Hypocrisy, The Church, and Following Jesus

Hypocrite: “A person who acts in contradiction to his or her stated beliefs or feelings.”

Run a Google search on the word “hypocrite” and you’ll discover that for many the word is synonymous with “Christian.”  According to the Pew Research Forum, hypocrisy is one of the most common reasons why many Americans don’t go to church. 

In his book They Like Jesus but not the Church, Dan Kimball writes, “Ask someone today if he or she likes Jesus, and the answer is usually yes.  But ask if that person likes the church, and chances are you will get a far less favorable response.”  While Jesus teaches a gospel of inclusion, grace, hope and love, Kimball notes that many have experienced the church as a place of exclusion, judgment, negativity, and rejection.  Sometimes when it comes to sharing Jesus with the world, the church gets in the way.

Lest we think that hypocrisy is a new phenomena, we remember that the struggle to live out our beliefs is as old as the human race.  In Jeremiah 7, God sends the prophet Jeremiah to the temple to convict the people of Israel of hypocrisy:

“Will you steal and murder, commit adultery and perjury, burn incense to Baal and follow other gods you have not known, and then come into this house which bears my Name, and say ‘we are safe?’ (Jeremiah 7:9-10).

The people of Israel were hiding their sins behind the walls of the temple.  They came to the temple on the Sabbath to make the proper sacrifices and confess their sins, but then they left and did whatever they wanted the rest of the week.  They treated God’s forgiveness as an excuse to do whatever they pleased.  They were hypocrites.

Jeremiah’s exhortation to the hypocrites of Israel is instructive: “Reform your ways and actions” (7:3).  In other words, practice what you preach.  True worship of God is not just what happens inside the temple.  True worship entails a total way of life.

James 2:26 says “faith without works is dead.”  Following Jesus entails much more than believing the right doctrines, saying the right prayers, or being in church every Sunday.  Following Jesus is a total way of life.  What we say and do on Sunday morning must cohere with how we live Monday through Saturday.

Is your life consistent with what you believe?  How does the faith you profess on Sunday morning impact the way you live the rest of the week?  In what ways are you hypocritical?  How can your life better reflect the values of Jesus?  How is God challenging you to “reform your ways and actions” so that you may live a life that reflects the gospel you believe?