It's a familiar enough story...

Stop me if you've heard any of these before:

...a popular television minister exhorts his audience to sacrifice their money and resources for God--only to be revealed as a sickeningly wealthy fraud guilty of pocketing the money himself.

...a pastor extols the virtues of morality each week to his congregation--while he cheats on his wife on the side.

...a once-respected religious leader resigns in disgrace, hounded by rumors of scandal and corruption.

Hypocrisy--pretending to believe in something you don't. It happens in all walks of life, of course, but when it happens in the church it is particularly upsetting. And if you think that you can't stand hypocrites, listen to what Jesus--usually characterized by his patience and gentleness--had to say about them: "You hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of dead men's bones and everything unclean... You snakes! You brood of vipers! How will you escape being condemned to hell?"

Those are harsh words, and they tell us in no uncertain terms that hypocrisy, whether it's demonstrated in the life of a prominent minister or a lowly churchgoer, is an offense to God. Most of us aren't famous preachers, but all of us must be on guard against the temptation to exempt ourselves from the standards to which we hold others.

Sometimes, even the best-intentioned person fails to meet the expectations of man and God. In fact, the Bible tells us that if we try to live a perfect life on our own, we'll never measure up (Romans 3:23).

It's a good thing that we don't rely on humans--few of whom can honestly claim to have always practiced exactly what they preached--for our hope! Because there is a truth strong enough to shine through even the darkest of hypocrisies--it's the message that God, who loathes hypocrisy, is willing to forgive our failures, to wipe them away as if they'd never existed, to transform two-faced deception into honesty and integrity.