Hypocrites among Us

I know it is very easy to be critical of the church today, and granted, there are a lot of things wrong with it. But don’t forget this: When Jesus Christ walked this earth, He started only one organization, and it is called the church. And He said, “The gates of Hades shall not prevail against it” (Matthew 16:18).

Some might say, “Yeah, but there are a lot of hypocrites in the church.”

Guess what? That isn’t new. There were hypocrites in the first-century church as well. In fact, one of our Lord’s handpicked disciples turned out to be a hypocrite. So yes, hypocrites and hypocrisy are nothing new. That is not to even mention that in the early church, there were rivalries, heresies, and some flat-out immorality.

Jesus told an interesting parable that we call the parable of the wheat and tares. In this story, He talks about a farmer who goes and sows wheat in his field, and at night his enemy comes in and sows tares, or weeds, among the wheat. Now the tares Jesus was describing are also known as darnel seeds, which look exactly like wheat initially and even through the growth process. But in the end, the darnel, or the tare, uproots the wheat. Jesus was saying, “You’re going to have the fake right next to the real, the counterfeit right next to the genuine.” The tares and the wheat will grow together, and we won’t necessarily know who is who and what is what until that final day.

Yes, there will be hypocrites among us. Only God knows who they are. But let’s also remember that every one of us has moments of hypocrisy. What we need to concern ourselves with is whether we are hypocrites and whether we are living godly lives.