Through the pandemic we learned a lot about infections, how to catch them, what’s contagious, how to protect yourself from getting the infection. I learned a lot of new terms, like “social distancing,” “ppe” (personal protective equipment), N95 masks, and so on. We’ve seen that people are willing to go to extra-ordinary measures – closing businesses, schools, gatherings, staying at least 6 feet away from each other, sacrificing graduations, sports, theaters, and more. It’s impressive and, in some ways, even admirable, how absolutely committed some people are to avoiding an infection.

The Lord Jesus calls us to just such an aversion to the infection of hypocrisy. He warns us against the “leaven of the Pharisees” (Luke 12:1.) He was speaking in the first century, communicating on the level that people at that time understood. Leaven, or yeast, was the one thing at that time that people understood could be caught or transferred from one lump to another. The transmissibility of yeast was the closest thing people understood to an infection, before the rise of germ theory. Yeast is a fungus that infects one lump of dough and is contagious to others. So, Jesus is saying that hypocrisy is like a germ. It’s transmissible, like the corona virus, from one infected person to another. Hypocrisy is highly infectious.

“Pastor Bob” was one of my predecessors at a church I pastored. He did me the big favor of introducing the “doctrines of grace” – what some call “Calvinism” to the people. He did me the bigger disfavor of modelling hypocrisy. When a deacon literally stood in the doorway and prohibited a black man from visiting, he apparently did nothing. He didn’t decry racism when it still reigned in the South. When he retired as pastor, he quit going to church. Hebrews 10:25 – don’t forsake assembling – apparently only applied to others. Over the last 15 years, I’ve seen that everyone who was shaped by his ministry is infected with their own variety of hypocrisy.

That the Lord Jesus tells us to “beware” of the infection of hypocrisy and compares it to a microscopic contamination, shows that hypocrisy is not an obvious duplicity. It’s likely to catch us unaware if we’re not diligent. It’s usually invisible to the naked eye, seen by its symptoms. Casually, I call the man, one of Pastor Bob’s devotees, who told me he was sorry that the church had to cut my salary to make the budget, who preached on giving and claimed to support his church, while he and his wife were fully employed, regularly buying new vehicles, annually taking pilgrimages to Disney World and splurging on such indulgences as annual passes to the Biltmore estate and elaborate tattoos, all the while he gave a mite, about one percent of his income; casually I call such a duplicitous man a “hypocrite.” But that’s a level of shameless two-facedness that’s beyond the more subtle infectious hypocrisy Jesus warns us about.

The Symptoms of Hypocrititus

Dr. Jesus described the symptoms of hypocrititus in Matthew 23. Look for the tell-tale signs.

1. The hypocrite loves rules because he then can keep them and show off his rule-keeping. He’ll invent rules, like no alcohol or only use a 400 year old Bible translation he often doesn’t understand, so he can load people with the burden of keeping them.
2. Hypocrites love displays (Matthew 23:5-6). In their day, the hypocrites “made their phylacteries broad” to show off Bible verses on their forehead. Today their Facebook page shows how apparently spiritual they are. They’ll show off how they had a group of homeless people in their living room.
3. Hypocrites love honorifics (Matthew 23:7-12). They love to be called “reverend” or “apostle” or “bishop” or “doctor” (without an earned degree). Reformed people often fall into the traditional debates against modern “apostles” or whether “bishop” is an appropriate title. There’s a place for that but to get to the root of the infection of hypocrisy, ask why they insist on being called “apostle.” It’s not about being an “apostle.” It’s about being called one. Much of the “old time religion” doesn’t put much stock in education but they love the titles of being educated, so they’ll spend money to get a phony certificate from a diploma mill, or have a slip-shod paper christened a dissertation so people will call them “Dr. So-and-so.”
4. Hypocrites love empty words (Matthew 23:16-22). The hypocrites of Jesus’ day debated when you could make a commitment and then break it. They loved the sound of vows, just not keeping them. For that reason, Jesus twice calls them “blind.” Someone told me that making a covenant to a church is not binding, not like a wedding vow. It’s like vowing by the temple or the altar, a pledge that sounds good but is the equivalent of crossing your fingers. It’s not a real commitment, they said. That’s full-blown hypocrititus. Jesus said, “Let what you say be simply ‘Yes’ or ‘No’; anything more than this comes from evil” (Mt. 5:37.) The evil is words that don’t mean what they say.

Treatment

Thankfully, we’re given effective treatment options for hypocrititus. Paul says that there are people with the “appearance” or “form” of godliness but they don’t have the power. “Avoid such people” (2 Timothy 3:5.) Practice social distancing.

I’ve seen people who seem to have begun as a Christian all right, they seemed to be growing and zealous, but they had people in their lives who were infected with hypocrisy. Maybe a relative or in-law who proved himself to be a commitment-breaking, empty-word spouting fraud. They weren’t careful about the influence of those hypocrites in their lives. They didn’t keep a social distance, didn’t use spiritual PPE, didn’t disinfect their lives after contact with them and the result was that they became infected too.

Second, disinfect with the light of truth. Sunshine is the best disinfectant. The pathogen of hypocrisy is killed by exposure to truth. Call it what it is. Don’t enable it with the excuses the hypocrites give to cover their sins. This is what we do in church discipline: the church corporately bursts the arrogant justifications for sin and says “that affair you’re having with your step-mother is immoral” (1 Cor. 5.) Tell the truth about it: your dropping out of church because you’re not a pastor any more isn’t excusable because you’re depressed; your displays are shams; your titles are about ego; your broken commitments are fraudulent; your words are empty; that your secret giving is a pittance shows where your heart is; your forms of religion deny the power of the gospel. Let the sunshine of truth kill the pathogen of hypocrisy.

John B. Carpenter, Ph.D., is pastor of Covenant Reformed Baptist Church, in Danville, VA. and the author of Seven Pillars of a Biblical Church (Wipf and Stock, 2022).