A friend once told me that when he had invited a neighbor to church, the neighbor’s response was, “Why would I want to go to church? They’re all just a bunch of hypocrites.”
My friend responded jokingly, “Don’t let that stop you, we’ve always got room for one more.”
The reality is that non-believers often misunderstand Christians. The misunderstandings are generally based on false assumptions or false impressions.
First, they may assume that Christians seem to act superior (and certainly that is an impression we might leave) assuming that they are better than they are.
Second, they often expect Christians to be somehow without sin or fault. Yet the apostle Paul points out in Romans 7:14-20 that Christians are forgiven, yet still possessed of the sin nature we were all born with (Romans 3:21-23).
Once after a sermon I delivered, a congregant approached me. He took issue with a statement I had made saying, “We (Christians) are all sinners saved by grace (Ephesians 2:8-10). His contention was that as a Christian he was a Saint and did not sin. Yet to claim we do not sin is contrary to the Word of God. 1 John 1:8 “If we say we have no sin we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.”
As Christians we are called to a higher standard than is laid out in the Old Testament, the Ten Commandments. Jesus points out in Matthew 5 that we are called to a much higher standard; one that looks not just at physical actions but looks into the condition of our heart.
When we are angry with our spouse, our child, our neighbor, even our pastor or elders we have murdered them in our heart. Can any of us say we have not been angry? Certainly there has been a politician in one party of another who has raised your ire.
The word hypocrisy in the Bible stems from the Greek word “hypocrisis” which refers to someone playing a part, that is to present an image of someone that is not us.
The dictionary says, “The behavior of people who do things they tell other people not to do: behavior that does not agree with what one claims to believe or feel.”
As Christians we are all on a journey. A journey to “Christlikeness.”
God has given us His Holy Spirit to aid us in that journey; none of us have arrived at the end of that journey. We are merely in the process known as sanctification, or growing in divine grace as a result of Christian commitment. Therefore we might all take stock, from time to time, of the level of that commitment. After all we have been given the best “helper,” “counselor” and “guide” that any of us could ever have hoped for or imagined.
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