Anypókritos (ἀνυπόκριτος): The Anti-Hypocrisy of an “unfeigned” love received by faith from the Fourth Dimension and lived out here and now through the Spirit
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Introduction: From hypocrisy to anti-hypocrisy
Given the most recent word study on hypokritḗs, it may be beneficial to give the New Testamental term for precisely the opposite—anhypókritos: “anti-hypocritical.”
As we saw from that initial study, every one of the twenty occurrences of hypokritḗs in the NT is spoken directly by Jesus Himself against the Pharisees as He actively confronts their false religious systems of control. Again, Jesus saw past their outer mask of virtue-signaling, religious activity into their inner heart of deceit where lay “all manner of greed and self-indulgence,” ”full of hypocrisy (hypokritḗs) and lawlessness” (23:25, 28).
That is to say, Christ well understood how the church and its religious leaders have an entropic tendency to devolve into manmade systems of control and profit that cause their institutions to become, in His words, “a den of thieves” rather than a “house of prayer.”
And here the point must again be made clear: He does not stand aside while this is happening before His very eyes, but actively confronts them, as it were, violently.
And when He does so, healing occurs.
For the church, in short, is to be a life-giving point of intersection between the eternal Fourth Dimension and our fallen Third.
A hospital that “receives all” (pandocheîon), as the Parable of the Prodigal son makes overwhelmingly clear.
And it is for this reason that we now move from third dimensional hypocrisy of the institutional church to the fourth dimensional anhypókritos of the living Church of Jesus Christ, where we can begin to see how this happens.
Anhypókritos (ἀνυπόκριτος)
Etymology and Dictionary Definition
Α: the alpha privative meaning ‘not’
+
ὑποκρίνομαι (hypokrínomai):
The verb form expressing the actions of one who ‘lives as a hypocrite’, or more precisely from our prior study, one who lives as a ‘mask-wearing actor playing a part’ on stage.’
->
Taken together, anypókritos comes to mean that a person is ‘unhypocritical’, ‘unfeigned’, ‘not acting/impersonating/pretending to be what one is not’, but ‘expressing that which is vitally genuine, real.’
6 occurrences in the NT
This initial study will explore the opening use of anhypókritos in Romans 12 concluding with its second occurrence in II Cor 6.
Summary Synthesis
The first two occurrences together with the final instance of anhypókritos in the NT all speak of an
“unfeigned/true/vital/genuine love” (Rom 12:9; II Cor 6:6; I Pet 1:22).
The middle two instances communicate an
“unhypocritical faith” (I Tim 1:5; II Tim 1:5).
And the penultimate use reveals a
“wisdom from above” that is “first pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality and without hypocrisy” (anhypókritos, Jam 3:17).
That is to say, this New Testamental term is specifically utilized to modify the chief virtues of love, faith and wisdom that come down to us, in James’ words, “from above.” When these are operating within Christ’s body, then healing can indeed begin to flow out from His body to a world that is trapped in the entropy and hypocrisy of this Fallen Age.
May it be so!
Detailed Analysis
[Spiritual] “gifts”…as gifts received from the Fourth Dimension
The first instance of anypókritos speaks of a “love” that is “unfeigned” or literally “without hypocrisy.” It is a love that is not an external show—not a performative act which makes us appear better than we actually are. Rather it is an outward expression of a vital, internal reality that, according to the Apostle, flows out from our life in the Spirit.
As one pastor has put it in an encouraging word to other ministers,
“Let all your prayers and actions be the outflow of a life hidden with God in Christ.”
That is the point.
It is a life—not an act.
And this life operates in us as the Spirit is working deep within our person, enabling the operation of the ultimate “spiritual gift” of love.
It should be noted, however, that in the entirety of the twelfth chapter of Romans, there is no instance of the word “spiritual” (pneumatikós). Though the chapter has often been summarized as an exegesis of “spiritual gifts”, the Apostle Paul speaks only of “gifts” (chárisma) without the modifier “spiritual.”
When he next offers an extended treatment of “spiritual gifts” in his letter to the Corinthians (I Cor 12), he identifies them there with only the term “spiritual” without using the term “gifts”:
“Now concerning the spiritual (perì dè tôn pneumatikôn), brethren, I do not want you to be ignorant…
And the reason he does so in both cases, it seems from the text, is that the operations of these gifts occur only as we receive and live out of the grace (cháris) that is poured into our soul from the Fourth Dimension by the Holy Spirit.
As such, we don’t perform the “spiritual gifts”; the Spirit performs them within us.
Romans 12
From conformation…to transformation…to a new “mindset” that has been “saved and delivered”
Romans 12, thus, begins with the extraordinary twin imperatives (which are quoted on this site’s homepage),
“Be not conformed (syschēmatízō) to This Present Age
But be transformed (metamorphóō)
By tbe renewing of your mind/heart/soul/spirit/nous”
But we must be very clear at the outset, this kind of transformation comes not through any kind of work which we achieve but only through the grace that we receive:
“For I say, through the grace (cháris) given to me,
to everyone who is among you,
not to think of himself more highly (hyperphronéō) than he ought to think (phronéō)
But to think soberly” (sōphronéō, or more literally, ‘to think out of a mindset and inner outlook [phrḗn] that has been saved and delivered [sṓzō]”) .
A first step: Doing our own inventory rather than that of our brother—the “leaky jug” and the “sack of sand”
Our thinking is saved from the self-comparisons that lead us to judge and critique one another. Rather, in the words of one the Desert Father at Scetis who was called to a council to pass judgment on a brother that had “committed a fault,” we carry a leaking water jug and say,
‘My sins run out behind me, and I do not see them, and today I am coming to judge the errors of another.’
Yet such a mindset is possible only through the operation of a faith that has been “measured out” to us (merízō, Rom 12:3b), where our eyes our opened to see that we, in fact, are the leaky jug that trickles out our sins behind us.
And seeing this, we are then able to respond in honesty by taking the critical first step of of doing our own inventory, rather that that of our brother (which never works, by the way).
We first admit the holes in our person, our contradictions, our short-comings, our Pharisaism, our hypocrisy. We do not hide our sins, carrying them behind us so that we can confidently stand in a council or church committee as the “accusers of the brethren.”
Rather we hold them up, as it were, in front of our own eyes.
In a similar story from Abba Pior we approach judgment on another in a totally different way:
There was at that time a meeting at Scetis about a brother who had sinned. The Fathers spoke, but Abba Pior kept silence.
Later, he got up and went out; he took a sack, filled it with sand and carried it on his shoulder. He put a little sand also in a small bag which he carried in front of him.
When the Fathers asked him what this meant he said,
‘In this sack which contains much sand, are my sins which are many;
I have put them behind me so as not to be troubled about them and so as not to weep; and see here are the little sins of my brother which are in front of me and I spend my time judging them.
This is not right.
I ought rather to carry my sins in front of me and concern myself with them, begging God to forgive me for them.’
The Fathers stood up and said,
‘Truly, this is the way of salvation.’
From sin that divides to grace that unites
When this transforming gift of grace then begins to operate deep within our person, it produces in us a mindset (phrḗn) that is literally saved (sṓzō) out of this fallen realm and delivered into the Fourth Dimension.
When this occurs, then we no longer think of ourselves with pride and arrogance, but we admit our errors and continual need for grace.
When our “outer man” of Pharisaism is “broken open” (to quote again Watchman Nee), this then enables the spiritual gifts to be “released” in our inner person that has become united to Christ, our head, and to each other, His living members.
“For as we have many members in one body, but all the members do not have the same function, so we, being many, are one body in Christ, and individually members of one another.
Having then gifts differing according to the grace that is given to us…” (12:4-6a)
Unity, to state it again, comes to us by grace that has been given and which we have gladly received.
Grace which then unites us to Christ and to our brother.
The gifts listed from “prophecy” to the ultimate gift of “love” (agápē)
From here Paul moves into a discussion of the various gifts, beginning with “prophecy”…that we don’t much speak about in “Evangelical” circles…but is, nevertheless, in the text (Rom 12:6b) and is to be manifested in our congregations “according to the measure (analogía) of faith.”
The Apostle then moves from faith-filled prophecy on to “ministry” (diakonía), “teaching” (didaskalía), “exhortation” (paráklēsis), “liberality” in giving (ho metadidous en haplótēti), leadership with “diligent zeal” (ho proḯstamenous en spoudḗ) and “mercy with cheerfulness” (eleōn en hilarotēti, 12:7-8)
And from this extraordinary collection of virtues that should mark out the living body of Christ to a dead and dying world, Paul takes us to the ultimate virtue of love that alone has the power to redeem our leaky, contradictory selves.
And here is where we find the first instance of anypókritos in the NT:
“Let love be without hypocrisy” (anypókritos, 12:9).
Love must be absolutely central to our faith;
“for love is of God;
and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God” (I John 4:7).
Because
“God is love
and he who abides in love abides in God, and God in him” (4:16b).
Yet, to move back to Romans 12, the operation of such a divinely-given, unhypocritical love requires an abhorrence of evil. We cannot tolerate it in any way. Rather, we must, in the Apostle’s words,
“Abhor what is evil”
But, more than mere hatred of evil, we must
“cling to what is good.”
We must
“be kindly affectionate (philóstorgos) to one another with brotherly love (philadelphía), in honor giving preference to one another” (12:10).
We must, in short, move from being “accusers of the brethren” to lovers of our brothers.
Concluding Word:
The Pathway into Fourth Dimensional Love: From Romans to II Corinthians 6
The Spirit’s Fourth Dimensional work in our congregations is thus witnessed in our union with one another in this brotherly love with the Spirit being “shed abroad” in our heart, working a transformative, other-worldly humility (12:10b-16).
Operating from this position, such vital love, as we will see in our next study, will confirm the true ministry of God in us (II Cor 6:4a), enabling us to endure through the great trials of this life (6:4b-5) specifically “by the Holy Spirit” Who works into our spirit this “genuine, anti-hypocritical love” (en Pneumati Hagiō en agapē anypókritō, 6:6).
And so we can endure
in much patience, in tribulations, in needs, in distresses,
in stripes, in imprisonments, in tumults, in labors, in sleeplessness, in fastings;
by purity, by knowledge, by longsuffering, by kindness,
by the Holy Spirit, by genuine, anti-hypocritical love” (en Pneumati Hagiō en agapē anypókritō),
by the word of truth, by the power of God,
by the armor of righteousness on the right hand and on the left,
by honor and dishonor, by evil report and good report; as deceivers, and yet true;
as unknown, and yet well known;
as dying, and behold we live;
as chastened, and yet not killed;
as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing;
as poor, yet making many rich;
as having nothing, and yet possessing all things” (6:4-10).
Amen!
So may it be!