Dangers of Hypocrisy

Back in the days of the Bible, a hypocrite was a Greek stage performer who wore a mask to portray whatever character he was currently playing. Isn’t this so fitting to the current term of the word, which means to preach to others to hold to a moral standard, while oneself does not? If you do this, you are, in other words, an actor, and therefore, untrustworthy! Hypocrisy falls under lying, which is why the Bible speaks so strongly against being a hypocrite. The most obvious example of this is in the Ten Commandments: number nine states, “You shall not bear false witness.” The wisest man who ever lived, King Solomon, taught in Proverbs 6 that “There are six things that the Lord hates, seven that are an abomination to him.” Can you guess what one of those seven is? That’s right! Lying. God hates lying! But why does God hate lying so much? The answer is, because God created us in His image (Genesis 1:27), and since God is incapable of being deceptive, it was not God’s original plan for us to be either. In Luke 12:2, Jesus tells His disciples,

Nothing is covered up that will not be revealed, or hidden that will not be made known.

This is Jesus saying that no matter what we cover up from man, God still sees, and considering that hypocrisy is putting up a deceptive front for MAN to see, it becomes quite clear that GOD sees right through it. Even the Pharisees, who, for a long time had a lot of power among the Jewish people, and who were held in very high esteem, were rebuked publicly by Jesus Himself for being “whitewashed tombs,” because they appeared to radically follow the Law of Moses, but internally they did not genuinely obey God. On the other end of the hypocrisy spectrum, the Cretan Christians were a group of people who claimed to have faith, but didn’t show it by their actions. The old saying, “actions speak louder than words,” applies very well to this group of growing Believers. Therefore, the verse I’m going to leave you with is Paul’s complaint to Titus about the Cretans:

Titus 1:16: “They profess to know God, but they deny him by their works. They are detestable, disobedient, unfit for any good work.”

Don’t just preach it…live it!