“HIGH AND MIGHTY ME”

11 ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. 12 I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I get.’

Luke 18:11-12

Some say that one of the reasons why modern Christianity is losing influence in society is that the church is full of hypocritical people. According to a Barna study, only 1 out of every 7 of today’s self-identified Christians seem to represent the actions found to be consistent with those of Jesus. In other words, most professing Christians do not necessarily demonstrate Christ-likeness. Source: https://www.barna.com/research/christians-more-like-jesus-or-pharisees/

The question is, what are we going to do about it?

In our opening blog for this series, we learned that while we find it relatively easy to spot hypocrisy in others, it is a dreadful task trying to detect it in ourselves.

From this point on, we will be looking into five unmistakable signs of hypocrisy.

You think highly of yourself.

I can’t think of a better way to describe a hypocrite than the Pharisee in Jesus’ parable found in Luke 18.

Jesus’ parable is addressed to people who think highly of themselves while looking down on others. Jesus’ use of a Pharisee as an object lesson would mean that He is taking aim at a particular social class: the religious elite. This Pharisee is hyper-religious—very passionate about public prayer but he isn’t really talking to God. His mouth is full of praise but his heart is far from God. He boasts of his moral “superiority” over the tax collector and highlights his religious achievements.

The Pharisee is, without a doubt, very religious. He prays; he fasts and even gives tithes. When you look at him, you can’t help but notice his religious zeal. What’s the problem, then? The problem is that his prayer is no more than an act. He is doing it for a show. Instead of measuring himself using God’s moral standards, he compares himself with less religious people. What makes it worse is that he feels good about being higher up.

Did you notice him using the personal pronoun “I” five times? If anything, it shows you the true state of his heart: he is conceited, self-sufficient, and quite frankly, full of himself.

Though we’d hate to admit it, we sometimes act more like Pharisees than Jesus. We love to point out others’ flaws while we call attention to our achievements. We avoid spending time with “sinners” and make our groups exclusively “Christian.” Instead of being intentional in helping others, we choose to “mind our own business.”

I hope and pray that God would show our Pharisaical tendencies and give us the strength to replace them with a Christ-like frame of mind. May we take a look inside our hearts and submit to God any hypocritical attitude we are fostering.

Pursue the Savior today!