a hypocrite: a person whose outward show of religion does not match the inner reality that God sees.
The English word "hypocrite" comes straight from this Greek word, but the two are not the same. In ordinary Greek the word once meant a stage actor, the one who answered the chorus, and from there it could mean a pretender or play-actor. By the time of Jesus, though, Greek-speaking Jews had given it a much heavier weight. In their writings it had become a word for the godless or the apostate, the person whose life is, at bottom, set against God. The Gospels carry that fuller force.
So a hypocrite here is not simply someone who lies about being good. The essence of the word is a gap: a split between the religious face a person turns toward other people and the truth of that person before God. That gap can take several forms. It shows up as religion performed for an audience, as a careful outward purity that hides inner rot, as clever readings of God's law that dodge what it really asks, as harsh judgment of others by someone blind to his own fault, and as a failure to read what God is plainly doing. In every case the outward shape of the life does not answer to God.
The word is sharper than the English "hypocrite" because it does not name a small inconsistency. It names a whole life so misdirected that, for all its religious care, it stands outside true relationship with God. Almost every time the word appears in the Gospels it is on the lips of Jesus, most often aimed at religious leaders, and the warning is meant to fall on anyone who would do the same.
Nuances
Disputed
Whether the New Testament word means chiefly "godless, impious" (its Jewish-Greek background) or keeps the older Greek sense of conscious play-acting and pretense.
- contestedThe word stands in the Jewish-Greek stream and means essentially the godless person who is set against God; play-acting and pretense are at most a secondary nuance.; Ulrich Wilckens, "ὑποκριτής," 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)
- contestedThe Jewish-Greek background is real, but the Greek sense of pretense and self-display is still present; the word is a composite of religious godlessness and a mismatch between outward act and inner reality, which can be either deliberate or a sincere self-deception.; James Barr, "The Hebrew/Aramaic Background of 'Hypocrisy' in the Gospels," in A Tribute to Geza Vermes, JSOTSup 100 (1990); W. D. Davies and Dale C. Allison, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Gospel According to Saint Matthew, ICC (1988-97); Ulrich Luz, Matthew: A Commentary, Hermeneia (2001-2007); John Nolland, The Gospel of Matthew, NIGTC (2005)
- minorityThe conscious, theatrical sense of a deliberate play-actor is primary; the word names a purposeful inconsistency designed to win human praise.; I. Howard Marshall, "Who Is a Hypocrite?" Bibliotheca Sacra 159 (2002): 131-150; Hans Dieter Betz, The Sermon on the Mount, Hermeneia (1995); BDAG (Bauer-Danker-Arndt-Gingrich), 3rd ed., s.v. ὑποκριτής