We were looking at Luke 6 in church the other day, and it got me thinking about hypocrites. More particularly, am I one?
The old gag suggests that I am: “The church is not full of hypocrites; there’s always room for one more!”
On this understanding, hypocrisy is an unavoidable description of the normal Christian life. We all say one thing but do another. We preach against lying, and yet find ourselves telling porkies. We rail against greed and materialism, and then chat about it all the way home in our Audi A4.
Or, as Luther famously said, we are all “simul justus et peccator”—at the same time justified and yet sinners. And so, if hypocrisy is the sin of preaching or believing something but doing the opposite, then all true Christians are, by definition, hypocrites. Our performance always falls short of our confession.
But this presents us with a problem as we read the New Testament, because, according to Jesus, hypocrites are children of hell who do not enter the kingdom of heaven (Matt 23:13-15). Hypocrisy is not an unavoidable state; it’s the leaven of the Pharisees that must be avoided at all costs (Luke 12:1).
I think this is because hypocrisy in the New Testament is a little different from how we often use the word. For us, hypocrisy is failing to practise what we preach. For the archetypal New Testament hypocrites (the Pharisees), it was failing to believe what they practised. It was not their performance that was the problem, but their hearts.
“You hypocrites!” said Jesus to them. “Well did Isaiah prophesy of you, when he said: ‘This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me’” (Matt 15:7-8). The Pharisees strove to appear righteous externally, to behave impeccably, and to be seen and approved by men as they did so (Matt 6:2, 5). And yet, for all the whiteness of their exterior, inside they were full of corruption and dead men’s bones (Matt 23:27-28).
To be a hypocrite in the New Testament sense, then, is to be a pretender, a fake, a phoney—a moralistic Sunday Christian who outwardly appears to obey the rules, but who, in reality, has a hard and corrupt heart that refuses to fall before Jesus in humble repentance and trust. This will emerge in behaviour, of course, but it may not be so readily or publicly apparent.
So perhaps we should be relieved. Maybe we’re not all hypocrites after all!
In reality, it is a far more sobering challenge, for the first disciples had to beware the leaven of the Pharisees, and so must we. Outward religiosity as a cover for internal spiritual deadness: it’s a deadly combination. And we drift towards it when our hearts grow cold and selfish and hard, even while our outward performance remains respectable and impressive.
May the Lord keep us from hypocrisy by applying his gospel to our hearts by his Spirit.
