The Many Faces of Hypocrisy

Jesus hates hypocrisy. He warns us to beware of it (Luke 12:1). He even describes the place of judgment as the place of the hypocrites (Matt. 24:51). In the gospel of Luke, Jesus mentions hypocrisy several times, each time adding to our understanding of this sinful disease of the heart. The straightforward meaning of hypocrisy is: “creating a public impression that is at odds with one’s real purposes or motivations” (A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament, 1038). But Jesus extends this word, netting people in their hypocrisy in ways we may not typically think are hypocritical.

The classic example of hypocrisy is the Pharisee. In Luke 11, Jesus describes Pharisees as those who “cleanse the outside of the cup and of the dish, but inside … are full of greed and wickedness” (v. 39). This hypocrisy is insidious. It boasts of a righteous life, one to be looked up to and applauded, but all of the externals are mere shows intended to gain the approval of men. It uses God and His law for the sake of man’s praises. This is a perverse abuse of the name of God. And to make it worse, the true content of the hypocritical heart is the opposite of what it appears to be. It is not full of love for God and others; it is full of love for money and devotion to things contrary to the will of God. Hypocrisy buries the true heart of greed and wickedness under a thin skin of righteousness. Therefore, those who bear the name of Christian, who claim a love for Christ and do external things in his name, need to heed the caution of Christ: “Beware the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy” (12:1). This hypocrisy is a righteous look-a-like, but filthy inside.

The kinds of hypocrisy Jesus condemns extend beyond the veneer of righteousness. There is an intellectual hypocrisy that Jesus also addresses. In Luke 12:56, Jesus says to the crowds, “You hypocrites! You know how to interpret the appearance of earth and sky, but why do you not know how to interpret the present time?” The people could observe the weather patterns and know if rain or heat was coming, but they had the Son of Man standing before them, preaching the Kingdom and calling for repentance, and they would not repent. Today, we can map the weather, map the solar system, map the stars, and map the genome. But we display the greatest intellectual stubbornness when we refuse to honestly map our course towards eternity and repent. We use our smarts to deceive ourselves. This is a kind of hypocrisy. Temporally smart. Eternally dumb. This intellectual hypocrisy uses God-given intellect to discern, learn, and observe things about God’s creation, but stubbornly refuses to apply the same consideration to the spiritual realities God has made plain through His Son.

One final hypocrisy. Jesus said, “You hypocrites! Does not each of you on the Sabbath untie his ox or his donkey from the manger and lead it away to water it? And ought not this woman, a daughter of Abraham whom Satan bound for eighteen years, be loosed from this bond on the Sabbath day?” (Luke 13:15–16). The ruler of the synagogue was indignant when Jesus healed this woman on the Sabbath. Jesus skewers his attitude by pointing out that he and others like him have more compassion on their beast on the Sabbath than they do on their fellow man. We all seem to have the capacity for compassion and love for small things. We might go out of our way to keep our car clean, our home repaired, our pets fed and inoculated. But when the opportunity for true compassion and love for people comes, we may find it inconvenient or even wrong to show compassion. It may bother us that we have to go out of our way to help. If we display the capacity for compassion and care for non-humans and fail to show compassion and care for humans, this is hypocrisy.

Fake righteousness. Fake intelligence. Fake compassion. Each one an infecting version of hypocrisy. May the Lord drive out any of this leaven from our hearts.