It is one of the main reasons I hear from people who do not choose to get involved with Christianity: the church is full of hypocrites. It is true that every church I have ever known has hypocrites. There are people there who do not love Jesus and do not care about his teaching. They may be there because of family pressure, or because it is habit, or because it is beneficial to their career. Hypocrites are those people who say one thing while intentionally doing something different. So there may be hypocrites in church who are mean, cruel, liars, addicts, thieves, and immoral. And they never intend to change.

Even Jesus knew that some “religious” people would not follow him. Read the story from the Bible about the Good Samaritan. It is found in the book of Luke, chapter 10. The religious leaders would not help an injured man. Jesus understands that there are hypocrites. But most people at church are not hypocritical, even the ones you know do not always act the way a Christian should.

So here is the truth about hypocrites at church. It is mostly a myth. We are not hypocrites, even when we do not the way we want.

It is not on purpose. We do mean what we say about Jesus. We are trying to live up to our profession of faith. But we are not perfect. We are strugglers with our sin. And we are getting better. We are a work in progress. We are trying to live new lives in an old world. We are forgiven and now we are learning to live forgiven. So we work on putting to death the things in our lives that are not like Jesus. And we are trying to put into our lives the things that are like Jesus. Sometimes you may see us in this in-between stage.

We are sorry. That is not who we want to be. It may be who we were. It is not who we are becoming. We are changing. We are helping each other in a journey to be what Jesus calls us to be.

We invite you to join that journey. We want to tell you about the new life you can have in Jesus. We want you to watch us be changed into new people because of Jesus.

God is changing me... he just isn't through yet.
Full of hypocrites? Not really. Just flawed, forgiven strugglers who are becoming more like Jesus every day.

I can help you join that journey. Write me at steve@hopeforlife.org. Or visit our website at www.hopeforlife.org.