‘All their works’ – Christ has already told us in the Sermon on the Mount that this includes their alms-giving, their fasting and their prayer. This sucks the life out of any real devotion to God. What a pretence to come to God, to control the features of the face for others to view, to have the eye fixed on oneself, and to desire all others to look at self, to steal praise from God. The deception is very deep and hidden under layers of dishonesty. It only works if the onlookers are persuaded that the worship is genuine, for no one is willing to praise a straight-out hypocrite. He therefore works hard to maintain the appearance of piety, and shows he knows what piety looks like. But really God is not in it; only he is in it. There is a strange contradiction here, for if the onlookers did not believe that God is real, they would not admire his piety, but in order to carry out his deception, he himself must deny that God is real. God is made merely the tool of his praise, and the servant of his pride. No wonder Christ says that the solution is radical – ‘when thou doest alms, let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth’; ‘when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door’; ‘when thou fastest, anoint thine head, and wash thy face’ (Matthew 6:3, 6, 17). The old nature must be dealt with in an uncompromising way to prevent hypocrisy getting its foot in the door.
What a mockery of true piety the hypocrite is guilty of! His piety stops with the outward observation, and the part which has real value – the piety of the heart, and the genuine love for God – is missing entirely. What is the external performance worth without this? How can we worship the God who is spirit, when we leave our spirit behind, or send it off on an errand elsewhere? Again Christ shows what his disciples should be by what the scribes and Pharisees are not.