That’s right, I’m a hypocrite. I really don’t like to admit it and I’m not proud of it. In fact, I’m ashamed about it at times, although not nearly as often as I should be. My awareness of my hypocrisy often fluctuates, based on my awareness of my sin and failures or at times based on the raw truth of potential consequences for my hypocrisy. At times, viewing my hypocrisy makes me feel worthless and in the extreme, I respond in hopelessness. Sometimes I feel as if there is no way out, as if there is no way of escaping my own hypocrisy.
But this is a lie. The way out is to confess my hypocrisy, to confess my many sins and all of my failures - to see that God intended for me to come to Him weak, broken, humbled and contrite. Jesus came to save sinners, of which I am chief among sinners. And to see that no-one, not even I myself can deliver me from this body of sin and death that hangs about me. You see, I need to stop trusting in myself and looking to myself to change on my own. I cannot bring about God’s forgiveness through some work, or even deep sorrow, of my own. And I cannot either merit or take away from the work of forgiveness that only Jesus can give to me.
On my own, there is no way out and on my own things would indeed be hopeless. But, I must forsake myself and consider my old sin nature truly dead with the death of Christ. I must trust only in the hope that is in Jesus – that He alone earned my forgiveness, that He alone earned my right to stand before the Holy God as clean and deserving and that He alone has saved me from my sin and the wrath of God.
The Gospel – the Good News that Jesus came to save sinners, is truly for sinners like me. And the good news is that Jesus can make sinners like me saints in His sight. Does this mean I stop sinning? No. Does this mean that I now live a perfectly sinless and holy life every day? No. Does this mean I am no longer aware of my failures and that I no longer fall? No. But this does mean that all of my sins, my failures, my fallings, all of my hypocrisy were placed on Jesus as He hung on the Cross and my entire body of sin was crucified with Jesus – and I consider it as gone as a dead man, who dies only once.
The good news is that all of my hypocrisy deserved punishment and Someone else took it and paid for my hypocrisy by bleeding and suffering for me - by His own death. The good news is that God now looks on me as if I had never sinned, even though He knows the reality, and now He has credited me with all of the right and holy living that Jesus lived. This is good news and this is why a hypocrite like me can stand forgiven and free from the weight of hypocrisy. And this is why a hypocrite like me no longer wants to live like a hypocrite.
Now, by God’s grace I can enter into His presence, where I know I will find mercy and grace to help me in my time of need. Now, I no longer stand before God as a hypocrite – I stand as His child, because I have been made a new creation and I possess in reality the righteousness that I could never earn. Now, I can live in hope and confidence that God loves me and that He will give me His favor to enable me to live a life that is pleasing to Him. Thank God the gospel is for sinners like me.
