About thirty years ago, my close friend and colleague, Archie Parrish, who at that time led the Evangelism Explosion (EE) program in Fort Lauderdale, came to me with a request. He indicated that on the thousands of evangelistic visits the EE
teams made, they kept a record of responses people made to discussions
of the gospel. They collated the most frequent questions and objections
people raised about the Christian faith and grouped these inquiries or
objections into the ten most frequently encountered. Dr. Parrish asked
if I would write a book answering those objections for evangelists to
use in their outreach. That effort resulted in my book Objections Answered, now called Reason to Believe.
Among the top ten objections raised was the objection that the church
is filled with hypocrites. At that point in time, Dr. D. James Kennedy
responded to this objection by replying, “Well, there’s always room for
one more.” He cautioned people that if they found a perfect church, they
ought not to join it, since that would ruin it.
The term hypocrite came from the world of Greek drama. It was used to
describe the masks that the players used to dramatize certain roles.
Even today, the theater is symbolized by the twin masks of comedy and
tragedy. In antiquity, certain players played more than one role, and
they indicated their role by holding a mask in front of their face.
That’s the origin of the concept of hypocrisy.
But the charge that the church is full of hypocrites is manifestly
false. Though no Christian achieves the full measure of sanctification
in this life, that we all struggle with ongoing sin does not justly
yield the verdict of hypocrisy. A hypocrite is someone who does things
he claims he does not do. Outside observers of the Christian church see
people who profess to be Christians and observe that they sin. Since
they see sin in the lives of Christians, they rush to the judgment that
therefore these people are hypocrites. If a person claims to be without
sin and then demonstrates sin, surely that person is a hypocrite. But
for a Christian simply to demonstrate that he is a sinner does not
convict him of hypocrisy. Keep Reading >>>
