Merely committing sin doesn’t make you a hypocrite. It makes you a sinner.Nothing is clearer in the Bible than the fundamental truth that all have sinned and come short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23). The road to salvation begins with the admission that you are a sinner in need of deliverance from your sins. Even for the Christian whose sin has been forgiven by the blood of Jesus, there remains a continual struggle with inner urges and dark thoughts and all sorts of evil inclinations. Romans 7 applies to all of us all the time. If we say we have no sin, the truth is not in us, and we deceive ourselves. So said the Apostle John in his first epistle. We are hypocrites if we pretend that we are not sinners, and we are fools if we think the temptations of others could never tempt us. Apart from the grace of God, you don’t know what you might or might not do. Is the church full of hypocrites, as some people like to say? The answer is no. Mostly the church is full of weak people, some weaker than others, but all of us are weak in various places, known mostly to ourselves and to our closest friends. Sometimes we stumble and sometimes we fall. The fact that we don’t always live up to what we say we believe doesn’t necessarily make us hypocrites nor does it cancel the truth we proclaim. Our failings prove our weakness and show again why we desperately need God’s grace. Amen.
Posted on: Sun, 13 Apr 2014 14:20:06 +0000