How We Became Hypocrites
A reflection on Matthew 7: 1-5 and selected passages
How We Became Hypocrites
As I think on Matthew 7:1-5, I can’t imagine anyone sits down and thinks,
“I’m going to use someone else’s sin to avoid dealing with my own.”
Then again, maybe we do.
Honestly though, I think what normally happens is that in our own desires and conclusions, we tend to feel that we are righteous and that our judgment often feels like we are simply choosing good values, defending something honorable, and that we should be doing something to make a stand. Inevitably this is all wrapped up in our own sinfulness.
Yet here in Matthew, I think Jesus is describing someone who considers themselves very good at being right about other people and at the same time has completely exempted themselves from their own standards. You see, the plank in the eye isn’t just a metaphor for obvious hypocrisy. Instead I think it’s a metaphor for a blind spot so big that it has contaminated the whole life.
When you think of an actor, you wouldn’t necessarily say that he’s a liar, nor would you say that he’s just being himself. No, he’s making a point to be something that fits a part. In the same way the hypocritical judgement that we find in Matthew 7 has created a self that fits a narrative or a performance, and over time this created self becomes the only self a man or woman ends up believing and knowing.
My question is how does a man end up here? Indeed I think many people end up here without ever really knowing how they got there. The heart truly is deceitful.
As I thought over this and looked around in scripture, I found four stories that kind of show us how this begins to grow in our lives. Let me show you each.
David and Nathan: Trying To Ignore Sin (2 Samuel 12)
David has committed adultery, he has had Uriah placed at the front of the battle and then pulls the other men back in order to kill him. What he did was awful and I’m not sure how much time David had to sit in this sin after he committed it, the Bible doesn’t say, but it seems like there was a moment of silence. I think it’s safe to say, at one point, the man who wrote “search me, O God, and know my heart” was not very interested in being searched in this moment. Especially because the text says that God sent Nathan. God is really patient, so the idea that he finally sends someone to David tells me that David wasn’t doing well in his own heart.
So, Nathan arrives with a story. I think this was wise on his part because a direct accusation might have triggered defensiveness in David (in the later examples we will see the use of stories as well).
The story goes like this,
“There were two men in a certain city, the one rich and the other poor. The rich man had very many flocks and herds, but the poor man had nothing but one little ewe lamb, which he had bought. And he brought it up, and it grew up with him and with his children. It used to eat of his morsel and drink from his cup and lie in his arms, and it was like a daughter to him. Now there came a traveler to the rich man, and he was unwilling to take one of his own flock or herd to prepare for the guest who had come to him, but he took the poor man’s lamb and prepared it for the man who had come to him.”
David’s response is immediate and filled with rage. He says the man in the story deserves to die, must pay back fourfold, and there should be no pity.
He was probably right to feel such rage. But he is also, in that moment, describing himself perfectly.
What Nathan did was drive David to admit what he knew was righteous in that moment, and in doing so, he forces David to stop covering up with his outward appearance and to face what he was dealing with inwardly. He forced him to see his and admit own sin by showing him the very same sin through another man. He forced him to stop acting.
So I think the first way that a man begins to grow this life of hypocritical judgment is by not recognizing or confessing his own sin for what it is, in all of it’s forms, and even trying to cover it up. Indeed men can be guilty of the worst kinds of sin and yet still, in their minds, have the ability to carry on life as if it never happened. They can get mad at other people’s sins while trying to ignore their own.
Simon the Pharisee (Luke 7:36-50)
Another great story that I think sheds light on this subject, is the story of Simon in Luke 7. We find Jesus at his house and Simon is simply sitting at his own dinner table, hosting what seems like a respectable gathering, and then something unexpected happens. A woman comes in who is from the streets and who seems to have a rough lifestyle. What’s amazing is that Simon keeps his reaction to himself. Which is usually how judgment likes to carry itself.
He says,
“If this man were a prophet, he would know what kind of woman this is.”
He dismisses the woman altogether, questions Jesus, and even considers himself above her. This all happened in a single thought, without a word ever spoken. How wicked we can be. This is contempt. The man has already settled everything in his own mind and heart.
After that thought, we watch Jesus expose Simon. He says,
“A certain moneylender had two debtors. One owed five hundred denarii, and the other fifty. When they could not pay, he cancelled the debt of both. Now which of them will love him more?” Simon answered, “The one, I suppose, for whom he cancelled the larger debt.” And he said to him, “You have judged rightly.” Then turning toward the woman he said to Simon, “Do you see this woman? I entered your house; you gave me no water for my feet, but she has wet my feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair. You gave me no kiss, but from the time I came in she has not ceased to kiss my feet. You did not anoint my head with oil, but she has anointed my feet with ointment. Therefore I tell you, her sins, which are many, are forgiven—for she loved much. But he who is forgiven little, loves little.”
This is basic hospitality, Simon. Yet he did none of it, instead he judges her and Jesus in his heart. But why? Why had Simon omitted all of it, yet the woman, the known sinner, had supplied it all?
The answer was simply that the woman knew her sin, cherished her forgiveness she had received, and in return, she loved. Hypocritical judgment is the exaltation of ourselves, the ignoring of grace, and a lack of compassion and love.
Simon’s self-perception as the “righteous host”required him to keep a certain distance from grace because he would never admit he needed grace. He had formed a log in his judgment. You can’t feel the weight of being forgiven much if you’ve convinced yourself you owe very little. His respectability made him blind and even unreachable.
So the second way this hypocritical judgement grows in our lives is through exaltation of ourselves and the disregard for grace available to others. In this sense, others are never worthy of grace.
The Pharisees: Wrong Motives and Skewed Laws (John 8:1-11)
This story is about the woman caught in the act of adultery and thrown at Jesus’ feet. It’s a very popular story. In Leviticus 20:10 both the man and the woman caught in adultery were called to face judgment. Yet, the man isn’t there as we enter the scene. Which then we have to ask the question, was this whole thing really about justice? I don’t think so. Indeed the woman is more like a prop than anything else. The Pharisees want to catch Jesus doing or saying something wrong. They need a reason to condemn him. Which also speaks to the subject at hand. Jesus was perfect and yet, they were judging him?
Anyways.
As they accuse the woman, Jesus bends down and writes in the dirt. Whatever he writes, the text doesn’t tell us, which I think is so cool. But the content obviously isn’t the point. I think it’s a way to show that he disengages from their accusations entirely before re-engaging on different terms.
He say, “let whoever is without sin cast the first stone.”
This man is cool. He doesn’t dispute their reading of the Law. No, instead I think there’s an unspoken question being asked here,
Are you the right people to be doing this?”
And the answer, apparently, was no. They knew it immediately. In fact they all started leaving. The oldest first, with the longest history of knowing what they’d done and who they were, followed by the others.
The third way hypocritical judgement grows in our lives is through pointing fingers with wrong motives, ignoring parts of the law for our own agenda, and not keeping the law ourselves.
A man needs to ask himself, “Am I the person to really be condemning someone?”
Many people want the law to be kept, but in their own lives, they don’t keep the law themselves. Indeed the Pharisees thought that they were keeping the law when why they brought the woman before Jesus, but in bringing the woman before Jesus they inevitably left out the man, which means they didn’t keep the whole law. Both the man and the woman deserved to be judged. This is the pattern of hypocritical judgment. We pile up all the law for other people when we ourselves don’t keep it, and in most cases we get everything wrong while expecting others to get everything right.
The Pharisee at Prayer: Righteousness as a Competition (Luke 18:9-14)
Lastly, we have Luke 18. This parable is about the Pharisee’s prayer and the tax collector. We read,
“He also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and treated others with contempt: “Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee, standing by himself, prayed thus: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I get.’ But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’ I tell you, this man went down to his house justified, rather than the other. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted.””
The problem with the prayer is that it’s self righteous and built entirely on comparison. The man, again, reveals to us what hypocritical judgement looks like. Indeed we are watching it grow from a heart that compares itself with other men instead of with the righteousness of God.
The tax collector, standing nearby, doesn’t compare himself against anyone. He doesn’t have any judgment towards the other man in the room. He just stands in front of God as he is. Have mercy on me, a sinner. He has no defense, no comparison , no “look at that guy,” and Jesus says he went home justified.
Hypocritical judgement requires someone worse than us to be in the room. It desires its own righteousness and is always in competition with others.
Conclusion
“Judge not, that you be not judged. For with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged, and with the measure you use it will be measured to you. Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when there is the log in your own eye? 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.”
Jesus says we must remove the plank, which implies that after you’ve done that, you can handle the speck. These four snap shots that we’ve covered, I think reveal a lot about the nature of the plank.
Indeed the plank is a hypocritical judgment that grows when we refuse to recognize or confess our own sin, and instead try to cover it up while judging others for the same things. It also grows through exalting ourselves and disregarding the grace available to others while believing we’re above the need of forgiveness. Or when we apply the law to others while excluding ourselves, and we judge with wrong motives instead of with an honest desire for the truth to prevail. More than that, hypocritical judgement involves comparing ourselves to someone worse than us and is built on competition rather than standing honestly before God.
That’s a big plank to have in your eye!
Indeed, more than that, the person who has honestly come to terms with their own sin before God isn’t the disqualified one when it comes to discernment. I don’t think this passage is saying to not judge at all. No, I think a person who knows what they truly are will actually be in a better position for judging, because they’re no longer using it for anything else.
The hypocrite needs to find someone guilty. A guilty person is their only justification and joy. But, the person who has stood before God and been found out and laid bare, they’re just trying to tell the truth in love.
Indeed let us consider this and let us fight against a life that is growing in a hypocritical judgment.
Cling to Christ!