Meanwhile, when many thousands of the crowd had gathered so that they were trampling on one another, Jesus began to speak first to his disciples, “Be on your guard against the yeast of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy.”
Luke 12:1 NIV
In the Greco-Roman world of the New Testament, a hypocrite was an actor who put on a mask and played a part. An actor is someone who pretends to be someone they are not. And in the world of entertainment, that is OK. Everyone understands the nature of acting.
But hypocrisy, or play-acting, is not limited to entertainers. Most of us are guilty of it, at least to some extent. We hide our true selves behind a mask that protects us and enables us to fit into our group. And we might even have multiple masks that we put on, depending on the group we happen to be in. We might even have been doing this for so long that we forget that we are wearing a mask and start to believe it is our true selves.
When Jesus warned his disciples about the yeast of the Pharisees, it was a warning against religious hypocrisy. They were playing the part of devout, law-abiding Jews. But that mask hid their true nature. In Matthew 23:27-28, Jesus called the Pharisees whitewashed tombs. They looked righteous on the outside, and they believed they were. But they were full of hypocrisy and wickedness on the inside.
Jesus’ warning to us is to guard against that happening in our lives. Don’t just play the part of being a follower of Jesus but remain unchanged on the inside. Instead, allow God’s word and the Holy Spirit to transform your life into the image of Christ. And, when you do, your outside life will reflect the transforming change God is making in your life (2 Cor. 3:18).
