The hypocrite is the one who accuses someone of being a hypocrite for trying after a fall. In the Bible-centered moral worldview, everyone is a sinner, everyone has fallen, and everyone needs redemption. The message therein is one of hope: Knockdown is not knockout—game over, down for the count—just because someone messes up. It’s not true about you nor anyone else.
Jesus’s message is that we each have a future, no matter how much we mess up. The one who see a future, seeks forgiveness, seeks to forgive, gets up keeps going, and doesn’t lay down to die just because of the past—that person grasps the point of the Bible.
How then can Bible-believers claim that anyone is a hypocrite for pressing forward and encouraging others with hope?
Too often, the unspoken rule of “Churchianity” is presumed, permanent, prerequisite perfection. But, we don’t reach perfection in this life. Cannibalization of proven mistake-makers proves whether a Sunday morning religion prays to a false god, not the God of the Bible.
Silas Sheffer said, “If I was going to have a view as controversial as ‘Earthly Perfection’ I would have kept it to myself.”
I myself don’t claim to be any kind of moral authority. I know that I’m not perfect, but I want to be. So, we have a litmus test that divides the morally upright from the posers: Is a moral value something one keeps perfectly or something one strives for, knowing that one can never measure up? Bible-based morals don’t tell us to pretend to have arrived, but to continue on until we have. Nothing will get in the way of your journey in Jesus as much as judging others—either for their mistakes or judging others for judging others.
The only true hypocrite is the one who truly thinks he is not. The accusation of “hypocrisy” is an old tactic of the “Churchianity” leader who protects his own position by maintaining a group think mob mentality, publicly lynching anyone who errs. It is also a tactic of non-Christians in public forums who loudly reject Jesus, accusing Christians merely because Christians are their enemies. These are the biggest hypocrites of all.
Titus 3:3-10