New Testament · Gospel

Matthew 6:25

Treasures and Worry

Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? Matthew 6:25 · Berean Standard Bible
What It Means

Matthew 6:25, in plain English

Stop worrying about what you'll eat, drink, or wear; your life is so much bigger than those things.

Why it's here

Jesus is talking to real people with real needs who genuinely worried about survival, not privileged people fretting over luxuries.

Who's speaking

Jesus, gently addressing your deepest anxieties.

Where it sits in the story

This begins a beautiful stretch where Jesus patiently dismantles worry and replaces it with trust in a caring Father.

A Closer Look

The scholarly reading

With 'therefore' (dia touto), Jesus draws a practical conclusion: anxiety (merimnao) about basic needs like food, drink, and clothing is incompatible with trusting the heavenly Father.

Language and setting

Most of Jesus' audience were subsistence-level workers for whom food and clothing were genuine daily concerns, not abstract worries.

Voice

Jesus, beginning His teaching on anxiety and God's provision.

Significance

This launches one of the most beloved passages in Scripture, where Jesus calls His followers out of survival-mode fear and into trust.

In context

Matthew 6:23–27

23But if your eyes are bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness!

24No one can serve two masters: Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.

25Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes?

26Look at the birds of the air: They do not sow or reap or gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they?

27Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?

Read all of Matthew 6 — Jesus redefines wealth, prayer, and anxiety in a single breath. The lilies and the birds become his unlikely teachers.

Understand every verse, not just this one

This page covers one. BibleKey does all 31,102 — tap any verse for its meaning, any word for its Hebrew or Greek root, and keep reading without leaving the chapter.

Get BibleKey

Understand every verse.

Not just the famous ones. BibleKey is free on iPhone and iPad.

Download on the App Store

Free on iPhone & iPad