Luke 6:42

THE SIN OF HYPOCRISY

‘Thou hypocrite.’

Luke 6:42

The only sin for which He did not make a plea, or a palliation, a pardon, or a prayer was hypocrisy.

I. The hypocrisy of the Pharisees.—Eight times—in one discourse—Christ uses the strong denunciation, ‘Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!’ Eight times! The first ‘woe’ because they would not themselves accept the Gospel, and prevented others. The second, because they covered wrong and covetousness with a show of long prayers. The third, not because they made proselytes, for that every one who holds the truth is bound to do, to proselytise and bring others to what he believes to be true, but because they made their proselytes bad, and worse than themselves. The fourth, because they destroyed proportions of things, made little things more binding than great things; the gold greater than the Temple; the gift greater than the altar. The fifth, because they were punctilious in small duties, and made them an excuse for neglecting the greater things of ‘judgment, mercy, and faith.’ The sixth because they made outside cleanliness a covering for inside corruption. The seventh, because there was an exterior beauty with an interior death. The eighth, because they were declaring themselves to be the children of—not by descent only but by their likeness to—their persecuting and murderous ancestors! Then, after those eight charges, follows that awful malediction, ‘Fill ye up then the measure of your fathers. Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell?’ Such then was Christ’s definition of hypocrisy.

II. The hypocrisy of Judas.—Very conspicuous among the hypocrites with whom Jesus had to do was Judas, one of Christ’s more immediate disciples; in fact, the treasurer among them. The love of money was his ruin. But in the end there came on him that tremendous revulsion which so often follows sin. In agony and remorse—do not call it penitence—Judas went to the chief priests, and said, ‘I have sinned, in that I have betrayed innocent blood!’ He flung down the thirty pieces of silver upon the ground, and went and hanged himself! So died the hypocrite, plunging deeper, and deeper, and deeper, till he fell, and the suicide went unto his own place!

The fact is Judas had been conversant with great things—with the great things of God. He had been admitted into the secrets of Christ. Now, such as a man’s privilege, and knowledge of Him, so are his temptations.