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You Are a Hypocrite
2 Corinthians 5:17
You are a hypocrite. Yes, you. You are. You who are watching this Christian devotion on a Christian topic or subject matter, a hypocrite. Let me give you my proof.
Have you ever lied? No? Well, have you ever withheld truth from someone? Let a coworker, a family member, spouse think or assume one thing when you knew that the truth was something else? Have you ever been angry with or at someone else, called them names? Even if those names never slipped past your lips, those mean dirty, foul words at least passed through your mind. Jesus says that is breaking God’s commandment against murder. Jesus says lust is committing adultery with another person in your heart. Disrespect for authority. If you have said, or if you have thought, rude, contemptuous things about our current president, you have broken God’s commandment for authority. And if you haven’t, you haven’t said or thought any of those things about our current president, very likely you said or thought them about the previous administration.
Hypocrisy. Hypocrisy can be defined as when our actions are opposite from what we say about ourselves, or how we identify or label ourselves. You are a hypocrite, but you’re a hypocrite because you’re a child of God. You are God’s son or God’s daughter. You are precious. You are redeemed. You’ve been cleansed and renewed. You see, our hypocrisy isn’t in calling ourselves or thinking of ourselves as Christians. No, no, that’s not it at all. Because Christian, child of God, that’s the true part. That’s the part that God Himself has accomplished and established. That part of us is more solid than the ground beneath us.
Second Corinthians five verse 17 says,
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away. Behold, the new has come. (2 Corinthians 5:17)
Our hypocrisy is our sin. That’s when we are acting like hypocrites. It’s when we break God’s commandments even in our thoughts. That’s when we are being hypocritical. That’s when we’re not being genuine to who we are. A new creation. Because who we really are is God’s, his children. We’ve been purchased and cleansed on Good Friday long ago, buried with him, risen with him three days later on that first Easter Sunday.
We are like Adam and Eve. They’re part of us. Adam and Eve created in God’s image. The children of Israel, once slaves, once captives, but freed and traveling, sojourning to a promised land. We are like Daniel, sleeping soundly and safely while surrounded by predators. Surrounded by lions. We are, like Jonah, kept safe in the deep. Called back to life from the deep. We’re like all those people that Jesus healed from their diseases, and cleansed from their demons, and raised from the death.
We are his people. We are children of the Heavenly Father, waiting for him to return and to remove these last traces of sin. These last traces of hypocrisy that still reside in us. God help us, each and every one of us, to live as we really are, as we’ve been remade to be. God help us for Jesus sake. Amen.
