hypocrisy: a show of piety or goodwill that does not match what is really there inside the person putting it on.
The English word "hypocrisy" comes straight from this Greek word, and the two are close, though not identical. In older Greek the family belonged to the theater: the related noun (ὑποκριτής) named the actor who answered the chorus, and speakers later used it as an insult for a public performer who could not be trusted. By the first century, Greek-speaking Jewish writers had loaded the whole family with religious judgment. In their books it had become the word for the profane person whose life is set against God. Both weights are present in the New Testament.
What holds the uses together is a direction, not merely a lie. Something is put on display for people to see, while the one who sees the inside is God. That single shape covers the religious face Jesus condemns in Matthew 23:28 and Luke 12:1, the pretended sincerity of the men sent to trap him in Mark 12:15, and, in Galatians 2:13, Peter's plain failure to act on a conviction he still held. In each case an outward act is offered that the inside does not support.
Two things follow. It does not require a deliberate lie: a person can believe his own performance and the word still fits, because the gap is measured by what God sees rather than by what the person will admit. And it can name a single act as easily as a settled character, which is why Paul can use it of Peter without treating him as an enemy of the gospel. The opposite word in the New Testament (ἀνυπόκριτος) describes love and faith with no act put on at all, and it gives the clearest picture of what this word denies.
Nuances
Disputed
Whether the New Testament word-group means chiefly "godless, impious" (from its Hellenistic Jewish background) or retains the older Greek sense of conscious play-acting and pretense.
- majorityThe background is real but the Greek notion of pretense remains: the word names a composite religious and ethical failure, a structural mismatch between a person's religious self-presentation and God's evaluation, which may be deliberate deceit or sincere self-deception.; James Barr, "The Hebrew/Aramaic Background of 'Hypocrisy' in the Gospels," in A Tribute to Geza Vermes: Essays on Jewish and Christian Literature and History, JSOTSup 100 (1990): 307-326; W. D. Davies and Dale C. Allison, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Gospel According to Saint Matthew, ICC, 3 vols. (1988-97); Ulrich Luz, Matthew: A Commentary, Hermeneia, 3 vols. (2001-2007); John Nolland, The Gospel of Matthew, NIGTC (2005)
- minorityThe word-group stands in the Hellenistic Jewish stream and means essentially godlessness or apostasy, opposition to God's will expressed through outward religious conformity; pretense is at most a secondary nuance.; Ulrich Wilckens, "ὑποκρίνομαι, συνυποκρίνομαι, ὑπόκρισις, ὑποκριτής, ἀνυπόκριτος," in Theological Dictionary of the New Testament (TDNT) 8:559-571; Joachim Jeremias, New Testament Theology, Volume One: The Proclamation of Jesus (1971); David E. Garland, The Intention of Matthew 23, NovTSup 52 (1979)
- minorityPretense is the dominant sense: the word names a purposeful inconsistency between profession and behavior, staged to deceive others and win praise or reward.; BDAG (Bauer-Danker-Arndt-Gingrich), A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament, 3rd ed. (2000), s.v. ὑπόκρισις; I. Howard Marshall, "Who Is a Hypocrite?" Bibliotheca Sacra 159 (2002): 131-150; Hans Dieter Betz, The Sermon on the Mount, Hermeneia (1995)