Hypocrisy in the Church (Part II)
Galatians 2:11-14

Perhaps one of the most famous confrontations in Christian history is that between the prominent apostles Paul and Peter as recorded in these verses. Paul’s charge: hypocrisy. It’s a big deal!

1. Hypocrisy is condemned (2:11)
2. Hypocrisy is based on fear (2:12)
3. Hypocrisy is contagious (2:13)
4. Hypocrisy is confusing (2:14a)
5. Hypocrisy is correctable (2:14b)

In this particular passage, verses 11 through 14, Paul is talking history and his point is to the readers in Galatia who are having some spiritual struggles and who are blowing it in various areas. His point is, “You can’t accuse me of making up this gospel, you can’t accuse me of receiving it from the apostles. You can’t accuse me of being in league with them. I am an apostle by my own right. Jesus changed me on the road to Damascus. Jesus commissioned me and they have not given me any new information.”

“As a matter of fact, I’m not even afraid,” Paul says, “to get in the apostles’ face,” in particular, Peter, who was the first of the apostles, the preeminent one. He describes that encounter here beginning in verse 11, accusing Peter, the first among equals, of all things -- hypocrisy. That is the key word we’re going to be discussing as we look at these verses a little more closely.

Galatians 2

¹¹ But when Cephas (Peter) came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, because he stood condemned. ¹² For prior to the coming of certain men from James, he used to eat with the Gentiles, but when they came, he began to withdraw and hold himself aloof, fearing the party of the circumcision. ¹³ The rest of the Jews joined him in hypocrisy, with the result that even Barnabas was carried away by their hypocrisy. ¹⁴ But when I saw that they were not straightforward about the truth of the gospel, I said to Cephas in the presence of all. “If you, being a Jew, live like the Gentiles and not like the Jews, how is it that you compel the Gentiles to live like Jews?”

I mentioned a week ago that I, for one, am relieved to see that Jesus never referred to his disciples as hypocrites, He saved that word, seemingly, for those of the Pharisees and scribes, those who had the law portending to be a certain way with it but were less than genuine. In one real hard-hitting passage in Matthew 23, Jesus pronounces what are called the seven woes upon the Pharisees.

I’m extracting one of them because a woe is an expression of sorrow, of sadness, of demise, of everything going wrong. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites, you are lost on this matter. He uses some interesting word pictures in the 23^rd chapter of Matthew. One of the woes begins in verse 27:

²⁷ Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs, which on the outside appear beautiful, but inside they are full of dead men‘s bones and all uncleanness. So, you, too, outwardly appear righteous to men but inwardly, you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.

A scathing charge, to be sure. We‘re not talking about tombs like where Jesus was buried. We‘re talking about that stone structure called a sepulcher, like a coffin that sat above ground. In the ancient Near East, if someone had the money they could be laid to rest in one of these big coffin-like stone structures. Because there‘s a dead body enclosed, that would become a place of uncleanness.

The outside of the sepulcher or of the tomb would be engraved and painted so that it would appear to be attractive. The reason they painted them white was so that they could be readily seen and therefore avoided. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites. You are like whitewashed sepulchers. You are to be seen for what you are and avoided, lest anyone hanging around you be rendered as unclean as you are.

“Hypocrites” is a hard hitting word as Jesus uses it and as the apostle Paul uses it.” The definition I suggested a week ago for hypocrisy is “beyond play acting.” The word hypocrite comes from the ancient Greek theater where one actor would play several parts by way of putting up a different mask -- one might be happy and one might be sad. The word hypocrite developed from that scenario. By the time of the New Testament, it had changed considerably.

We have to understand that when a Bible word is used, we need to apply it the way the Bible applies it and not the way the world applies it. The world would tell us one thing; the Bible would tell us quite another. Biblically, hypocrisy goes beyond the play-acting thing. It’s not just inconsistent appearance in Scripture, but rather deliberately misrepresenting the gospel for self- serving reasons. This is not talking about a Christian who struggles with his or her walk and someone comes up and says “What a hypocrite. You‘re not doing everything you say.” Who does, except Jesus? That isn‘t what hypocrisy is in Scripture.

The world is wrong about things like judging. The Bible is quite clear that there is right and wrong in moral behavior and that people are called to police their own ranks, so be careful that we don’t buy into that “judge not” stuff. The world loves to call Christians self-righteous. “You self-righteous Christians” is a contradiction in terms. A Christian cannot be self-righteous and be a Christian. A self-righteous person is one who says, “I can drum up my own righteousness” and a Christian is one who says, “I don’t have any righteousness. I have all mine from Jesus.” That’s the difference. The world gets that one wrong. The world gets the word hypocrisy wrong, as though we’re supposed to run around beating ourselves over the head because we have occasional lapses in the Christian inconsistency.  “Oh, no, I’m a hypocrite. I’m like those scribes and Pharisees.” No, that’s what the world would have us believe, but it’s not true. The world also was wrong about Jesus himself.

Hypocrisy is condemned

The apostle says hypocrisy is condemned. “I opposed him to his face because he stood condemned.” Peter, by his actions, was confusing people about eternal issues. That is wrong. He’s condemned because he is misrepresenting the character of God. God had lowered a sheet for him in a vision several times saying, “All foods are clean.” Peter began to live that way but when certain people from Jerusalem showed up he withdrew and separated himself.

He was misrepresenting God’s character, and Paul used a hard word, hypocrisy, for it.

Hypocrisy is often based on fear

Peter was intimidated by those who came from Jerusalem. Jerusalem was the mother church; the Christian church was born in Jerusalem. The apostles all were centered out of Jerusalem. Jerusalem was where Peter lived, where James, the half brother of the Lord, was the head of the church. These fellows show up and Peter became intimidated, wanting to be sure he pleased them, rather than adhere to what he knew to be true.

Hypocrisy is often contagious

Poor behavior is easier when everyone is doing it.

¹³ The rest of the Jews joined him in hypocrisy, with the result that even Barnabas was carried away by their hypocrisy.

That’s a big, big deal for Paul to write because he is writing to the Galatians and his partner on his trip to the Galatians had been Barnabas. It was Barnabas who was in on that entire journey, Barnabas who went to Pisidia and Iconium and Derbe and Lystra, and was considered, by one of those communities of the Galatians, to be like Zeus the god. They had high regard for Barnabas.  Paul is saying, “Look here, even your friend, even my companion, Barnabas, was sucked into this thing.” How tragic could it be?

Barnabas had been Paul’s friend from early on. When Paul, who had been a persecutor of the church, needed someone to trust him in the early church, it was Barnabas who took Paul by the hand when he was still called Saul and said, “This guy is ok.”  It was Barnabas, referred to as the son of encouragement, who was generous enough to sell a big piece of his ranch and donate the money to the apostolic cause.

Barnabas was a good guy and everybody knew him, but even the good guy messed up and play- acted to an extreme along with Peter and the rest. Barnabas caved when he did the math. James, who was the head of the church in Jerusalem, and these companions who had come from Jerusalem to Antioch where Paul and Peter were, were bringing with them a measure of confusion because as Jews it was harder for them to understand that you could be a Christian without going through any of the Jewish rites of passage.

It was hard for them to grasp the notion that you could be a Christian, that you could go to heaven, simply by placing your trust in the Messiah and not worrying about dietary laws, not worrying about circumcision, not worrying about temple issues. They struggled with that and so as a result in the Jerusalem church there was confusion, there was some strife and they knew all about it down in Antioch.  So when these fellow came south, Barnabas looked at them and wondered if he wanted to be a part of their confusion or not.

Unwisely, thinking he was doing the right thing, he withdrew along with Peter and misrepresented the gospel to those who were watching. He compounded their confusion; he didn’t fix it. The problem probably was more among those Jews who were coming down than it was among the Gentiles who were already at Antioch because here they’re coming down and thinking, “When we’re here, it’s ok to eat anything.” That’s what they’re hearing. “I wonder if in Antioch you can eat anything and not get in trouble as Christians?” There’s Barnabas. Barnabas was on that first journey; Barnabas has eaten Gentile food with Gentiles for years without any of the ceremonial issues of the Jews. Barnabas must have it right. Imagine the confusion on those people’s part. Here’s Barnabas saying, “I’m not eating with Gentiles. Not when you folks are here. Now see here, I’ll wash just so, I’ll eat just so, I’m a good rule keeper.”

What has he done? He has confused the beauty of the gospel and now the Jews and even the Gentiles are saying, “Are we supposed to eat just so? Is that part of the Christian package, eating just so? Have we not added something to the gospel? We thought the gospel was pure and simple: All my trust in Jesus only. Salvation by grace through faith plus nothing. What about eating right, or plus being circumcised, or plus observing the temple ceremonial issues. Where do you draw the line?” They’re wondering and Barnabas and Peter and the others were simply confusing them.

What does a Christian look like anyway? Even Barnabas was caught up. Hypocrisy, then, is confusing. I think that has to be the fundamental crime. We should never, ever confuse anybody about the simple and beautiful gospel -- ever.

Jesus came from heaven to earth, took on the form of human flesh and as a perfect man paid our debt to God. He went back to heaven and if we want to go to heaven too we simply put all our trust in Him. Put all our trust in Him and get baptized? No. Plus go to church? No. Plus go to Sunday school? No. Plus dress a certain way? Plus eat a certain way? Plus live a certain way? No! Plus nothing.

It has to stay simple, and these brothers long ago were complicating it and confusing folks and making things worse. Hypocrisy is confusing. Notice in verse 14:

¹⁴ But when I saw that they were not straightforward about the truth of the gospel, I said to Cephas in the presence of all. “If you, being a Jew, live like the Gentiles and not like the Jews, how is it that you compel the Gentiles to live like Jews?”

“I said in front of everybody: ‘Look how inconsistent you are.’” And by God’s grace, Paul helped get rid of a lot of that confusion.

What Peter and Barnabas and the others had done was really put everybody in a very tough spot. Here are the Jews struggling already with this whole issue of adding something to the gospel. Now they’re scratching their heads and saying, “So, dietary laws are necessary?” Peter is thinking, “What about Acts chapter 10? What about that vision that God gave him of the sheet being lowered from heaven with all kinds of unclean creatures on it? Three times Peter was told, “Arise, Peter, kill and eat.” He comes back with, “Oh no, Lord, I’ve never done anything like that.” “It’s ok what I, God, have declared to be clean. Don’t you worry about. It’s mine to declare clean. I declare it to be clean.” He has declared all foods clean. “Peter, you have no business holding back. You eat it. It will not mess you up for heaven. It will not make you un-Christian; it will not make you second class Christian. You just do what’s before you.”

That happened three times. No sooner had he wakened and shaken the cobwebs from his head than the Gentiles showed up from down the coast of Caesarea saying, “We serve this centurion total Gentile. He’s been praying. We’re supposed to come get you so you can come into his house and share the gospel with him.” Peter did, with a clear conscience, as he should have done.

Now what do we do with that? Peter has had a habit. Paul said, “You’ve been eating with Gentiles forever now, it seems. And now these Jews show up and you don’t want to eat with Gentiles any more? You’re a Jew, but you’re living like a Gentile, what are you doing? Trying to compel these Gentiles to live like Jews? Which is it?” And the confusion mounted.

Jews weren’t the only ones at the table. There also were a lot of Gentiles there. Paul has been real clear with them. “Look, you’re a Gentile, you come to salvation the same way as the Jews, by grace through faith. That’s it. Plus nothing.”

“Don’t we have to join something?” No.

“Circumcision?” No.

“Look here, what are you eating? I’ll have some too. See, I’m a Jew and I can eat off your plate. It’s ok. We don’t need these rules.”

The Gentiles say, “We’re on the same level with the Jews?” Yes. Then they see Peter withdraw, and the text is pretty clear. It’s like he drew a line in the sand, stepped across it and said, “I’m not going with those Gentiles any longer.”

What are the Gentiles supposed to think? “Was he lying to me? Am I really a second class Christian now, or do I have to become a Jew? Will somebody please tell me. Will somebody please help me out?”

We have to be so careful here, you and I, that we don’t confuse people about being right with God. So very careful that we don’t say, “You go to heaven by first praying this prayer, then get baptized.” Be careful -- salvation is by grace through faith plus nothing.

The question is not what prayer did I pray, which words did I use, or where did I walk an aisle or any of that stuff. The question is if you were to die tonight and stand before God, and He said to you, “Why should I let you into my heaven?” you would only have one answer and it isn’t because I got the words right. It isn’t because I got baptized or because I grew up in a Christian home, or any of that. It’s because I put all my trust in Jesus only. That’s it.

Sometimes we confuse it like you can only get to heaven by a certain way. Or perhaps, “Oh, so you’re a Christian. If you really want God’s blessing on your Christian life, then you do this and this and God will bless you real good.” There’s a problem with that. We can misrepresent the gospel and erroneously and falsely and perhaps cruelly lead people to believe if you just become a Christian everything will start going well for you.

That’s not only wrong, it’s mean, it’s cruel, and it’s confusing. It’s a horrible misrepresentation of the gospel. I think about Job, who was a bit confused for a while and so were his friends. Their confusion was all surrounding “what does it take to be right with God?” That was their question. His friends were saying to Job, “Everything in your whole life has fallen apart except you still have your wife. That’s it. You don’t have your health and you don’t have your possessions and you don’t have your family. You don’t have anything so you’ve been doing something really wrong because you didn’t get God’s blessing, did you?”

Job said, “No, I’ve been real careful that I get God’s blessing. I was real careful about my sacrifice, about my prayer life. I was doing everything fine and suddenly everything is gone.” They said evidently you weren’t doing everything fine because everything is gone. Job, what you need to do is repent and get right with God and start doing this and start doing that. So it’s the blind leading the blind in a sense, trying to figure out God because the circumstances just didn’t seem to add up for a real believer. Then God showed up and gave them a talking to in a display of power to boot.

Once God showed up, everybody quit asking questions and realized that all the details of this relationship are a distant second to knowing God first of all. He showed up and did away with all questions. Job’s dilemma was cured, not because he got in line with some rules and guidelines, but because he met God and that just cleared everything up. No more confusion.

This is what Paul did in Galatians. He said, and I think this is the key sentence of the entire passage:

 ¹⁴ But when I saw that they were not straightforward about the truth of the gospel, I said to Cephas in the presence of all. “If you, being a Jew, live like the Gentiles and not like the Jews, how is it that you compel the Gentiles to live like Jews?”

Do you see where Paul begins? He says, “This is what’s true about the gospel of Jesus Christ,” and he knows it’s true; he knows there are no rules to keep to get to heaven. He knows that is so, he understands that Jesus alone is sufficient to pay our way to heaven. Paul knows that and he knows that our link to Jesus is simply trusting Him. That’s all. Not impressing Him, not bribing Him, not manipulating Him, not fooling Him, simply trusting Him. Paul said, “Knowing that, I started there with the truth of the gospel.”

Brothers and sisters, that’s where we need also to begin, What do we know to be true about the gospel and we go from there. All the rules that we may want to adopt ought to take their proper place in light of the truth of the simple gospel. He stood first there and then he moved on to its effects. They weren’t walking straightly. The gospel is going one way and they’re going another. He said, “I brought them back to the truth. I pulled out the map and laid it in front of their faces and said, ‘This is how God has done it, where are you?”

I think an excellent illustration of that is Romans 14 because in the church in Rome, to whom Romans was written, there were at least two kinds of Christians there. He characterizes two kinds in Romans 14, he calls them the weak and the strong. Probably they were the Jews and the Gentiles, the Jews with their rules and their structure and the Gentiles with their freedom.

This is what he does, if you follow Paul’s argument in Romans 14. He says it’s very, very critical that you two groups learn to get along and this is how you do it. You don’t do it by adopting the same rules, that won’t work. You do it by embracing the same God, that will work. He says in Romans 14:

1 Now accept the one who is weak in faith, but not for the purpose of passing judgment on his opinions. 2 One person has faith that he may eat all things, but he who is weak eats vegetables only.

He thinks he will please God if he keeps these rules. Some people are there. Howard Hendricks, who has been a teacher for 50 years at Dallas Seminary and a wonderful Bible teacher conference speaker, speaking of his own marriage as an illustration -- he had been married for many years -- “When my wife and I were first married,” Hendricks says, “there were all kinds of rules. You need to call me, you need to check in, you need to tell me, and so forth. But the longer we were married the more those rules weren’t needed any more. Until now, having been married for five decades or more, we don’t have any rules. We just know. We love one another and we don’t need rules any longer to accomplish the same thing it used to take rules to do.”

The point being as you grow in relationship, the rules aren’t as necessary. That’s what Paul is saying here in Romans 14. The behavior may amount to the same, but not because you’re keeping a rule, but because you’re loving the Lord and there is a difference. It’s a difference that most of us must grow toward. That’s Paul’s point in Romans 14. He says, “Let not him who eats regard with contempt him who does not eat, let not him who does not eat judge him who eats.” Why? Because God has accepted him.

Do you see what he is doing? He’s taking the problem back to the person of God. He’s taking it back to the big picture, saying if God has accepted them, that’s all you really need to know. “Do not judge the servant of another,” he says. Jesus shed his blood for, bought and paid for that person, either that person who is a rule keeper or that person who is not. That’s all you need to know. That’s where it begins.

¹⁷ For the kingdom of God is not eating or drinking, but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.

It’s God. It’s knowing Him. It’s being devoted to Him. It’s embracing Him. It’s obeying Him. It isn’t in the rules we come up with.

Paul in Galatians takes his hearers back to the truth of the gospel, saying we start there and from there we get our guidelines.

Hypocrisy is correctable

The apostle stood up, seeing they were not walking straight, remembering the beauty of the simplicity of the gospel of Jesus and said,

If you, being a Jew, live like the Gentiles and not like the Jews, how is it that you compel the Gentiles to live like Jews?”

What is he doing? I sketched three steps to correcting this problem. Step one, and we see it here -- confrontation. Please clarify. If you are confusing the gospel, if I am confusing the gospel, please ask for clarification. “Do you see what you’re doing, Peter? Do you really see what you’re doing? Do you get the big picture? You have these Jews wondering now if they are supposed to keep dietary laws. You have these Gentiles wondering now if they are second class Christians because they’re not Christians like you. Would you please stop and see what you are doing.” And does it square, not with Paul’s opinions, but does it square with the simple beauty of the gospel?

Confrontation is first. Second is truth. I will quote our brother Peter from his own epistle, First  Peter, which he wrote much later. He has grown, he has learned, he has changed, he has matured; the Lord Jesus has a hold of his life. This is what he writes in chapter 2:

¹ Therefore, putting aside all malice and all deceit and hypocrisy and envy and all slander.

Writing to people who are where he was, knowing where they are, understanding their struggle.

² like newborn babies, long for the pure milk of the word, so that by it you may grow in respect to salvation, if you have tasted the kindness of the Lord.

Just like Paul would have said, they weren’t walking according to the truth of the gospel. They weren’t lined up with what God clearly had said and stated objectively. “Long for the pure milk of the word that by it you may grow in respect to salvation just like I have done,” Peter says, as he is much nearer the end of his life here than he was in Galatians chapter 2. He sees it.

Confrontation, truth, and third, transformation. This is God’s work and I’m so glad it is. I’ll just remind you what Romans 12:2 says:

² And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind,

Long for the pure milk of the word. Get the truth of God’s word into your heart and into your mind, renew it that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect. That’s what we do. That’s the fix. That’s the correction. Confrontation: “Do you see what you’re doing? Please clarify to me what you think you are doing. Help me understand.”   Long for the pure milk of the word and God will do the transformation.

There are times in our Christian lives when we may not be sure, which is why it’s all the more critical that we understand what the Bible clearly says and we hang onto that. As we stand upon, in Paul’s words, the truth of the gospel, it had to have been a tough thing for Paul. He is taking his stand and saying, “Peter, Barnabas, all you people, you are wrong, because this is what gospel truly is: all my trust in Jesus only. He alone for my salvation plus nothing -- and you are adding something. That’s wrong and it had to be tough for Paul to do.