hypocrisy Archives — truthmission.net

Reasonable: Part 3–What is Good

Love must be honest and true. Hate what is evil. Hold on to what is good. (Romans 12:9 NIRV)

Back in Part 2, we discussed how God gives various spiritual gifts to individuals, so that we can build up the Church, with each member doing its part, just like the parts of our body.

So what does it look like when the Church is functioning this way? It’s a lot more detailed than making sure the Wednesday night potluck goes off without a hitch!

First, we must remember that these are SPIRITUAL gifts, which means that there must have been a spiritual transformation that has taken place already. The greatest evidence of this is love.

Not feelings, but actions. There is no room in the body of Christ for hypocrisy or two-faced gossiping. We have to get this part right before we can move on with the rest of verse 9.

Hate what is evil

If this sounds familiar, it is because we covered this verse thoroughly in the Necessity of Being Intolerant series.

I feel like I should reiterate, though, that the Bible clearly states to hate WHAT is evil, not WHO. There are still too many people misinterpreting this verse to justify judgmentalism. We are not talking about hating people here. We are talking about behaviors and habits.

For more details regarding “what is evil,” I would encourage you to review the Necessity of Being Intolerant series, especially part 1. But for now, I want to focus on the rest of Romans 12:9.

Hold on to What is Good

Verses 10-12 contain several examples of what is good, the things that we should hold on to. Let’s break this down verse by verse.

10 Love one another deeply. Honor others more than yourselves.

What is good in this verse is humility. C.S. Lewis once said that humility is not so much about thinking less of yourself, but thinking of yourself less. When the members of the Church body are focused where they should be, they don’t just use “brother” and “sister” as honorary titles, but truly do treat everyone else in the Church as family.

Remember, false humility makes a show of itself to build up the person showing it, but real humility builds up others, and is not self-seeking.

11 Stay excited about your faith as you serve the Lord.

When you know your calling, your work should be a joy, not a grind. God’s part is to prepare the work for us and equip us to do it. Our part is to have a zeal to meet God where He’s already working and join Him in that work.

12 When you hope, be joyful. When you suffer, be patient. When you pray, be faithful.

Hope does not mean the kind of hope that is desperation mixed with doubt. This is a joyful expectation. You’re not wishing that something might happen; you’re eagerly awaiting something good that you are certain is coming.

Yet while we are hoping and waiting, sometimes we are suffering. When I first wrote this on 12/12/2020, many were suffering from the financial fallout of COVID-19. Many still are today.

Regardless of our gifts, one of the fruits of the Spirit that all believers receive is patience. Some older English translations actually use the word “longsuffering.” If we have joyful hope that what is good is on the way, this helps us to endure what is not so good.

And we endure these things by being faithful in prayer. No matter how grim our circumstances get, we always have the ability to exercise this discipline. God can handle our anger and our disappointment, but He also wants us to remember that what is good comes from Him, and always at exactly the right time.

(For more of what is good, come back for Part 4—The Best of Your Ability)

Do Unto Others: Part 5–Faithful

Hold on to loyal love and don’t let go, and be faithful to all that you’ve been taught. Let your life be shaped by integrity, with truth written upon your heart. That’s how you will find favor and understanding with both God and men—you will gain the reputation of living life well. Proverbs 3:3-4 (TPT)

In Part 3, we learned that one way to win the respect of others is to mind our own business and show appreciation. Here’s another one—being faithful.

Probably the most common way we use the word “faithful” today is in the context of a relationship. When we are “faithful” to a significant other, it is a sign of focus and commitment.

The original Hebrew word emeth, rendered “faithful” in the verse above has much more depth. It means sturdy, stable and trustworthy. Something you can depend on without thinking twice. In the King James Version, emeth is most frequently translated as “truth,” so you can see why it’s a favorite word of mine!

The word signifies things that are firmly established as being right. To apply this word to a person would be to describe them as reliable, sincere, and one who clings to the Truth. And as we proclaim God as the source and embodiment of all Truth, it stands to reason then that a faithful person is reflecting the image of a faithful God.

We like it when we can rely on people, don’t we? It sure takes a lot of stress out of life when you know you can count on someone.

Sometimes, though, it seems that we may not put as much energy as we should into being that kind of person. If faithfulness is a sure way to win respect, then a sure way to lose it is hypocrisy.

A hypocrite is, at the heart, a pretender. A hypocrite shows you one face while being someone else underneath. If a person makes a habit of being this way, it won’t take long for the word to get out. A hypocrite is untrustworthy, because you never know what to expect from such a person. One thing you won’t expect is truth and faithfulness.

There is no room for hypocrisy in the Church. As Paul advised to the Colossians:

Don’t lie to each other. You’ve gotten rid of the person you used to be and the life you used to live, and you’ve become a new person. This new person is continually renewed in knowledge to be like its Creator. Colossians 3:9-10 (GW)

If you have professed Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, none of the bad stuff you did before counts against you, but there’s a catch. You can’t go back and do that stuff anymore. (Of course, if your conversion is genuine, you won’t want to anyway, so it’s all good.) But God created you in His image, and if you have accepted His invitation, you have become eternally adopted into His family. Since God is the source of all love and the essence of all Truth, that means you have His faithfulness in your DNA.

It doesn’t matter who you are or where you came from. God created you to do the work He had planned for you, but He also gives you the strength and endurance to perform this work faithfully. When you follow through with that, it pleases God to see His plan working itself out in your life.

And as an extra added bonus, other people will notice not only the work you’re doing, but also the manner in which you do it. They will see your sincerity and know that you are someone they can trust.

(Some days this is easier than others, however. Come back for Part 6—Courageous.)

DN=: Part 16–Hypocrisy

I find it interesting that the Greek origin of the word “hypocrisy” comes from the theatre. You may know that ancient Greek plays were performed by actors wearing masks. These actors were called hypocrites, not because of any character deficiency, but because they were literally “pretending under a mask.”

This meaning makes sense when you think about people whom you may have considered guilty of hypocrisy. What they are doing is showing the world one face, their “mask,” while pretending to be something they are not. One of these masks is self-righteousness.

Why do you see the splinter in your brother’s eye but not notice the log in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the splinter out of your eye,’ when you have the log in your own eye? You hypocrite! First, take the log out of your own eye; then you will see clearly, so that you can remove the splinter from your brother’s eye! (Matthew 7:3-5 CJB)

Jesus’ warning against hypocrisy from the Sermon on the Mount is one of the most humbling passages in scripture. However, as is so often the case when people use the Bible as a defense mechanism, many of us want to put a period where God put a comma (or in the case of the translation used here, a semicolon).

Notice that Jesus did NOT say, “You hypocrite! First, take the log out of your own eye” PERIOD! There is a “then” after the “first” and a “so that” after the “then.” The purpose of taking the log out of your own eye is to clear your vision. And the purpose of clear vision is to successfully complete the task of helping get the splinter out of your brother’s eye.

Jesus is clear in noting that the fault does not lie with the person giving correction, but with the spirit in which it is given, namely that people with issues of their own ought to address those before pointing out someone else’s.

Nowhere in the passage above does it say that it is OK to have a splinter in your eye. It also does not state that one must be perfect to remove a splinter. After all, no human was ever perfect besides Jesus. And since He is clearly advocating the removal of splinters from eyes by people who are less than perfect, it should be equally clear that imperfect people, under the right conditions, are qualified to remove eye splinters.

IMPERFECTION DN= HYPOCRISY

Have you ever tried to be perfect or maybe felt that you wouldn’t measure up if you were anything less than perfect? It’s stressful, isn’t it?

Many Christians fall into this performance trap. Sometimes we get the impression that in order to be worthy bearers of the name of Christ, we can’t slip up, lest the onlooking world accuse us of hypocrisy.

I would like to do my part in helping break this cycle by saying that it’s actually a good thing for the world to see us fail. It doesn’t seem so at first, when we are enduring the taunting, the ridiculing and the finger pointing, but when the dust settles, we have a unique opportunity.

We have the chance to publicly demonstrate personal responsibility by swallowing our pride and owning our fail as well as the consequences thereof.

In other words, we can take off our masks and show the world what’s underneath.

He turned now to his disciples and warned them, “More than anything else, beware of these Pharisees and the way they pretend to be good when they aren’t. But such hypocrisy cannot be hidden forever. (Luke 12:1b TLB)

The few of you who have stuck with me during the LONG pauses between posts in this series may have wondered what the delay was all about.

I knew that I was going to be closing out my series exposing the hypocrisy of the “=” movement by talking about hypocrisy itself and how those who bring that charge the most strenuously seem to be the guiltiest of it themselves.

Then I looked in the mirror one day and saw the log. So I’ve been spending the past several weeks trying to figure out what to do with this log in my eye.

You see, the thing is, I’m a wanderer. I guess we all are, because we are all susceptible to sin in general and the sin of pride in particular, but I’ve been doing quite a bit of wandering lately. I can totally relate to what Paul was feeling when he wrote this to the Romans:

I don’t understand myself at all, for I really want to do what is right, but I can’t. I do what I don’t want to—what I hate. I know perfectly well that what I am doing is wrong, and my bad conscience proves that I agree with these laws I am breaking. But I can’t help myself because I’m no longer doing it. It is sin inside me that is stronger than I am that makes me do these evil things.

I know I am rotten through and through so far as my old sinful nature is concerned. No matter which way I turn, I can’t make myself do right. I want to but I can’t. When I want to do good, I don’t; and when I try not to do wrong, I do it anyway. Now if I am doing what I don’t want to, it is plain where the trouble is: sin still has me in its evil grasp.

It seems to be a fact of life that when I want to do what is right, I inevitably do what is wrong. I love to do God’s will so far as my new nature is concerned; but there is something else deep within me, in my lower nature, that is at war with my mind and wins the fight and makes me a slave to the sin that is still within me. In my mind, I want to be God’s willing servant, but instead I find myself still enslaved to sin.

So you see how it is: my new life tells me to do right, but the old nature that is still inside me loves to sin. Oh, what a terrible predicament I’m in! Who will free me from my slavery to this deadly lower nature? (Romans 7:15-25 TLB)

I think at some level I just knew that I wouldn’t be able to finish this without dislodging my log.

But then I considered the question that ends the passage above. Who will free me from my slavery to this deadly lower nature? Well, duh. Jesus already did. I’m still working on my wood-vision, but at least I’m aware of it. The fact that I want the log out of my eye is the evidence that it is possible. Especially when I consider the alternative:

If anyone sins deliberately by rejecting the Savior after knowing the truth of forgiveness, this sin is not covered by Christ’s death; there is no way to get rid of it. There will be nothing to look forward to but the terrible punishment of God’s awful anger, which will consume all his enemies. (Hebrews 10:26-27 TLB)

The unfortunate fact that I am prone to wander from the Truth does not make the Truth any less true. Therefore, it is not hypocrisy for an imperfect messenger to deliver a perfect message to someone that would benefit from it.

For this reason, I will press on, and continue doing what I have been called to do.

Because falling down DN= falling away.