"Be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven."

"Don't think the church is full of hypocrites. There's always room for at least one more." I shared this once from the pulpit. It is what I thought was a well-worn-out preacher joke. A person who heard me say it found it a bold statement: one he'd rarely heard a preacher share. Can you say that about "good church people"? Hypocrisy involves many things. We usually take it to mean to preach one thing and do another. The original word has the connotation of putting on a mask or putting on a big showy display. When I said the church always has room for more hypocrites, that is not to say anything positive about hypocrisy. It is to say it is a universal human temptation and the hospital for sinners which is the church is exactly where such people need to be: not because God loves hypocrisy but because he wants religious hypocrites to become genuinely spiritual.

Jesus, in fact, is against hypocrisy, but he is not surprised to see it.

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