This might shock people, but I am a sinner. I know, this is difficult to comprehend, but stay with me for a minute. I can be a hypocrite that relies on ministry opportunities to prove my love for God. Too often, my justification sounds a little too close to the Pharisees: “We are descendants of Abraham, and we have never been enslaved to anyone” (John 8:33, CSB).
Of course I’m close to you, God: I’m a student in seminary; I’ve always been in church; I’m a pastoral intern at two churches! Sometimes, we can rely a little too close to our external fruit, and we forget to look at our own hearts.
This isn’t just Jonathan Hatt’s problem. Isaiah, a man in ministry, spent many years thinking the same thing. As God’s mouth-piece, Isaiah did all the external action of calling Israel to repentance. He was a “man of God”; he was calling people to repentance; he did everything external to please God. Did you know he was also a hypocrite?
Look at Isaiah 6, chapters after Isaiah’s beginning of ministry. In this passage, Isaiah becomes face-to-face with the LORD Himself, Isaiah comes into the presence of this holy and righteous God. How does Isaiah respond? “Woe is me for I am ruined because I am a man of unclean lips and live among a people of unclean lips, and because my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of Armies” (Isaiah 6:5, CSB). Isaiah was a religious hypocrite; he saw his sin of hypocrisy before anyone else. Even biblical writers could go through the motions, forgetting the absolute holiness and glory of our Lord.
And yet, it is this same glory of God that turns Isaiah from his sin, because the next verse promises Isaiah that “your iniquity [i.e. evil action] is removed and your sin is atoned for [i.e. forgiven]” (V.7). Isaiah is not left despondent in guilt and shame; he is forgiven so that he can return to God again in loving obedience (v.8)!
You yourself may have experienced an Isaiah-moment, where you see the infinite magnitude of God’s glory and holiness, and you tell yourself: “God, I’m unworthy. I’m too guilty!” Yet our conviction is only the first step; God offers us so much more than just therapy for feeling bad about ourselves. He forgives that guilt of religious hypocrisy, going through the motions of “church” instead of daily coming to God in utter dependence.
You might feel like a hypocrite today; don’t worry, it’s you and me both. Praise God who offers us something so much more in Jesus Christ. Instead of only Isaiah seeing the glory of God, Jesus “became flesh and dwelt among us. We observed his glory, the glory as the one and only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14). Christ himself came in the flesh, and so often the presence of Christ alone is enough for people to fall at their feet and seek forgiveness. Thankfully, Christ came to live the perfect life in our place, died as the perfect sacrifice, and was raised again through the power of God. And it’s based on that fact alone that we can walk in newness of life today.
If you’re suffering from complacency, if you’re suffering from “faking Christianity,” if you feel the weight of guilt and shame, you can bring all of this to Jesus’ feet. The absolute glory of Christ’s death and resurrection for us will always be enough to cure us from religious hypocrisy.