When someone uses the term “religious hypocrite” they are usually referring to legalistic, mean spirited people who act like they do everything right (but don’t) and judge everyone who does anything wrong (or differently). Sure, that may be one form of hypocrisy, but legalists aren’t the only hypocrites warming church pews.
The word “hypocrite” is another word for “actor.” So, a hypocrite is someone who puts on a show. There really isn’t any difference between someone who claims to be righteous and doesn’t live accordingly and someone who claims to be LABELED righteous and doesn’t live accordingly. In other words, claiming one is “justified,” “sanctified,” and “holy” doesn’t make one a Christian. It is living like one is “justified,” “sanctified,” and “holy” that proves one is a Christian (What is a Christian anyway? The word means “little Christ.”).
Christ saves us, “not on the basis of works” (Titus 3:5). He doesn’t require us to earn our salvation. But the evidence of our faith in his work for (and in) us will be “good works.” “We are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works which God prepared beforehand SO THAT WE WOULD WALK IN THEM” (Eph 2:10) He begins the change. He does everything.
Behavior matters. What we do and do not do matters. If that were not the case, the scriptures wouldn’t be full of instruction (and encouragement) on how to (and how we can) live and act as children of God. Jesus would never have commanded us to love our neighbor if he didn’t want us to operate in a spirit of love. Paul would never have told us to “lay aside the old man” if it were not possible to do so. It is hypocritical (a lie) to claim we are Christians if we still crave the things of the world, have no hunger and thirst for righteousness (and mock those who do), and display little or no evidence that the spirit of Christ is working in our lives. God does not expect us to live righteously without him. But he DOES expect us to submit to him and let him work in and through us.
I’ve never met someone who always says and does the “right” thing. But I have met people whose lives are full of the light and life of Christ. Warming a church pew, convincing myself I’m “safe” and forgiven without allowing Christ to begin changing me is just as sickening and hypocritical as if I were claiming perfection without God.
“If we say that we have fellowship with Him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth; but if we walk in the Light as He Himself is in the Light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin. If we say that we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” 1 John 1:6-9
”If conversion makes no improvements in a man’s outward actions then I think his ‘conversion’ was largely imaginary.” C.S. Lewis
Stephanie
