27 Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men’s bones, and of all uncleanness. 28 Even so ye also outwardly appear righteous unto men, but within ye are full of hypocrisy and iniquity. (Matthew 23:27-28 KJV)
William Burkitt’s Commentary
Here we have a woe denounced against the Pharisees for cheating and deceiving the people with an outward shew, and external appearance of piety and religion: their lives were seemingly very religious but their hearts were full of hypocrisy and all impurity, like sepulchres painted without, and full of rottenness within.
Whence, Learn, That the great design of hypocrisy is to cheat the world with a vain and empty shew of piety. The ambition of the hypocrite is to be thought good, not to be so; he is the world’s saint, not God’s.