“You are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you. But if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Him” (Romans 8:9).
Did you know that Betty Crocker was never a real person? This brand and fictional character are used in advertising campaigns for food and recipes. Betty was created by the Washburn-Crosby Company in 1921 to give a personalized response to consumer product questions following a unique Gold Medal Flour promotion featured in the Saturday Evening Post. The ad asked consumers to complete a jigsaw puzzle and mail it to the then Washburn-Crosby Company, later General Mills, in Minneapolis, Minnesota. In return, they would receive a pincushion shaped like a bag of flour. So, along with 30,000 completed puzzles came several hundred letters with cooking-related questions. Realizing that especially housewives would want advice from a fellow woman, the company’s Advertising Department convinced its board of directors to create a personality that the women answering the letters could all use in their replies. The name Betty was selected because it was viewed as a cheery, all-American name. It was paired with the last name Crocker, in honor of William Crocker, a Washburn Crosby Company director. They even gave Betty a face, commissioning her first portrait in 1936. It has been updated seven times since its creation to reflect changes in fashion and hairstyle (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betty_Crocker).
Imagine the thousands of sincere women who have written to Betty over the decades with cooking and recipe questions thinking they were getting advice from a real-life baking expert. The truth about Betty reminds all of us how important it is to be real and true. Nowhere is that more important than with God’s people. Christ-followers are warned over and over in the Bible about authenticity, being real. The harshest words of Jesus were reserved for religious hypocrites. He called them snakes, broods of vipers, stains, blemishes, springs without water, mists driven by storms. Jesus reminds us of necessary authenticity in His harsh condemnation of the religious leaders of Jerusalem in Matthew 23:24-26: “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you clean the outside of the cup and of the dish, but inside they are full of robbery and self-indulgence. You blind Pharisee, first clean the inside of the cup and of the dish, so that the outside of it may become clean also."
Consider several facts from the Bible about people who are religious frauds. First, they attempt to hide their evil hearts—who they really are—with outward elegance and refinement. Jesus said in Matthew 23:25: “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you clean the outside of the cup and of the dish, but inside they are full of robbery and self-indulgence.” Second, they attempt to hide their separation from God with sweet but sly lip-service. In Mark 7:6, Jesus said, “Rightly did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites, as it is written: ‘THIS PEOPLE HONORS ME WITH THEIR LIPS, BUT THEIR HEART IS FAR AWAY FROM ME.’” Third, they would rather other people be like them than to truly be saved and belong to Jesus. In Matthew 23:15, Jesus said, “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, because you travel around on sea and land to make one proselyte; and when he becomes one, you make him twice as much a son of hell as yourselves.” The fourth is closely related to the third: they turn people away from heaven and toward hell. Jesus said in Matthew 23:13: “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, because you shut off the kingdom of heaven from people; for you do not enter in yourselves, nor do you allow those who are entering to go in.” Finally, they will ultimately be condemned to hell to suffer eternal wrath and punishment. Speaking of the religious fraud, in Matthew 24:51, Jesus said that He “will cut him in pieces and assign him a place with the hypocrites; in that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”
Friends, the Bible says much about the false convert or fake Christian. Moreover, every word of it is meant to create disgust and repulsion for every kind of insincerity toward Jesus. Therefore, remember that Christian authenticity is a job done by the Holy Spirit in a Christian’s life from the inside out as he and she obey the commands, live by the principles, and imitate the patterns revealed in God’s holy word, the Bible. This inward transformation molds and shapes the true believer inwardly and outwardly to be like Christ in character, nature, and action, thereby, proving salvation. There is no hiding this reality. Therefore, the absence of this reality in a person’s babblings, beliefs, and behaviors reveals him and her to be “in the flesh,” not “in the Spirit.” Therefore, they are unspiritual, unregenerate people regardless of their sweet-sounding, smooth talk. Just as Paul said in Romans 8:9: “You are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you. But if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Him.”
Friends, decide today to renounce every form of religious hypocrisy. Make up your mind to belong to Jesus in every sense of the word—truly be honestly, wholly His.