hypocrisy

Everyone is a Hypocrite

by Ben Zornes · Jul 2, 2025

Every human is a hypocrite. Say you were to stand outside a busy shopping mall in order to survey the broad population about their moral framework. Ask people what they believe to be right or wrong, what their primary moral guidelines are, and what they believe evil to be you would certainly get a great deal of variety. However, if you followed up that survey with a question about whether they have perfectly kept their own moral framework, every honest participant would need to admit that they broke their own moral code.

Culturally, we live in a world governed by rules and regulations. Some of these laws are better and more biblical than others, but we are surrounded by a dense forrest of litigiousness. But though we have our rules, we commonly break those rules while insisting we are keeping the spirit of those rules.

Yet if we really took a long and honest look at ourselves, we not only are breakers of the letter of the law, we are breakers of the spirit of the law. Our hypocrisy is deep and wide. It transcends lines of liberal and conservative, male and female, and national borders. It is the condition of man. He holds up standards for others that he himself does not attain to. You are, on your own, blackmailed by your own moral inconsistency.

This is why the new birth which is offered to us in Christ is of absolute necessity. The Christian is one who acknowledges their great sinfulness, but not to bemoan it or wallow in it, but to confess it, be rid of it through the forgiveness which the Father gives, and to overcome it by the Spirit’s power at work in us. Only by honest confession is the blackmail of your moral hypocrisy rendered powerless.

Hypocrisy and God’s Reputation

by Ben Zornes · Apr 15, 2024

Hypocrisy is one of the most hated sins. There are Pride parades, Pro-Choice rallies, Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, and anxiety support groups. But you’ll have a hard time recruiting folks to show support for “Hypocrites Rights.”

Hypocrisy is, of course, claiming to hold up some virtue or set of virtues while secretly violating those virtues. Some examples come to mind. The pro-life politician who is exposed for making his mistress get an abortion.The Pastor using tithe dollars for secret trips to Vegas. The Instagram trad-wife whose perfectly curated online image doesn’t match her real life image of laziness in homemaking and bitter snappiness in mothering. All such hypocrites will soon find their secrets out in the open, and their hidden sins made public, and God will judge it.

But amongst Christians there is a silly but dangerous temptation when it comes to hypocrisy. We know how we ought to live and the standards we ought to uphold. And if we have sinned in some arena we are tempted to think we must protect God’s reputation by not confessing our sin, bringing it into the light, and making things right. We reason that we wouldn’t want to embarrass God with a confession of our sin. As if He would need to rush a PR statement to the press when one of His people confess their sin.

God has already informed us what His position is in regards to confessed sin: He delights in mercy. That’s why there’s a bloody cross after all. He gives that mercy to those who humble themselves and confess their sin. So don’t hide your sin out of fear of what it might do to God’s reputation. His mercy is wide enough to swallow up your worst sin, and for His holiness to remain unsullied.

Our pride convinces us that God needs us to hide our sins, so as to not to bring shame upon Him. But He calls us to bring it out into the light, denounce it, be ashamed of it so that by His mercy our shame might be turned into the uplifted face of those who have received forgiveness. So then, we ought to be swift to confess our sins, so that by God’s grace we might be kept from presumptuous sins in order that we might not give way to great transgressions. If our desire is to bring honor to name of the Lord we must remember that the Word teaches us that it honors Him when we confess our sin and sinfulness. So then put your certain hope in Him, trusting in His character and nature which is a deep ocean of tender-mercies to those who put their trust in Him. This is your only hope in life and in death, that God has made a way for your sins to be confessed and for Him to forgive them all without compromising His righteousness.

When the Church is a Joke

by Ben Zornes · Mar 21, 2022

The enemies of the church have effectively wielded the weapon of irreverent mockery. Pop culture has relentlessly pilloried sacred things as objects of scorn for decades. Sit-coms make dads the butt of every joke. Late-night comedians guffaw over puritanical sexual ethics. These modern court jesters mocked sacred things, with no reverence shown whatsoever.

But their irreverent jokes landed because the church made a mockery of these things first. We disdained holy things, and treated them as common. We showed up in our Sunday best, after Friday nights of drunkenness under the guise of Christian liberty. We sang the songs of Zion, while our eyes were scanning the saints with lust, or envy, or pride. We made a joke out of these holy things, long before Pixar Studios did. When the saints gather in God’s house with a breezy & casual air––coming as if for entertainment, for making business connections, for hooking up, for presenting ourselves as respectable citizens––we tell the world a profane joke.

Of course, at the same time this was happening the world introduced new “sacred spaces” which aren’t to be scorned. You must speak with hushed & reverent tones about women’s rights, racial equality, the universal right to healthcare, how US fossil fuel (and US fossil fuel alone) will destroy our planet, man descended from primordial goo. The church’s sacrilege of these heavenly courts has led to a sanctifying of the courts of fornication, greed, a blood-shed.

Which is why you must not forsake the assembly of the saints. But what you must forsake is coming here as a joke. You must sanctify the Lord, in your heart. You must do as you just said a moment ago you were going to do, and lift up your heart in true joyful faith to the God who redeemed you.

We’ve treated our King’s courts like an ordinary occasion. We’ve mouthed the words, we’ve played the part, we’ve mimed the motions, all with our fingers crossed behind our back. Our sin we’ve sanctified, while God’s glory we’ve spurned. In many ways we have reverenced the glory of man, the majesty of man’s kingdoms, the splendor of man’s exploits; while on the other hand we haven’t marveled at the Savior which sought us and bought us. We’ve knelt before Nebuchadnezzar, instead of standing up to him. But God sees the inward motions of our hearts, He sees our motives for coming into His courts, and He sees when our heart is far from Him even as we lip-sync the right words.

But the potency of the Gospel is that it mocks all forms of self-righteousness. The Gospel flips all such sacrilege on its head. Instead of mocking true righteousness, it mocks all our feeble attempts to sanctify our sin and folly. The Gospel, then, makes a joke of all our hypocrisy. It tells miserable sinners, that they have been made clean by the Savior. This Good News is worth the deepest belly laugh of all.