"Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like white-washed tombs, which on the outside appear beautiful, but inside they are full of dead men's bones and all uncleanness."
A lot of people today like to define hypocrisy this way: saying one thing but doing another. Which does sound hypocritical. But the problem with that definition is that it makes all of us hypocrites. All of us have moral ideals and aspirations. None of us live up perfectly to even the standards we set for ourselves, and of course, no one lives up to God's standard which is sinless perfection (see Romans 3:23). All of us fail on a regular basis to live completely up to the moral and ethical standards we proclaim, if we are honest with ourselves. So by the current, popular definition, we're all hypocrites! But Jesus has a different definition.
In Matthew chapter twenty-three, Christ speaks out against the hypocrisy of the "scribes and Pharisees" (v. 2). These were two of the established religious leadership groups in Christ's day. The scribes were in charge of copying and maintaining the sacred scrolls of the Old Testament, while the Pharisees ruled over the synagogues and taught the masses about strict adherence to the Law. Jesus says that "...they say things and do not do them" (v. 3), which seems to support the popular definition today of hypocrisy. But as one studies this chapter more, it becomes clear that their problem was not just an occasional, unintentional moral lapse, but a continual, intentional desire to cover up who they really were. These religious leaders wanted to appear to be something they were not.
The reference to "whitewashed tombs" would be very familiar to the Jewish people in Christ's day. Before the major feast day of Passover, the tombs along the road to Jerusalem were painted white so that pilgrims coming to the holy city could easily avoid them. Touching or even coming too close to a tomb would render them ceremonially unclean, and thus, unfit to participate in the Passover. The white tombs looked beautiful, but on the inside was death and decay.
Jesus is saying that the scribes and Pharisees deliberately painted themselves as "righteous", but inside they were full of "lawlessness" (v. 28), and they knew it. So Christ's definition of hypocrisy is someone pretending to be righteous, when they know they are not, and they have no intention of doing what is right. This goes along with the meaning of the word "hypocrite" as "one who pretends" or "puts on a mask".
All of us as Christians are going to fail to completely live up to the standards of God's Word on a regular basis. This does not make us a hypocrite. It means we are still in the flesh, and an unfinished product. This is not an excuse for us to sin, but when we do, and we will, we should admit it and strive to do better with God's help. Pretending that we don't sin or have it all together spiritually-speaking when we don't is hypocrisy. Some Christians are guilty of this, but many are not. If you are in the latter category, do not get down on yourself or let people call you a hypocrite. But humbly keep striving to live for your Lord!
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