him and hear what he said.
Neither the posture nor the places are what he condemns, but what they had in view in all of it: that they might be seen of men. A great deal of weight sits on the word loved. They loved the synagogues and the streets rather than their own rooms, because praying in public won them applause. They did not love prayer for its own sake; they loved it when it gave them an opening to be noticed. The danger is not in the publicity but in loving it, because that is what feeds the pride.
For men like that there was more in it than applause. Who would not trust men who prayed like that? The trust put the estates of widows and orphans within their reach, and once the estates were in their hands they could be devoured without anybody suspecting. The long prayers those men were known for were the pretence it went under. Christ's verdict on the whole of it was that they had their reward: being seen was the point they were after, they got it, and it is all they will ever get from God for the service.
Against all of that, one room. Enter into thy closet, and the word behind closet is a chamber, a private place suited to being by yourself, to thinking, and to prayer. Public prayer is not being excluded — he directs his people to it himself and approves of it — but a man was to pray in private as well, and especially there. Phrases like shut thy door turn up in Isaiah, where they carry safety; here it carries secrecy. And the instruction is addressed to one man at a time: thou, by thyself and for thyself, whoever thou art. Shutting the door does three things. It leaves a man unobserved, and so clear of showing off; undisturbed, and so clear of distraction; unheard, and so freer in what he says. Being unheard is something their own writers sometimes asked for too: a voice nobody hears, they said, is the prayer which is daily accepted. And praying alone suits a man's own particular case better than public prayer can.
Then the examples arrive, and not one of them is a room. Isaac went out into a field, Christ went up a mountain, Peter went up onto a roof. There is no door on any of those. Thy closet may mean any secret place. As far as ceremony goes, no place is the wrong place, so long as it does what the retirement is for. Praying where other people can see is not the fault either: prayer may be offered in any circumstances, however open, so long as what drives it is not the wish to be admired but the things prayer is actually for. Pulling back in the heart will do, and a man ought to withdraw into that closet even while praying in company. Take the room and the door away and what is being asked for is still plain: a man praying with nobody in mind but God.
The one he is told to speak to is out of sight himself — invisible, not to be seen with the eyes of the body. He is come to through his Son, the only mediator between God and man. And he is to be prayed to as a Father, as thy Father, ready to hear and answer and inclined to pity and help. He sees what the human eye cannot see: the real design and desire of the heart. His eye is on a man to accept him where no man's eye is on him to applaud him. There is no quick silent turning toward God that he does not notice.
The verse ends in a reward, and the word wants care. It is called a reward, but it comes by grace and not as a debt — and what could there be to earn in begging? The reward runs both now and afterwards, for time and for eternity. Secret prayers are sometimes rewarded openly in this life, by answers plain enough to be seen; and at the great day there is an open reward whether that has happened or not. The word rendered openly means, word for word, in the open place. It is read as the last day, when every secret thing is made manifest. Then it is in front of the whole world, angels and men. The men on the corner had theirs in front of the whole town, and it was a mere flash and shadow. The open part is what men like them are fond of, and they have not the patience to wait for it; the sincere are not looking for it, and are given it anyway.
The men on the corner arranged their day around being watched. That is the labour the shut door puts an end to — not the praying, the arranging. They were seen, which is what they were there for, and the seeing was all they got. The man who shuts the door is not unwatched either. He is watched by the one the praying was addressed to, who cannot be seen himself and sees straight to what a man means.
Drawn from Matthew Henry, John Gill, the Jamieson-Fausset-Brown commentary, Adam Clarke, Albert Barnes, B. W. Johnson and the Geneva Bible notes. How these teachings are made