In the mean time, when there were gathered together an innumerable multitude of people, insomuch that they trode one upon another, he began to say unto his disciples first of all, Beware ye of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy.
In the mean time - in close connection, probably, with the foregoing scene, Our Lord had been speaking out more plainly than ever before, as matters were coming to a head between Him and His enemies, and this seems to have suggested to His own mind the warning here. He had just Himself illustriously exemplified His own precepts.
When there were gathered together an innumerable multitude of people, insomuch that they trod one upon another, he began to say unto his disciples first of all - and afterward to the multitudes (Luke 12:54),
Beware ye of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy. As leaven is concealed within the mass on which it operates, yet works diffusively and masterfully, so is it with hypocrisy. Hypocrisy is of two kinds. Pretending to be what we are not, and concealing what we are. Though these are so closely allied that the one runs into the other, it is the latter form of it against which our Lord here warns His disciples. When His name could not be confessed but at the risk of reputation, liberty, property, and life itself, the temptation to unworthy concealment of what they were would of course be exceedingly strong; and it is the consequences of such cowardly and traitorous concealment that our Lord is now to point out. Elsewhere He would have us count the cost of Discipleship before we undertake it: Here He would have us count the cost of hypocrisy-in the sense of shrinking from the confession of His name before men-before we resolve on or give way to that fatal step.