Hypocrisy
The UPDV's hypocrite is the man whose mouth and his heart are in different places. The diagnosis is older than the gospel scenes that put the word in Jesus' mouth: the prophets had already named the disease as a worship that honors with the lips while the heart is far away, a fast that quarrels and exacts, a temple-going that runs alongside theft and adultery. Jesus picks up the prophetic line — Mark and Luke have him quoting Isaiah at the Pharisees, calling crowds and synagogue rulers and lawyers "hypocrites," and warning his own disciples first against "the leaven which is the hypocrisy of the Pharisees." The apostolic writers extend the warning into the church — Peter dissembling at Antioch, false teachers with feigned words, men who profess God and deny him by their works — and James and John bend the same lens onto the believer himself, who hears the word and forgets it, says he loves God and hates his brother, says he has no sin and so makes God a liar. The arc this page tracks runs from the heart Yahweh inspects, through the prophetic indictment of formal worship, into Jesus' direct charge against the Pharisees and lawyers, through the apostolic warning about church teachers and church members, and out to the final verdict on names that live but are dead. Many of the most famous Matthean "hypocrites!" sayings sit outside UPDV scope and so are not used here; the Synoptic parallels in Mark and Luke carry the same material.
The Heart Yahweh Sees
The frame for the topic is the inspection Yahweh performs and man does not. At the choice of David the line is given to Samuel: "Don't look on his countenance, or on the height of his stature; because I have rejected him: for [it is] not [a matter of] what man sees; for man looks on the outward appearance, but Yahweh looks on the heart" (1 Sam 16:7). The wisdom-tradition lays the same axis between the inside and the outside: "Fervent lips and a wicked heart Are [like] an earthen vessel overlaid with silver dross" (Pr 26:23); and "When he speaks fair, don't believe him; For there are seven disgusting things in his heart" (Pr 26:25). Sirach issues the maxim plainly: "Do not be a hypocrite in the sight of men. And take heed to [the utterances of] your lips" (Sir 1:29). Jesus turns the same warning into a command: "Do not judge according to appearance, but judge righteous judgment" (John 7:24); and Paul presses it into church practice — "those who glory in appearance, and not in heart" (2 Cor 5:12). The opposite picture is given in Nathaniel: "Look, an Israelite indeed, in whom is no guile!" (John 1:47). What Yahweh sees, and what the no-guile life looks like, are what the rest of the topic is measured against.
Worship That Honors with the Lips
The prophets diagnose Israel's piety as a worship whose forms are in order and whose heart is gone. Yahweh refuses the sacrificial system as long as it floats free from obedience: "What to me is the multitude of your⁺ sacrifices? says Yahweh: I have had enough of the burnt-offerings of rams... Bring no more vain oblations; incense is disgusting to me; new moon and Sabbath, the calling of assemblies — I can't endure evil and the solemn meeting... And when you⁺ spread forth your⁺ hands, I will hide my eyes from you⁺; yes, when you⁺ make many prayers, I will not hear: your⁺ hands are full of blood" (Isa 1:11-15). The same indictment in shorter compass at Isaiah 29:13: "Since this people draw near [to me], and with their mouth and with their lips do honor me, but have removed their heart far from me" — the verse Jesus will quote at Mark 7:6-7. Jeremiah names the contradiction between the worship and the conduct: "Will you⁺ steal, murder, and commit adultery, and swear falsely, and burn incense to Baal, and walk after other gods that you⁺ have not known, and come and stand before me in this house, which is called by my name, and say, We are delivered" (Jer 7:9-10). His cardiology is exact: Yahweh is "near in their mouth, and far from their heart" (Jer 12:2). Hosea returns to the same line — "they have not cried to me with their heart, but they howl on their beds" (Hos 7:14); "Their heart is divided; now they will be found guilty" (Hos 10:2) — and gives the principle that summarizes the prophetic protest: "For I desire goodness, and not sacrifice; and knowledge of God more than burnt-offerings" (Hos 6:6). Amos agrees: "I hate, I despise your⁺ feasts, and I will take no delight in your⁺ solemn assemblies. Yes, though you⁺ offer me your⁺ burnt-offerings and meal-offerings, I will not accept them" (Amos 5:21-22). Micah names the priests and prophets who turn the worship into a transaction: "the heads of it judge for reward, and its priests teach for wages, and its prophets tell the future for silver: yet they lean on [the Speech of] Yahweh, and say, Is not Yahweh in the midst of us? No evil will come upon us" (Mic 3:11). Zechariah turns the question on the fast itself: "When you⁺ fasted and mourned in the fifth and in the seventh [month], even these seventy years, did you⁺ at all fast to me, even to me?" (Zec 7:5). Malachi finds the same hypocrisy in the priests who bring blemished animals to the altar: "You⁺ offer polluted bread on my altar... when you⁺ offer the blind for sacrifice, it is no evil!... Present it now to your governor; will he be pleased with you?" (Mal 1:7-8); "But cursed be the deceiver, who has in his flock a male, and vows, and sacrifices to the Lord a blemished thing" (Mal 1:14).
Fasting for Show
A subset of the same indictment is the fast that turns inward and devours the neighbor. Isaiah 58 is the locus: "Yet they seek me daily, and delight to know my ways: as a nation that did righteousness, and did not forsake the ordinance of their God... Why have we fasted, [they say], and you don't see? [Why] have we afflicted our soul, and you take no knowledge? Look, in the day of your⁺ fast you⁺ find [your⁺ own] pleasure, and exact all your⁺ labors. Look, you⁺ fast for strife and contention, and to strike with the fist of wickedness" (Isa 58:2-4). The fast is real and the affliction visible — "Is it to bow down his head as a rush, and to spread sackcloth and ashes under him? Will you call this a fast, and an acceptable day to Yahweh?" (Isa 58:5) — but the heart and the hand are not in it. Zechariah pushes the same question into the post-exilic community (Zec 7:5-6).
The Sanctimonious Person
The Psalter and Isaiah catch the man whose religion has become a performance of his own superiority. The wicked are addressed directly in a Psalm of Asaph: "But to the wicked God says, What have you to do to declare my statutes, And that you have taken my covenant in your mouth, Seeing you hate instruction, And cast my words behind you?" (Ps 50:16-17). The wilderness generation receives the same diagnosis: "But they flattered him with their mouth, And lied to him with their tongue. For their heart was not right with him, Neither were they faithful in his covenant" (Ps 78:36-37). Isaiah catches the type that turns piety into distance from one's neighbor: "who say, Stand by yourself, don't come near to me, for I am holier than you. These are a smoke in my nose, a fire that burns all the day" (Isa 65:5). And Jeremiah names the worshippers who "trust in lying words" — assuming the temple guarantees them however they live (Jer 7:8). Ezekiel describes a congregation that gathers at the prophet's door and goes home unchanged: "they come to you like the coming of a people, and they sit before you as my people, and they hear your words, but don't do them; for with their mouth they show much love, but their heart goes after their gain" (Ezek 33:31).
"You Hypocrites" — Jesus Names It
The word the gospel hands to Jesus is the one the Septuagint and Sirach already use, and he applies it again and again. He quotes Isaiah 29 against the Pharisees over hand-washing: "Isaiah prophesied well of you⁺ hypocrites, as it is written, This people honors me with their lips, But their heart is far from me. But in vain they worship me" (Mark 7:6-7), and adds the diagnosis the prophets had given: "You⁺ leave the commandment of God, and hold fast the tradition of men" (Mark 7:8). He names the inside as the source of the outside in the same chapter: "from inside, out of the heart of men, evil thoughts proceed... wickednesses, deceit... pride, foolishness" (Mark 7:21-22). He warns his disciples to beware "the leaven of the Pharisees and the leaven of Herod" (Mark 8:15), and Luke reads that leaven as a name: "Take heed to yourselves [and stay away] from the leaven which is the hypocrisy of the Pharisees" (Luke 12:1). When asked the trick question about Caesar, Mark says he "knew their hypocrisy" before he answered (Mark 12:15); Luke describes the same scene as "spies, who feigned themselves to be righteous, that they might take hold of his speech" (Luke 20:20).
He uses the word at the synagogue ruler who is offended at a Sabbath healing: "You⁺ hypocrites, does not each of you⁺ on the Sabbath loose his ox or his donkey from the stall, and lead him away to watering? And ought not this woman, being a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan had bound, look, [these] eighteen years, to have been loosed from this bond on the day of the Sabbath?" (Luke 13:15-16). He uses it at the crowd that can read clouds and not their own time: "You⁺ hypocrites, you⁺ know how to interpret the face of the earth and the heaven; but how is it that you⁺ don't know how to interpret this time?" (Luke 12:56). And he uses it at the man who sees his brother's faults and not his own: "You hypocrite, cast out first the beam out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to cast out the mote that is in your brother's eye" (Luke 6:42). Behind that one is the question that lives at the center of the topic: "And why call⁺ me, Lord, Lord, and not do the things which I say?" (Luke 6:46).
The Lukan Woes
The Lukan parallel to the Matthean woes is concentrated in Luke 11. The first concerns the cup: "Now you⁺ the Pharisees cleanse the outside of the cup and of the platter; but your⁺ inward part is full of extortion and wickedness. You⁺ foolish ones, did not he who made the outside make the inside also?" (Luke 11:39-40). The second concerns the tithe: "you⁺ tithe mint and dill and every herb, and pass over justice and the love of God: but these you⁺ ought to have done, and not to neglect the others" (Luke 11:42). The third concerns the front seats and the public greetings (Luke 11:43); the fourth, the unmarked grave: "you⁺ are as the tombs which do not appear, and the men who walk over [them] do not know it" (Luke 11:44). The lawyers receive their own line: "you⁺ load men with loads grievous to be borne, and you⁺ yourselves don't touch the loads with one of your⁺ fingers" (Luke 11:46); they build the prophets' tombs and approve their fathers' killing of them (Luke 11:47-48); they "took away the key of knowledge: you⁺ didn't enter in yourselves, and those who were entering in you⁺ hindered" (Luke 11:52).
The picture-frame complaint is collected in another saying about the scribes: "Beware of the scribes, who desire to walk in long robes, and love salutations in the marketplaces, and chief seats in the synagogues, and chief places at feasts; who devour widows' houses, and for a pretense make long prayers: these will receive greater condemnation" (Luke 20:46-47; cf. Mark 12:38-40). Sirach has anticipated the gesture: "[There is one] with a downcast look, pretending to be deaf, But when unobserved he will get the better of you" (Sir 19:27); the man whose mouth speaks sweetly while his face changes the moment he is unobserved (Sir 27:22-23).
The Pharisee and the Publican
Luke gives the topic its parable. "Two men went up into the temple to pray; the one a Pharisee, and the other a publican. The Pharisee stood and prayed these things to himself, God, I thank you, that I am not as the rest of men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this publican. I fast twice in the week; I give tithes of all that I get. But the publican, standing far off, would not lift up so much as his eyes to heaven, but struck his breast, saying, God, be merciful to me a sinner. I say to you⁺, This man went down to his house justified rather than the other: for everyone who exalts himself will be humbled; but he who humbles himself will be exalted" (Luke 18:10-14). The Pharisee's prayer is genuinely directed — he fasts, he tithes — and is still indictable, because it is "to himself" (Luke 18:11) and is wholly comparison.
Apostolic Warnings about False Teachers
The apostolic letters carry the same warning into the life of the church. Paul to the synagogue Jew: "you therefore who teach another, don't you teach yourself? You who preach a man should not steal, do you steal?... You who glory in the law, through your transgression of the law do you dishonor God? For the name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you⁺" (Rom 2:21-24). Paul on a class of teachers: "those who are such do not serve as slaves to our Lord Christ, but to their own belly; and by their smooth and fair speech they beguile the hearts of the blameless" (Rom 16:18). The Pastorals state the trajectory: in the latter times "some will fall away from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits and doctrines of demons, through the hypocrisy of men who speak lies, branded in their own conscience as with a hot iron" (1 Tim 4:1-2); and there are men "holding a form of godliness, but having denied its power: from these also turn away" (2 Tim 3:5). Titus supplies the diagnosis as a single sentence: "They profess that they know God; but by their works they deny him, being disgusting, and disobedient, and to every good work disapproved" (Tit 1:16). Peter sees false teachers operating through "feigned words" to "make merchandise of you⁺" (2 Pet 2:3). Jude pictures the same men at the love-feasts, "shepherding themselves; clouds without water... twice dead, plucked up by the roots" (Jude 1:12). The apostolic ethic against this is straight: "Putting away therefore all wickedness, and all guile, and hypocrisies, and envies, and all evil speakings" (1 Pet 2:1).
The Antioch Incident
Hypocrisy can show up among the apostles themselves. Paul's first-person record at Antioch is the case in point: "before some came from James, [Cephas] ate with the Gentiles; but when they came, he drew back and separated himself, fearing those who were of the circumcision. And the rest of the Jews dissembled likewise with him; insomuch that even Barnabas was carried away with their hypocrisy. But when I saw that they did not walk uprightly according to the truth of the good news, I said to Cephas before [them] all, If you, being a Jew, live as do the Gentiles, and not as do the Jews, how do you compel the Gentiles to live as do the Jews?" (Gal 2:12-14). Peter believes one thing about Gentile fellowship and behaves another way when the wrong audience arrives, and Paul names the gap by the same word the gospel uses: "their hypocrisy."
Self-Deception
The hardest line of the topic is that the typical deceived person is himself. The Psalter sees it of the wicked man: he flatters himself in his own eyes (cf. Ps 36:2 in Deceit). Job's friends preach it as proverb against the godless (Job 8:13-15). Paul presses it: "if a man thinks himself to be something when he is nothing, he deceives himself" (Gal 6:3). James presses it twice — "be⁺ doers of the word, and not hearers only, deluding your⁺ own selves" (Jas 1:22), with the picture of the man who looks at himself in a mirror and immediately forgets what he looks like (Jas 1:23-24); and "If any man thinks himself to be religious, while he doesn't bridle his tongue but deceives his heart, this man's religion is useless" (Jas 1:26). James's other line is that a faith that does not act is hypocrisy: "if a man says he has faith, but doesn't have works... If a brother or sister is naked and may be in lack of daily food, and one of you⁺ says to them, Go in peace, be⁺ warmed and filled; and yet you⁺ don't give them the things needful to the body; what does it profit?" (Jas 2:14-16). John applies the same lens to four of the church's own confessions in turn. To say we have fellowship with him and walk in darkness is to lie (1 John 1:6). To say we have no sin is self-deception, and to say we have not sinned is to make God a liar (1 John 1:8, 10). To say "I know him" and not keep his commandments is to be a liar (1 John 2:4). To say "I love God" and hate one's brother is to be a liar (1 John 4:20). The hypocrite, in John's letters, is not a special class of person — he is the believer who says one thing and lives another, and the verdict is the same in each case.
Names That Live and Are Dead
The end of the canon names the corporate form of the same thing. The Christ of the Apocalypse to Sardis: "I know your works, that you have a name that you live, and you are dead" (Rev 3:1). To Smyrna: "I know your tribulation... and the blasphemy of those who say they are Jews, and they are not, but are a synagogue of Satan" (Rev 2:9). The verdict is the prophets' verdict and Jesus' verdict and the apostles' verdict in one. What survives the inspection is what the law and the prophets and the Lord and the apostles all asked for: a worship that comes from the heart, a fast that lets the oppressed go free, a tithe that does not skip justice, a confession of sin, a love of the brother, a faith that has works.