📖 Biblical Definition
Hypocrisy is the playing of a part not one’s own — pretending righteousness one does not actually possess. The Greek hypokritēs originally named a stage actor playing a role behind a mask. Christ’s sharpest words were aimed at it: the seven woes against the scribes and Pharisees in Matthew 23, each addressed to "scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!" The diagnosis is sustained throughout: "Woe unto you... ye are like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men’s bones, and of all uncleanness. Even so ye also outwardly appear righteous unto men, but within ye are full of hypocrisy and iniquity" (vv. 27-28). Hypocrisy is the religious sin par excellence — and it is repeatedly the sin Christ names hardest.
📜 Webster 1828 Definition
Pretending righteousness one does not possess; theatrical religion; Christ's sharpest condemnation.
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HYPOCRISY, n. Simulation; a feigning to be what one is not; or dissimulation, a concealment of one's real character or motives.
Greek hypokrisis originally named the actor's art on the Greek stage; Christ's redeployment of the term made it the standard New Testament word for religious pretense.
📖 Key Scripture
Matthew 23:13 — "Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!"
Matthew 6:5 — "And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are."
Luke 12:1 — "Beware ye of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy."
1 Peter 2:1 — "Wherefore laying aside all malice, and all guile, and hypocrisies, and envies."
⚠️ Modern Corruption
Modern Christianity often softens hypocrisy into ‘inconsistency’; Christ named it deadly, leaven-spreading, and the disqualifier of religious authority.
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Christ's seven Matthew-23 woes are sustained, sharp, and unsoftened. The hypocrite is not merely flawed; he is the one whose religion has become a stage-act covering an unconverted heart. The leaven (Lk 12:1) spreads.
The household's defense is unfeigned faith (1 Tim 1:5). Take off the mask; be the same in private and in public; let the inside match the outside. The hypocrite's great fear is exposure; the unfeigned saint has no exposure to fear.
🔗 Greek & Hebrew Roots
Greek hypokrisis; acting under a mask.
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Greek hypokrisis — from hypo (under) plus krinō (to judge / discern); originally the actor's art.
Usage
"Christ named it deadly, leaven-spreading, and disqualifying."
"Take off the mask; be the same in private and in public."
"The hypocrite's great fear is exposure."