Matthew 23:15
15 Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!
For you travel across sea and land to make a single proselyte, and when
he becomes a proselyte, you make him twice as much a child of hell as
yourselves.
The hypocrite works hard for the “church”, he puts lots of time and effort in. Unfortunately, when someone becomes interested (probably as a result of the hard work of the hypocrite) they encounter a counterfeit gospel. If someone comes looking to hear what God is like, and, instead, they see and learn a message from me about cleaning myself up and modifying my behaviour, then they are worse off than before they walked into the church.
Am I a hypocrite? Would someone learn from me what repentance and faith look like? Or would they learn that it’s saying the right thing that matters? Would they learn that if you change a few little superficial behaviour patterns, then you can basically live as you want?
This does not mean that we should just put more effort into the image you present to new christians, because they will learn to put the emphasis on their image as well. We need to model repentance and faith. We need to let people see an honesty about sin and dependence on grace.
hypocrites series