Shining Before Men and Christ's Payment for Fasting

Mat 6:16 Moreover when you fast, do not, as hypocrites do, have a sad countenance: for they disfigure their faces, that they may appear to men to fast. Truly I say to you, They have their reward.

In the original Greek, there is a play on words in this verse that is lost in English. The term used for "disfigure" is aphanizo, which means to "to vanish" or "deprive of luster." Then the word translated as "appear" is phaino, which means "shining," "to be resplendent." So this phrase describes people who hide their faces so that they will shine before men, a nice turn of phrase.

This verse draws a clear division among the physical appearances (faces), society (shining before men) and the spiritual. This division between the physical, social, and spiritual world is a unique and constant theme of Christ's message in the Gospels, one that is seldom commented on. It also reflects the Trinity, the Father, who created the physical, the Son, who introduced God into society, and the Holy Spirit who is within people.

These three states (physical, social, and spiritual) are often contrasted by their visibility, which is why the Greek terms are important in this verse. The physical is visible. The spiritual is hidden. The social is illusion or, more precisely, misleading. This verse reinforces Christ's constant message that people confuse the true, hidden spiritual reality with the false social reality. In this case, people hide physically so that they can appear spiritual good but this is just a social illusion.

The term "reward" here is our old friend, misthos, which means wages or payment as opposed to a prize. As we have pointed out numerous times before, Christ teaches that physical sacrifice can earn spiritual compensation but we cannot get paid twice for the same deed. If we seek social compensation, we automatically don't get any spiritual compensation.

For me, Christ is continuously trying to describe a balance in the universe like the laws of physics which prevents the destruction of energy or matter, but allows them to be converted back and forth. Here Christ says that physical suffering can be converted to spiritual reward or social reward, but not both.