Wednesday; November 6

Jesus was a good guy.  (Okay, you can file that under the “firm grasp of the obvious” tab.)  While Jesus was full of goodness and kindness, He did have an intolerance for certain things – one of which was hypocrisy.  Early on, Jesus reminded people to look at their own lives before criticizing others by saying, “You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye.” (Matthew 7:5).  However, if there was a particular bias, it was against religious hypocrites.  In condemning the one particular attitude of His day, He said, “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs which on the outside appear beautiful, but inside they are full of dead men’s bones and all uncleanness.” (Matthew 23:27).  Throughout His ministry Jesus advocated love and acceptance, but He was very pointed when it came to duplicity. 

As I thought about this, two things came to mind.  First, we must live up to our convictions.  If we claim to be righteous, we’d better do what is right.  Yet, I think we have another responsibility … we need to hold others accountable for what they do – especially those who hold themselves out as religious.  One of the challenges to evangelizing the world these days is that people in the world can see better than they can hear.  They might hear the gospel, but they see too much godlessness among the self-professed righteous to take some of them seriously.  

There are times when forgiveness and tolerance is needed, but when it comes to hypocrisy, we need to toe the line.  Let’s live our claims and only claim those who live the godly life. 

Think About It!

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