Hypocrisy
The ancient Greeks liked their plays and dramas, but rather than have the actor memorize their lines they had a person behind the curtain who spoke the lines while the performer on stage acted out the role. We might refer to the person behind the scenes as one who didn’t “practice what they preached.”
This is like the problem some Christian experience, and the Bible calls it hypocrisy. When there is a discrepancy between what we say and what we do we create confusion in the minds of those that are watching us.
The Lord rebuked the Pharisees because they were saying many things and taking a place of religious leadership, but their life was anything but what it should be. He said “Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye make clean the outside of the cup and of the platter, but within they are full of extortion and excess” (Matthew 23:25).
The Lord wants us to be real, inside and outside. Paul summed it up, when he wrote: “That ye may be blameless and harmless, the sons of God, without rebuke, in the midst of a crooked and perverse nation, among whom ye shine as lights in the world” (Philippians 2:15).
