When Jesus used the word 'hypocrite', everybody knew He was referring to actors.  In the Greek theatrical tradition of Jesus' day, the most common plays were tragedies in which the misfortunes of the main character stemmed from unrealised bad personality traits.  The audience could see the tragedy developing although the character remained oblivious to his own faults.  The word itself means ‘speaking from underneath a mask’.  Not only could the audience not see the face of the actor, but the mask also prevented proper vision.

Speaking probably more to His disciples than the crowd, Jesus used this sawdust and plank analogy to expose the laughable nature of religious hypocrisy.  The ‘mask of religious self-importance’ worn by the Pharisees did not represent God or His kingdom at all (Matthew 6:2).  They were using religion as a way of promoting themselves.  They partly did that by crafting an intricate web of rules which kept people away from God.  Breaking the rules was a punishable offence, but the hypocritical clergy were unable to help people because they were blind to their own sin and blind to the truth (Matthew 23:13).

By asking the questions, ‘Why?’ and ‘How can you do it?’, Jesus exposed legalistic religion.  Jesus asked how they could see to extract a small piece of dust from somebody's eye when they were blinded by a huge plank of wood.  Obviously, they could not.  Only Jesus Christ is able to deal with the blindness caused by our natural sinfulness (John 8:12).  Trainee apostles were not to be legalistic referees of other people's behaviour, but to bring them to Jesus so that He might deal with their spiritual blindness and heal their souls.

Christians are sometimes accused of being legalistic moralists who pretend to be better than others.  Unfortunately, that is sometimes true.  But that is not a true advertisement for the gospel, nor does it reflect the grace of God.  If we are to work with the Lord, we must understand that our task is not to make people nicer (because we cannot), but to bring sinners to the Saviour (John 4:39).  In many ways, that should be a relief.  It is not our task to criticise wrong behaviour or to pretend we are better.  If we are working with Jesus, our first responsibility is to ask Him to remove our own guilt (which is only possible because He has paid the penalty for our sin - see www.crosscheck.org.uk to know more).  After that, as we have no power to change people, our role is to tell our friends and colleagues the story of God’s love, pray and encourage them to go to Him also.