⭐WEB · Matthew 6:25
What does Matthew 6:25 mean?
"Therefore I tell you, don’t be anxious for your life: what you will eat, or what you will drink; nor yet for your body, what you will wear. Isn’t life more than food, and the body more than clothing?"
— Matthew 6:25 (World English Bible)
Surrounding context
“The lamp of the body is the eye. If therefore your eye is sound, your whole body will be full of light.
But if your eye is evil, your whole body will be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!
“No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other; or else he will be devoted to one and despise the other. You can’t serve both God and Mammon.
Therefore I tell you, don’t be anxious for your life: what you will eat, or what you will drink; nor yet for your body, what you will wear. Isn’t life more than food, and the body more than clothing?
See the birds of the sky, that they don’t sow, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns. Your heavenly Father feeds them. Aren’t you of much more value than they?
“Which of you, by being anxious, can add one moment to his lifespan?
Why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow. They don’t toil, neither do they spin,
Explanation
Matthew 6:25 records Jesus telling his listeners not to be consumed with worry over the basic necessities of life—food, drink, and clothing. He isn't saying these things don't matter or that people shouldn't work to provide for themselves, but rather that anxiety about them should not dominate a person's heart and mind. The rhetorical question at the end—"Isn't life more than food, and the body more than clothing?"—invites the hearer to step back and recognize that existence itself, and the meaning of human life, is bigger than the sum of material provisions. If God has given the greater gift of life and a body, Jesus reasons, surely he can be trusted to provide the lesser things needed to sustain them.
This verse comes from the Sermon on the Mount, the extended teaching found in Matthew 5–7 in which Jesus lays out the character and values of those who belong to the kingdom of heaven. The word "therefore" ties verse 25 to what precedes it: verses 19–24, where Jesus warns against storing up earthly treasures and declares that no one can serve both God and money. Having just addressed misplaced devotion to wealth, Jesus now turns to the anxiety that so often accompanies the pursuit of material security. He is speaking primarily to his disciples, ordinary people—many of them poor by modern standards—who faced real daily uncertainty about food and clothing in an agrarian, subsistence economy. His words continue through verse 34, where he elaborates with examples from nature (birds, flowers) and concludes with the famous instruction not to worry
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