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# Stop Being Anxious - The Argument Jesus Actually Makes
- URL: https://www.valuemysoul.com/stop-being-anxious-the-argument-jesus-actually-makes/
- Published: 2026-08-23T01:52:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-08-25T02:02:36.000Z
- Description: Jesus does not tell worried people to cheer up. He builds a case - from birds, from wildflowers, from what a Father knows - and Peter later tells you what to physically do with the worry.
- Author: Dedrick Wright
- Tags: Christianity, God, Christ

> *"For this reason I say to you, do not be worried about your life, as to what you will eat or what you will drink; nor for your body, as to what you will put on."*  
> — [Matthew 6:25](https://ref.ly/Matt6.25;nasb95?t=biblia&ref=valuemysoul.com) (NASB95)

Telling an anxious person not to be anxious is famously useless. If that were all Jesus were doing here, this passage would be the least helpful paragraph in the Sermon on the Mount.

It is not what He is doing. Verses 25–34 are an argument, with premises, and the premises are the point. Leon Morris summarizes the whole unit in a sentence: "Jesus underlines the pointlessness of anxiety and the sound reasons for trusting the heavenly Father."[\[1\]](#fn1) Pointlessness and reasons — the passage attacks worry from both ends.

## "For This Reason"

The paragraph opens with a connective, and it matters. Jesus has just finished talking about treasure and about serving two masters ([Matthew 6:19–24](https://ref.ly/Matt6.19-24;nasb95?t=biblia&ref=valuemysoul.com)). *For this reason* ties anxiety to that.

Morris explains the link, citing Bruce: the new thought is that people "can be unfaithful to God through care as well as through covetousness."[\[2\]](#fn2)

That is a sharper observation than it first appears. Everyone understands that greed can displace God. Worry does not look like greed — it looks responsible, even humble; the anxious person is not asking for a yacht, only for enough. But Jesus files them together. Both are lives organized around money, and worry is simply the version practiced by people who do not have any. For the greed side of the same coin, see [money and stewardship](../money-and-stewardship).

## The Word

‎**μεριμνάω** (*merimnaō*; BDAG 632) — to be anxious, to be pulled apart by care. The construction in verse 25 is a present imperative with a negative, which in Greek ordinarily addresses an action already in progress: not *never start* but *stop*.

Morris is careful about who Jesus was talking to, and it is worth repeating before anyone accuses this passage of being glib: Jesus "lived in a society where shortage of food was much more common than in modern Western states," and his hearers "would have come from the poorer classes."[\[3\]](#fn3) These were not people with a savings account and a vague unease. Food and clothing were live questions. The command is addressed to real scarcity, not imagined scarcity, which is exactly why it cannot be dismissed as the advice of someone insulated from the problem.

## Birds and Wildflowers

> *"Look at the birds of the air... and yet your heavenly Father feeds them; are you not worth more than they are?"*  
> — [Matthew 6:26](https://ref.ly/Matt6.26;nasb95?t=biblia&ref=valuemysoul.com)

Two examples, both chosen for what they do not do. The birds do not sow, reap, or gather into barns — the three-stage agricultural cycle every farmer in the audience depended on. The flowers do not labor or spin — the two-stage cloth-making process every household ran. Jesus names the entire economy of food and clothing and points at creatures that participate in none of it and are fed and dressed anyway.

Note also that the flowers are *of the field*. Not garden flowers, not anything cultivated. Nobody planted them, and nobody tends them, and they outdress Solomon.

The logic is from lesser to greater, and Morris identifies where its force actually comes from: Jesus "sees the Father as active throughout his creation, caring even for birds and flowers; there is accordingly no reason for those who call him 'Father' to be anxious."[\[4\]](#fn4) The argument does not rest on nature being reliable. It rests on the Father being active in it — which is why it works as comfort and would not work as observation. Nature is not, on its own, reassuring. Birds starve. The claim is about who is behind the feeding.

Morris's summary of the unit is four words long and hard to improve: **"Worry is pointless; trust is well based."**[\[5\]](#fn5)

## What the Father Knows

> *"For your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things."*  
> — [Matthew 6:32](https://ref.ly/Matt6.32;nasb95?t=biblia&ref=valuemysoul.com)

Morris draws a distinction here that keeps this verse honest: "Perhaps we should notice that it is *need* of which Jesus speaks. His followers may expect their needs to be met, but not necessarily their desires."[\[6\]](#fn6)

The promise is not a blank check, and reading it as one has done real damage. What it does say is that the information problem is solved. God is not waiting to be briefed on the situation.

## Seek First

> *"But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you."*  
> — [Matthew 6:33](https://ref.ly/Matt6.33;nasb95?t=biblia&ref=valuemysoul.com)

This is the pivot, and it is not a technique for getting the other things. Morris is exact about the word *first*: it "does not here mean 'first in time' but 'of first importance'; the kingdom is not one among many competing aims for the disciples, but that which comes first of all." He quotes Bengel: **"He who seeks that first, will soon seek that only."**[\[7\]](#fn7)

Morris also insists on whose righteousness is in view: "It is God's righteousness that disciples must seek" — not a self-generated moral performance, but the right standing that comes from Christ's work and the conduct that follows from it.[\[8\]](#fn8)

And the verb translated *added* is worth noticing: the things in question "will be added to what the disciple already has."[\[9\]](#fn9) They arrive as a supplement to something. The passage never treats provision as the goal — it treats it as what accompanies the goal.

## What Peter Tells You to Do About It

Jesus diagnoses and argues. Peter, decades later, gives an instruction with a physical verb attached.

> *"Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you at the proper time, casting all your anxiety on Him, because He cares for you."*  
> — [1 Peter 5:6–7](https://ref.ly/1Pet5.6-7;nasb95?t=biblia&ref=valuemysoul.com)

Peter Davids makes the grammatical connection that most readers miss: verse 7 is not a new command but the method of the one before it. "Our author not only instructs one to humble oneself, but he also explains how to do this. It is by 'casting all your anxiety on him.' The reason one can do this is that 'he cares about you.'"[\[10\]](#fn10)

That is a striking definition of humility. We usually think of humility as thinking less of ourselves. Peter defines it as *handing over the worry* — because holding onto anxiety is a way of insisting that the outcome depends on you.

The verb is vivid, and Davids supplies the detail that makes it land: "The picture of throwing one's anxieties on God is colorful and graphic (the verb occurs elsewhere in the NT only in [Luke 19:35](https://ref.ly/Luke19.35;nasb95?t=biblia&ref=valuemysoul.com), where the disciples toss their cloaks over a donkey as a saddle for Jesus)."[\[11\]](#fn11)

That is the image. Not setting a burden down gently. Throwing it — the way you sling a heavy cloak over an animal's back because the animal can carry it and you would rather not. The nearest Old Testament parallel is [Psalm 55:22](https://ref.ly/Ps55.22;nasb95?t=biblia&ref=valuemysoul.com): *"Cast your burden upon the LORD and He will sustain you."*

Davids also notes that Peter is not innovating. The teaching "is firmly rooted in the NT," and he points straight back to this same Matthew passage: Jesus "makes precisely the point that one should not have any anxiety about food or clothing because the God who cares for birds and lilies surely cares far more about disciples."[\[12\]](#fn12) Two apostles, two decades apart, arriving at the same place.

## Where the Argument Ends

Not in optimism. Jesus never says things will work out.

He says the Father is active in His creation, that He knows what you need, that you are worth more to Him than the birds He already feeds, and that a life reorganized around His kingdom finds the rest supplied alongside. Peter says the way to act on that is to throw the weight of it onto God, and gives the reason in four words — *He cares for you.*

Not *He is able*, though He is. **He cares.** The provision comes out of the relationship, which is the same thing the whole Bible has been saying about God's provision from the beginning: see [God as sustainer and provider](../god-as-sustainer-provider).

---

1. Leon Morris, *The Gospel According to Matthew*, Pillar New Testament Commentary, comment on Matt 6:25–34\. [↩︎](#fnref1)
2. Morris, *Matthew*, PNTC, on Matt 6:25, citing Bruce. [↩︎](#fnref2)
3. Morris, *Matthew*, PNTC, on Matt 6:25–34\. [↩︎](#fnref3)
4. Morris, *Matthew*, PNTC, on Matt 6:25–34\. [↩︎](#fnref4)
5. Morris, *Matthew*, PNTC, on Matt 6:25–34\. [↩︎](#fnref5)
6. Morris, *Matthew*, PNTC, on Matt 6:32\. [↩︎](#fnref6)
7. Morris, *Matthew*, PNTC, on Matt 6:33, citing Bengel. [↩︎](#fnref7)
8. Morris, *Matthew*, PNTC, on Matt 6:33\. [↩︎](#fnref8)
9. Morris, *Matthew*, PNTC, on Matt 6:33\. [↩︎](#fnref9)
10. Peter H. Davids, *The First Epistle of Peter*, New International Commentary on the New Testament, comment on 1 Pet 5:7\. [↩︎](#fnref10)
11. Davids, *1 Peter*, NICNT, on 1 Pet 5:7\. [↩︎](#fnref11)
12. Davids, *1 Peter*, NICNT, on 1 Pet 5:7\. [↩︎](#fnref12)