Love Without Hypocrisy
by James Lincoln on October 15, 2006
Years ago our family traveled across the country in our station wagon to spend our summer vacations with Debby's family in New York. We were too poor to fly and our vacation time was short. So, we scooted across America about as fast as legally possible. The down side was that we were in such a hurry we missed a lot on the way. We would pass Yellowstone and tell the girls, "Quick, take a picture. That's Yellowstone National Park on your left or...If you look fast you'll be able to see the Grand Tetons! Or... "Hey look...roll down the window... there's the Blue Ridge Mountains!" We were so focused on getting to our destination as fast as possible that that we just missed a lot of great places.
Beginning in verse nine, Paul runs off (in rapid fire) thirteen exhortations all under the heading of sincere love. There are two ways you can look at these. You can speed past them about seventy miles per hour and say, "Hey, quick...look at these; aren't those nice. But don't get out of the car," or you can stop, explore and take your time to look around. Because I'm driving the bus on this trip I want us to spend enough time to taste and see what God has put before us. When you drive through a fast food restaurant you're in a hurry; you want your meal fast. But when you sit down at one of Debby's meals or Stan's Swedish meatballs there's no hurry. There you want to linger, sit back and savor everything. So let's explore these exhortations and ask what they mean. What difference do these exhortations make in your lives? As you read them slow down and pray. Ask God to fill us up with his Holy Spirit. Without God's help and grace we'll miss the mark. Now this list is tightly connected to the things Paul has been saying about worship and the gifts of the Spirit. Authentic worship is really more about being a living sacrifice or a sacrificial offering that was totally consumed than it is about a worship service where we preach, pray and sing. When the church offers its services the way the consumer-market offers commodities by exchanging goods and services for one's participation or giving... it ends up turning worship on its head....because authentic worship is about being consumed as a living sacrifice not consuming. Paul's still talking about this. The last thing Paul wants is for the church to become theater even if it's excellent theater. The Greek word Paul uses for 'hypocrisy' comes right out of the Greek theater. He's teaching us that worship is about transforming your mind, getting humble, getting involved, using the gifts God has given you to build up the body; it's about drinking in the mercies of God and about offering yourself up to love others as Christ loved you. Jesus loved us before we were willing and able to love Him back. There was no immediate exchange for goods and services in his love. Just as the gifts of the Spirit are manifestations of Christ's work among us, so this list is a manifestation of the way Christ is and loves among us through the way we love one another. So, we want to know then what this love is all about and how it shows up with us. He says in v.9,
"Let love be without hypocrisy. Abhor what is evil; cling to what is good." Rom 12:9-10
LOVE: Agape
The word Paul uses for love is the Greek word agape. The early Christians took this word which was the least used of all the words for love and they filled it up with the connotations of God's love for us in Christ. It was so rarely used it didn't come with a lot of baggage. And it worked. Although rare, it was used for love for God as well as the love of God. It was also used for the love expressed between a husband and a wife. It refers to a sacrificial love. The best definition I have read for agape is that agape love exists when the satisfaction, joy, safety and security of another means more to you than your own. When we say that we love someone...if we love them with agape love ...then we will place their safety, their joy, their security and well being above our own. John 3:16 captures it, "For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son..." He loved by placing the satisfaction and joy of the world above His own. This definition of love is consistent with all Paul has been saying about authentic worship. Loving is about giving; it's about being consumed and being spent in the pursuit of another's joy and well being. It's one of those Christian paradoxes that's counterintuitive to consumerism. As a Christian you gain your life by losing it. In this respect this is frightening to us. Because we are afraid that if we give, spend time in or become consumed in loving or serving we will lose or miss out. From a consumer point of view the widow who gave her last mite to the service of God was stupid and foolish. However, it was full of love and faith. I have a feeling she gained her life and didn't lose anything at all.
We can now document pretty accurately the relational curve in marriage. At the beginning there is the "In love" stage. The truth is that most are in love with a dream wish about what this person is going to do for you and be. They are in love with the idea or dream they have of what the relationship is going to be like. After a few years reality sets in. To some degree we are in love with that image. When Debby and I started dating I asked her if she wanted to go see a hockey game. She said, "Sure!" Not long after we were married I asked her if she wanted to go to the hockey game. She said, "No thank you." Before we were married she asked me if I wanted to go shopping with her at the mall. I said, "Certainly my beloved, nothing could be more fun than to go shopping with you at the mall." After we were married she asked if I wanted to go shopping with her at the mall. I said, "No thank you...I think I'll watch some hockey on TV." What happened? Reality set in.
Often a couple can keep the "in love" stage going for a few years. However, somewhere between year four and seven the "in love" experience is severely tested. Then, the decision is, "Are we going to love each other for who each other really is?" About half in America say, "No." that's too painful. To lay aside what you want to secure another's joy and security is painful. By nature we don't like this. But this is love. This is what the apostle meant when he said that "Love will grow cold." Love happens when you pursue your joy in the joy that you can serve up to another. It exists when the satisfaction, joy, safety and security of another is more important than your own. Paul is warning us about the failure of love.
There's something else you need to know. If you lay hold of this and love one another through that stage in a marriage or any other committed relationship you almost always discover a love that is richer, deeper, stronger, safer and more filled with joy than you could have ever imagined. Now, my knees still ache when I go into a shopping mall. I hate that sound of clothes hangers sliding across the metal racks; it's worse than finger nails on a chalk board. And Debby still doesn't care for hockey. But our love for each other has never been stronger and sweeter than it is today.
Love: Without Hypocrisy
The first way Paul address agape love here is to point out that agape is love without hypocrisy. The word translated 'sincere' is the word anupokritos or 'without hypocrisy'. It word for hypocrisy literally means to cloak or to put on a false mask. Actors wore hupkritos in the theater. Now of all the words he could have used to describe love why this? Why not say, "Let love be constant or kind..." I think the answer is found in v.3. "Don't think too highly about yourself..." This doesn't mean to wallow in self condemnation. It means to get so full of Jesus and His mercies that you become self-forgetful and your life begins to orbit around Jesus and not you. You become less concerned about the image you're cutting and more captivated by Jesus and the riches of His grace.
Now this is the exact opposite of hypocrisy. The hypocrite is absorbed in himself. "How will I appear to others? How can I create a good impression of myself to others?" And in the pursuit the externals the cloak can become more important than the reality. So, Paul is calling us to love each other as Christ loved us. However, serving ourselves and pursuing our own interests can be masked with the appearance of serving or loving others.
When we were married I told Debby that I loved her. I learned that I needed her more than I was even capable of loving her. My love for her was amazingly immature and shallow. It was sincere... but it was sincerely selfish. Now that just goes to show you how gracious and merciful God was to let me marry Debby. It must also say something about how many jewels He wants to give Debby in her crown in heaven. So our love can be hypocritical. We can say that we love others when in reality we are pursuing our own selfish ambitions and actually using others in that pursuit.
Jesus and Hypocrisy
Let's look at two things Jesus said about hypocrisy and see if we can get closer to God's heart and mind about this.
The first is in Matt 23:27-28:
"Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of dead men's bones and everything unclean.
or ...Mtt.15:7,
"You hypocrites! Isaiah was right ..."'These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me."
Jesus said hypocritical love is about trying to make the outside look better than the inside. Jesus said, "Woe to you hypocrites. You clean the outside of the cup..but inside you are full of greed and self indulgence."
You can do some pretty great things with the motive of making yourself look good. Paul says in 1Cor. 13:3 "If I give away all that I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love (agape) I gain nothing." So hypocrisy shows up when we hide internal sin by putting up a moral/external front.
Why do we do it? Well, Jesus said that it's an attempt to get praise or to have others make much of us. Mtt. 6:2 "When you give to the needy, sound no trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogue and in the streets that they may be praised by others." Jesus said the same about prayer, "They pray... that may be seen by others." What drives hypocrisy? We want others to praise us and think much of us. It's posturing. If flows out of a heart that lives for its own glory instead of God's glory. It comes from a heart that seeks the praise of others before it seeks the praise of God. It's putting ourselves in the place of God and wanting what really only belongs to Him. Affirmation is a good thing but only if it is in the right relationship to the Creator.
A second way hypocrisy can show up is when we try to mask our own flaws by drawing attention to other people's flaws.
I can remember a Saturday morning men's meeting a number of years ago when some men were going on and on about the how horrible pornography was and how terrible those who produced it were. All of this of course is true. Then one of our church leaders who was overhearing this conversation said, "Men, I'm embarrassed to admit this. But my problem is not with them. My problem is that there is still something in me that likes it." That changed the dynamic of the meeting real fast. He realized that simply pointing out the flaws of another will not dismiss our own flaws. Wouldn't it be a good thing if politicians from both parties appreciated this?
In Luke 6 42: Jesus said, "How can you say to your brother, 'Brother, let me take out the speck that is in your eye,' when you yourself do not see the log that is in your own eye? The Jesus said, "You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take out the speck that is in your brother's eye." Hypocrisy can put the finger on another to take the focus off of us. Instead of owning up to my own responsibility I'll hit my spouse with a salvo of her problems.
In Luke 3, Jesus heals a woman who had been bent over for over eighteen years. Now I want you to think about this woman and picture what life must have been like for her if she had been bent over for eighteen years. What if the eighteen years represented the first eighteen years of her life? Picture her bent over and only seeing the dust and feet for all those years. Imagine what it was like for her to not receive and give hugs like we do. What was it like not to dance, jump rope or play games. Did others make fun of her? Did they mock her or tease her? Did they befriend her? Did young men desire her the way they desired and pursued other young women? How do you think she felt? Out of compassion Jesus healed this woman. Imagine what it must have been like for her to have straightened up for the first time, her head lifted up to the sky and arms outstretched... to hug freely, dance, run and jump and twirl?
Jesus healed her on the Sabbath, so the ruler of the synagogue was angry and said, "There are six days in which work ought to be done. Come on those days and be healed, and not on the Sabbath day." Then the Lord Jesus answered him, "You hypocrites! Does not each of you on the Sabbath day untie his ox or his donkey from the manger and lead it away to water it?"
Why was the man's zeal for the Sabbath hypocritical? He wasn't seeking the praise of men. What was he doing? He was using a zeal for a religious rule to cover up his gross lack of zeal for compassion toward another human being. His anger with her diverted the righteous indignation he deserved. He had more compassion for the donkey than for this woman. But even his compassion for his donkey was self serving. Oxen and donkeys weren't pets. They were farm animals and a means to make money. And no rule... even the rule of the Sabbath got in the way of making money (cf. Lk.16 14). So his anger at her covered up his own greed. His hypocrisy is in the fact that he sees the speck in another's eye and yet grossly misses the log in his own.
Hypocritical love covers or cloaks what is really on the inside by dressing up the outside and it spends more time in pointing out the flaws in others than it does in admitting the flaws within our own hearts.
OK. What do these things mean for us and how should we act in light of this command to let love be without hypocrisy?
Acknowledgement and transparency
First, we must recognize that we're all tempted to be hypocritical in these ways. Why would Paul make this his first exhortation about if it wasn't a real issue? At times we all want to make ourselves look better on the outside than we are on the inside. I suppose pride or shame are at the root of it. How can we be filled with His Holy Spirit when we are so full of ourselves? C.S. Lewis wrote that by comparison to Pride all other sins are like fleabites. To love without hypocrisy is a call to humility and a call to openness and transparency. It really means to see things the way they really are and admitting that's the way they are. Jesus came to heal the sick not to call the healthy. If you are so healthy that you don't need a savior then Jesus has nothing for you. God is about liberating us from some dream world of ourselves. But, you must begin by asking God to help you to be a little more honest with yourself today than you were yesterday. And ask him to make you more transparent especially with those who love you the most. Someone said that whatever you hide is what you're addicted to. All things are transparent and open before God. You never hide anything from God. He knows all and through faith in Jesus He forgives us. He really does. Love without hypocrisy is loving each other honestly and transparently.
I have a pastor friend in Pennsylvania who shared with me about a Wednesday night prayer meeting that attracted scores of teenagers. There was no program, no electric guitars and no drums. There was no theater and no video and loud music. He asked the kids why they kept coming back. They said,
"You know, pastor... this is the only place we can go where people are honest with their real struggles and sins in life. You people share your struggles and even sins openly and transparently. You ask God to forgive you and each other to forgive you. There isn't anywhere where we can go where this happens. We feel like we can be honest here and be loved here in spite of our sins and struggles."
Sincere love happens when we stop focusing on the speck in other people's eyes and start taking out the log in our own. What is the emphasis in your conversation? Is it more about the failings of others or more about learning how to get your own act together? Ask this, "Lord, am I using a focus on exposing the sins of others as a cloak to hide my own sins from myself and others? Lord, where do I need to repent and change?" This doesn't mean that we go underground about the corrections our church and society need to make. It just means that we approach them with a common humility that we are all sinners saved by the miracle of God's grace. We don't come to anyone with a position of superiority. There is common ground at the cross.
Dr. John White, as medical student in England was required to do a service in a venereal disease. On his first day at the clinic he overslept and arrived late. The doctor's entrance in the back was locked. So, he had to go in the front where there was a long line of patients waiting to receive free medical help for their conditions. Dr. White walked up to the front of the line and spoke to the receptionist and said, "I'm Doctor White and I was supposed to report here at 8 o'clock but I'm a bit late." She said, "I sorry you'll have to get in the back of the line and wait like everyone else. He said, "Oh...But you don't understand. I'm a doctor!" She said, "I'm sorry doctor.... it can happen to any of us. You'll have to get in the back of the line and wait with the others."
At that moment he realized that he was outraged because he was being identified with the sinners in the line. He was indignant that he would be considered in the same group as these despicable sinners.
Then he remembered another scene where people were waiting in line. It happened two thousand years ago. They were sinners waiting to be baptized by John as a sign of their sinfulness and their need for repentance and cleansing. And in that line stood Jesus...waiting with the rest of the sinners to be baptized. Although he was sinless, spotless and perfect and had never once broken any commandment....there he was standing in line and freely taking on himself the reputation of a sinner and bearing their shame as if it was his own. Dr. White was embarrassed to be associated with these sinners. Jesus left heaven... not only to be seen with sinners like us but to become the most notorious sinner of them all. He who knew no sin became sin for us that we might become the righteousness of God. He loved us by taking on himself that which was stealing our joy, safety, security, and well being. He took it away from us and took it on himself so that we would be free...beloved, so that we could be straightened up. He made our satisfaction and security more important than his own.
And because of that grace and love that pursued our joy more than his own we can be forgiven, transparent, and we can forgive without minimizing our own sins by pointing out the sins of others. Sincere love, you see, covers a multitude of sins. You can be transparent before God because Jesus makes you safe with Him as you really are and forgives us anyway. We can bear with the sins of others because Jesus has been more than forbearing with us. By His love we can love others by pursuing their joy, safety, satisfaction and security more than our own because we know that Jesus is always doing the same for us flawlessly, eternally, irrevocably, and triumphantly. If God is for us no one can stand against us. So, beloved let's love one another without hypocrisy for His glory and our great joy.