What does Jesus say about hypocrites?

Next the Lord* launches out woe after woe against the Scribes and Pharisees. They were hypocrites. They shut out the new light of God, while zealous beyond measure for their own thoughts; they undermined conscience by their casuistry, while insisting on the minutest alliteration in ceremonializing; they laboured after external cleanness, while full of rapine and intemperance; and if they could only seem righteously fair without, feared not within to be full of hypocrisy and lawlessness. Finally, their monuments in honour of slain prophets and past worthies were rather a testimony to their own relationship, not to the righteous, but to those who murdered them. Their fathers killed the witnesses of God who, while living, condemned them; they, the sons, only built to their memory when there was no longer a present testimony to their conscience, and their sepulchral honours would cast a halo around themselves.

In Matthew 6:1-18 the Lord Jesus refers back to the practical righteousness already mentioned in chapter 5:20. There we read: "For I say unto you, That except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven." The Pharisees and Scribes are often depicted in the New Testament as men whose religious activities were for a pretence only (Mark 12:40), and carried out before men. They loved and sought the praise of men more than the praise of God (John 5:44; 12:43). In Matthew 23 the Lord Jesus calls them hypocrites several times. Hypocrisy is the endeavour to appear better than one (really) is. Hypocrisy was the great sin of the Pharisees. This is why the Lord Jesus speaks of the leaven of the Pharisees as of something totally evil (Luke 12:1). Their righteousness was only an outward one and had no value before God.

"In the meantime, when there were gathered together an innumerable multitude of people, in so much that they trod one upon another, he began to say to his disciples first of all, Beware ye of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy. For there is nothing covered, that shall not be revealed; neither hid, that shall not be known. Therefore, whatsoever ye have spoken in darkness shall be heard in the light; and that which ye have spoken in the ear in closets shall be proclaimed upon the housetops" (Luke 12:1-3). He first of all warns us against a danger to which we are all exposed. "Beware ye of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy." And the reason is this, "There is nothing covered, that shall not be revealed; neither hid, that shall not be known." He warns our souls against being unreal — seeming to be what we are not. We have to watch against hypocrisy. It often takes a pseudo-spiritual form, i.e., the desire to seem more spiritual than we are.

Take the case of Ananias and Sapphira, in Acts 5. You may say, it was a very solemn thing for the Lord to cut them off. Yes. But they had not given heed to the Lord's word here, or else they would not have fallen into Satan's trap. They desired to look a little more devoted than they really were. Are not our hearts subject to the same temptation? We know it. The Lord knows it also, and hence says to us, "Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy."

We have to take care that we go not before God, lest we might find ourselves in detail, if not in the main, against God. We must not break that which is bruised by yielding to personal or party feelings. What a danger this is. The inevitable effect of a judging spirit is that we get judged ourselves. The soul, whose habit is censorious, is universally ill spoken of. "With what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged." Then the Lord puts a particular case: "Why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?" (ver. 3). That is, where this proneness to judge is, there is another still more serious evil — an habitually unjudged evil in the spirit, which makes the person restless, and desirous of proving others to be wrong too. "Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye?" (ver. 4). The mote, of course, was but little, but it was made a great deal of, and the beam, an enormous thing, was passed by. The Lord is bringing out, in the most emphatic way, the danger of a suspicious judicial spirit. And He shows that the way to deal rightly, if we desire the good of His people and their deliverance from evil, is to begin with self-judgment. If we really wish to have the mote out of our brother's eye, how is it to be done? Let us begin with the grave faults we know so little, corrected and confessed, in ourselves: this is worthy of Christ. What is His way of dealing with it? Does He say of the mote in our brother's eye, Bring it to the judges? Not at all; you must probe yourself. The soul is to begin there. When I judge the evil that my conscience knows, or that, if my conscience does not know now, it may learn in God's presence — if I begin with this, I shall then see clearly what concerns others; I shall have a heart fitted to enter into their circumstances, an eye purged from what unfits the heart to feel with God about others. "Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye, and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye" (ver. 5). This may be found in a believer, in principle; though when the Lord says, "Thou hypocrite," He alludes to the evil in its full form; but even in ourselves, we know it in measure, and what can be more opposed to simplicity and godly sincerity? Hypocrisy is the most hateful evil that can be found under the name of Christ — a thing that even the natural conscience writhes under and rejects. "Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye, and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye."

Often and often we find that when the beam is gone, the mote is not to be seen, having already disappeared. And where the heart is set upon the Lord, would we be sorry to find ourselves mistaken about our brother? Should I not rejoice to find the grace of the Lord in my brother, if I discover in self-judgment myself only to be wrong? This, may be painful to one, but the love of Christ in the believer's heart is gratified to know that Christ is spared this further dishonour.

In all cases the snare is ostentatious, doing our righteousness before men to be seen of them. Otherwise, says our Lord, ye have no reward of your Father that is in the heavens. He lays the utmost stress on the manner and the motive with which the act is done. Display in the doing of alms He compares to sounding a trumpet before the doer, and denounces it as what the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, within and without where people meet and pass. Can anything be conceived baser than a son of God playing a part to win the notice and approbation of men? How solemnly He adds, Verily I say to you, They have got their reward!

This kind of thing, pushed as it was by the Pharisees to its extreme limits, stirred our Lord to a strong exposure of its evil. They were hypocrites, and He told them so plainly. They came under Isaiah's scathing denunciation, for this type of religious wickedness is always to be found with men who have hearts far from God and yet honour Him with their lips, whilst putting their own precepts and commandments in the place of His word. All such nominal worship is empty and in vain, yet it is not difficult for a true believer to get entangled in such things today.

This passage furnishes us with the most terrible denunciation from the lips of Jesus, of which we have any record. He never said such things to any poor publican or sinner. These hot words were reserved for religious hypocrites. He was full of grace and truth. Grace with truth He extended to the confessed sinners. The searchlight of truth, without mention of grace, was reserved for the hypocrites.

Disciples warned. — What, then, were the faithful disciples to do in the midst of such people? This was a necessary and an important question, to the solution of which the Lord now turned attention, and that in the most public way. For when there were many thousands of the multitude gathered together, — "myriads," wrote Luke, a crowd so compact that they trode one upon another, — "He began to say to His disciples first of all, Beware ye of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy." What He here meant by leaven is explained to us. It was hypocrisy. The hypocrite attempts to conceal something from the eyes of others by presenting a false appearance. He comes in a garb which is not his really. He feigns to be what he is not. To God that is hateful. Sooner or later hypocrisy is stripped of its mask, and is seen before all in its true character. "There is nothing covered up," so we should translate, "that shall not be revealed; and hid, that shall not be known. Therefore whatsoever ye have spoken in darkness shall be heard in the light; and that which ye have spoken in the ear in closets shall be proclaimed upon the house-tops" (Luke 12:2-3). The reader will doubtless call to mind what is said in 8:17. But the statements are not the same. There the Lord is encouraging the disciples to be faithful in service, and to profit by His teaching. Here He is warning against hypocrisy. So in 8:17 we have, "Take heed how ye hear." Here we read, "whatsoever ye have said," etc. Keeping these two words in mind, hear, and said, the reader will have a clue to the two passages.

But prayer can become a mere religious exercise or show. This danger arises especially in public prayer-in the family circle, but especially in the assembly. A child once said to his father: "You always pray in a different manner when we have visitors!" Some prayers in the gatherings-uttered in a sanctimonious tone or a gushing flood of words-raise the question if they are not rather directed to those present than to God.

The Lord refers to such dangers when He speaks to His disciples about the hypocrites who loved to pray publicly in order to be seen of men and to be admired for their piety. The Jews of that time had the habit of praying at certain fixed times of the day (Acts 3:1). This generally took place in the temple or in the synagogue but if this was not possible they were allowed to pray just wherever they might be. The Lord Jesus is probably primarily referring to this. Yet His words do not mean that He judged every public prayer as hypocrisy. Various references in the New Testament show that the Lord Jesus Himself prayed in public (Matt. 14:19; 15:36). It was the practice of the first Christians to pray in public too (Acts 12:5; 20:36; 27:35; 1 Tim. 2:8). The Lord Jesus therefore does not refer to the place but to our inward attitude and the motive for prayer. For God knows our hearts through and through. "For there is not a word in my tongue, but, lo, O LORD, Thou knowest it altogether" (Psa. 139:4). Knowing that we cannot pretend anything before God we should not try to do so with our listeners either. They will, however, always be able to say a hearty "amen" to a simple, heartfelt prayer.

The people will protest that He ought to know them because they have eaten and drunk in His presence (though they cannot say, "having fellowship with Him"), and that He has taught in their streets. Because of these outward contacts they demand some recognition. This is the very character of the hypocrite. He touches the fringes of Christianity by his formal observances, but in heart he does not know the Lord. Therefore the Lord repeated, "I tell you I do not know you, where you are from." He then adds the solemn words, "Depart from Me, all you workers of iniquity." Their ability to deceive will no longer make way for them: their falsehood will be exposed.

What humiliation for those who thought they could brazen their way through every obstacle into heaven! These Jewish leaders boasted in their natural fathers -- Abraham, Isaac and Jacob -- and in the prophets of Israel, but they would find they had no spiritual relationship with them at all. "Weeping and gnashing of teeth" would be theirs, while their fathers and the prophets would have the pure joys of the kingdom of God, from which they themselves would be thrust out. For the kingdom will be fully purified from the admixture of which we read in verses 19-21. They will gather out of His kingdom all things that offend, and those who practice lawlessness, and will cast them into the furnace of fire. There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth (Mt.13:41- 42). The weeping is only in self-pity, not in repentance. Wailing is the attitude of complaining, for faith is absent. Gnashing of teeth is a spirit of rebellion, not corrected even by the solemn judgment of God.