What is Hypocrisy? In the examples given by Jesus, hypocrites have no place in the Kingdom of God. Consider the words recorded in Matthew:
Matthew 15:7–9 (ESV)
“You hypocrites! Well did Isaiah prophesy of you, when he said: This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.”
This quote from Jesus towards the Pharisees and scribes come from Isaiah 29:13 regarding God’s judgment towards Jerusalem. Notice Jesus was letting them know that Isaiah was talking about them as well and not merely using this verse to describe their behavior. This would have probably been especially alarming considering the regard they held for Isaiah. Jesus called them hypocrites because their actions are merely external and do not come from their hearts, and their teachings are not from God but reflect human tradition (Matthew 15: 2–3).
What can we learn from this?
For starters, let’s consider a 2015 research study that said a whopping 83% of Americans identify themselves as Christians. Hopefully, you are shaking your head like I did when I read that. If that large of a majority of our population is Christian, why is there so much division, violence, and all-out hatred in this country? Are these behaviors Jesus would endorse? Does our talk match our walk? Obviously being a Christian means different things to different people (see previous posts regarding postmodernism and relativism).
All throughout Scripture—if only more of these 83% would embrace it—we find multiple examples of what it means to be a Christian. Consider character. Character can be described in Christian terms as living a sanctified life or living a holy life that honors God. Character is your behavior when no one else is around. As reputation is how others see you, character is how God sees you. The Reverend D.L. Moody once said, “If I take care of my character, my reputation will take care of itself.”
But having a Christian character is a choice. We who profess to read our Bibles should know what God requires of us—yet we often freely choose to disobey. John 5:39-40 is an excellent couple of verses to bring up to a lost Jehovah’s Witness, but it also has bearing on those who profess to be a Christian or worse yet, a Bible-knowing Christian, and show no evidence of a transformed life: “You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me, yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life.”
Our Christian witness to a non-believing world is mostly presented by the way we carry ourselves. Live a hypocritical life and your ability to bear witness for Jesus is forever lost. Continue in hypocrisy and you count the eternal cost.
Have you ever sat in church and felt that the pastor’s message was developed solely for you that day? I certainly have. Now, I obviously never got to meet Charles Spurgeon, but this 1859 sermon could easily have been delivered to me in a one-on-one meeting between the two of us had we met just a few short years ago when my own hypocrisy was running (and ruining) my life:
“Let us recollect that we cannot do anything in secret even if we try. The all-seeing God, apprehended in the conscience, must be the death of hypocrisy. I cannot try to deceive when I know that God is looking at me. It is impossible for me to play double and false when I believe that I am in the presence of the Most High, and that he is reading my thoughts and the secret purposes of my heart. The only way in which the hypocrite can play the hypocrite at all is by forgetting the existence of God. Let us, therefore, recollect it—wherever I am, upon my bed or in my secret chamber, God is there. There is not a secret word I speak in the ear of a friend but God hears it. Do I seek out the most private part of the city for the commission of sin—God is there. Do I choose the shadow of night to cover my iniquity?—He is there looking upon me.
The thought of a present Deity, if it were fully realized, would preserve us from sin; always looking on me, ever regarding me. We think we are doing many things in secret, but there is nothing concealed from him with whom we have to do. And the day is coming when all the sins that we have committed shall be read and published. Oh! what a blush shall crimson the cheek of the hypocrite when God shall read the secret diary of his iniquity! O my fellow-professors, let us always look upon our actions in the light of the great outreading of them in the day of judgment. Pause over everything you do, and say, “Can I bear to have this sounded with a trumpet in the ear of all men?” Nay, take a higher motive, and say, “Can I endure to do this and yet to repeat the words, ‘Thou God seest me.'” Ye may deceive men, and deceive yourselves, but God ye cannot, God ye shall not. Ye may die with the name of Christ upon your lips, and men may bury you in sure and certain hope of a glorious resurrection, but God shall not be deceived neither by your profession nor by men’s opinion.
He shall put you in the scales, and if you be found wanting, he shall cry, “Away with him.” He shall ring you, and if you have not the ring of the pure coin of grace, he shall nail you down for ever as a counterfeit. He shall strip the mask off you. Virtue is most adorned, when unadorned the most. To detect you, you shall be stripped naked, and every cloak shall be torn to tatters. How will you endure this? Will ye dig into the depths to hide yourselves? Will ye plunge into the sea to find a way of escape? Will ye cry for the rocks to hide you, and the mountains to fall upon you? In vain shall you cry. The all-seeing God shall read your soul, shall discover your secret, shall reveal your hidden things, and tell the world that, though you did eat and drink in his streets, though you preached his name, yet he never knew you, you were still a worker of iniquity, and must be driven away forever.”
C.H. Spurgeon. Hypocrisy. Delivered on February 6th, 1859.
