What Is Lent? Fasting as Secret Devotion, Not Show
Short answer: Lent is a roughly forty-day season of prayer, fasting, and repentance that many Christians observe in the weeks before Easter. It is rooted in the forty days Jesus spent in the wilderness, when Matthew 4:1-2 reports that he was led by the Spirit and fasted. Scripture never commands the observance of Lent, and no verse names the season. It developed in the early church as a period of preparation for Easter baptism and as a corporate season of repentance. The central scriptural concern is the one Jesus pressed in Matthew 6:16-18: fasting and devotion are directed toward God, not performed for an audience. Lent is a human tradition, useful when it serves that aim and harmful when it replaces it. It can be kept, modified, or left alone in good conscience.
What Lent actually is, and what it is not
Lent is a season, not a ceremony. It begins on Ash Wednesday and runs roughly forty days, excluding Sundays, to Easter. In many churches it is marked by fasting, prayer, almsgiving, and repentance, and it ends in Holy Week. The number forty echoes Israel's years in the wilderness, Moses on Sinai, Elijah at Horeb, and above all Jesus in the wilderness, where Matthew 4:1-2 says he was led by the Spirit and fasted forty days and forty nights.
What Lent is not matters just as much. It is not a scriptural mandate. No command in the Bible says to keep forty days before Easter. It is not a payment for sin, and it is not a second baptism. It does not make anyone more justified before God. The New Testament nowhere assigns Lent a date, a duration, or a required practice.
This means Lent belongs to the category of traditions the church may order for its own edification. Romans 14 gives the principle: some days are esteemed, some are not, and each person should be fully convinced in his own mind without judging the other. A Christian who keeps Lent devoutly and a Christian who ignores it entirely can both be faithful, provided neither despises nor judges the other.
The one thing Jesus says about fasting and being seen
In Matthew 6:16-18 Jesus does not argue about whether to fast. He assumes it. The verse begins with the word when, not if, and then warns against doing it like the hypocrites, who disfigure their faces so that others will notice. The issue is not the practice but the audience. Fasting aimed at human observers has already collected its payment, and God owes nothing further.
The correction Jesus gives is startlingly practical. Anoint your head and wash your face, he says, so that your fasting is not apparent to people but to your Father who sees in secret. In other words, do not manufacture a religious look. Let your appearance be ordinary. The Father who sees what is hidden will reward openly.
That single instruction is the diagnostic for any Lenten practice. If the fast is designed to impress a spouse, a small group, or a social media feed, it is the hypocrisy Jesus described. If it is genuinely between the person and God, it is the devotion he commends. The same fast can be either one, depending on who is being served.
Why a season of forty days appeals to Christians
The appeal of Lent is partly the appeal of a beginning and an end. Repentance is a daily calling, but human beings tend to move in seasons. A defined stretch of weeks gives shape to resolve: a time to face sin honestly, to pray more deliberately, to give, and to return to God. That is why so many traditions find the season useful even while differing on how to keep it.
There is also a corporate dimension. Joel 2:12 calls the people to turn with all the heart, with fasting, weeping, and mourning, and the next verse urges them to return to Yahweh, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in loving kindness. Repentance in Scripture is not only private. A whole congregation can humble itself together.
The danger is that seasonal devotion can become a substitute for daily devotion. If the forty days are earnest and the other three hundred and twenty-five are neglected, the season has been misused. Lent works best as a focused expression of a life that is already oriented toward God, not as a yearly attempt to make up for the rest of the year.
How fasting appears across Scripture
Fasting runs through the whole Bible as an ordinary companion of prayer and repentance. Daniel 9:3 records that he set his face to the Lord God, to seek by prayer and petitions, with fasting and sackcloth and ashes. Notice the order: the fast accompanies seeking, it does not replace it. The goal was the Lord himself, not the discomfort of going without food.
In the New Testament, fasting appears in the life of the church as well. Acts 13:2-3 describes a congregation serving the Lord and fasting when the Holy Spirit spoke, setting apart Barnabas and Saul for the work to which he had called them. Fasting here is bound up with worship, listening, and commissioning, not with earning anything.
Jesus himself fasted in the wilderness as recorded in Luke 4:1-2, where he returned from the Jordan full of the Holy Spirit and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness. Fasting did not make him holy; he was already full of the Spirit. The fast was part of a Spirit-led season of preparation, and it preceded a season of testing. That pattern is worth remembering when Lent becomes a kind of spiritual achievement.
Is Lent commanded, or is it a tradition of the church
Lent is a tradition. The command to fast is not given with a calendar attached. The early church gradually developed a period of preparation before Easter, and the practice took different forms in different regions and centuries. That history is real, but it is history, not Scripture, and it should be described as such rather than read back into the apostles.
This does not make the tradition worthless. Jesus himself observed a feast of dedication in John 10 that Scripture had not instituted, and the early church gathered on the first day of the week without a direct command. Traditions can serve the church well. They simply do not carry the authority of God's word, and they must never be treated as if they did.
The practical outcome is freedom. Nothing in the New Testament authorizes anyone to require Lent of another believer, and nothing forbids anyone from keeping it. If a church or a family decides to observe it, that decision should be explained honestly as a choice. If a believer declines it, that should not be read as spiritual laziness. Both positions can be held in good conscience before the Lord.
The freedom to keep Lent or to let it go
Because Lent is not commanded, the question is not whether a Christian must keep it but whether the practice helps. Some find that a season of fasting and prayer exposes attachments they had not noticed, sharpens their longing for God, and prepares them to celebrate the resurrection with real joy. For them, Lent is a tool that serves devotion.
Others have seen Lent become a source of pride, comparison, and performance. They may have kept a fast to be noticed or felt guilty for failing. For them, laying the season aside may be the more honest path. Scripture does not condemn either choice, and neither group should look down on the other.
If a person keeps Lent, the test remains the one Jesus gave: is this done for the Father who sees in secret, or for people who see the surface? That question settles more than the calendar. It reaches into every fast, every prayer, and every gift, and it turns a tradition into genuine worship or exposes it as theater.
How to keep Lent without turning it into a performance
Start with the audience. Before deciding what to give up or take on, decide for whom it is being done. If the answer is God, the practice can be quiet. If the answer is the approval of others, no amount of discipline will make it Christian, because the reward has already been received from the wrong source.
Second, keep the ordinary routines. Jesus said to wash your face and anoint your head. He did not say to hide the practice from God or from a trusted friend who can pray for you; he said not to advertise it. A fasting person should still eat normally on other days, smile at their family, and refuse to broadcast the sacrifice.
Third, tie the fast to something positive. Daniel sought the Lord with his fast; the church in Acts listened while it fasted. Fasting that is only subtraction tends toward self-focus. Fasting that makes room for prayer, for Scripture, and for generosity toward the poor is the kind of devotion the prophets and Jesus both described.
Biblical fidelity check
Matthew 6:16-18 establishes several things plainly. It assumes that fasting is a normal practice for disciples; it warns that fasting can be corrupted by a desire for human attention; it instructs secrecy before the Father; and it promises that the Father who sees in secret will reward. It also shows that God evaluates motive, not merely outward behavior. Those are the certainties of the passage.
The passage does not establish Lent. It does not mention forty days, Ash Wednesday, Easter, or any church calendar. It does not require any particular food to be given up, and it does not say that fasting earns forgiveness or merit. A common misreading turns Jesus' warning about hypocrisy into a prohibition of all public religious practice, as if any visible devotion were sinful. That is not what he said. He condemned doing righteous deeds to be seen by people; he did not forbid the deeds themselves, nor did he forbid corporate worship and fasting, which Acts 13:2-3 shows the church practicing together.
Other passages that speak to Matthew 6:16-18
Fasting and hidden devotion connect to the wider call to follow Christ. The demand to deny self and take up the cross daily is treated in What does Luke 9:23 mean to take up your cross daily?. The gentleness of Christ's yoke, which keeps discipline from becoming crushing, is explored in What does Matthew 11:28–30 mean by easy yoke?. The promise of Christ's presence when believers gather is considered in What does Matthew 18:20 mean?. And the warning against judging others whose practices differ is examined in What does Matthew 7:1 mean by judge not?.
Frequently asked questions
Is Lent in the Bible?
No. The word Lent does not appear in Scripture, and no verse commands a forty-day season before Easter. The practice developed in the early church as a period of preparation and repentance. Its biblical resonances come from the forty days Jesus spent in the wilderness, where Matthew 4:1-2 says he was led by the Spirit and fasted. Because it is a tradition rather than a command, Christians are free to observe it or not, and neither choice should be treated as disobedience to God.
What does Jesus teach about fasting in Matthew 6:16-18?
Jesus assumes his disciples will fast and warns against doing it for display. The hypocrites disfigure their faces to be seen by men, and Jesus says they have received their reward. Instead, his followers are to wash their faces and appear normal, so the fasting is known to the Father who sees in secret. The passage makes motive central: the same fast can be vanity or worship depending on whether it is offered to God or performed for people.
Do Christians have to give something up for Lent?
No. Scripture does not require anyone to give up anything for a season. Giving up a food, a habit, or a pleasure is a chosen discipline, not a command, and it carries no merit before God. If a believer chooses to fast, the biblical pattern is to seek the Lord with it rather than to treat it as an achievement. Those who keep the practice and those who do not should refrain from judging one another, since the matter is one of Christian freedom.
