NOTES for Mat 23:13-22
Today's bitter words of Christ about the scribes and Pharisees, who barricaded the entrance into the Kingdom of Heaven with their religious stereotypes, should be considered in parallel with the words of the Almighty, "You shall not make yourself an idol." Alas, the human being has a frightening ability to make idols out of everything. After all, everything that is so important to the scribes and Pharisees is objectively good. Prayer is vitally necessary, and so are preaching and preserving the temple... But all this can be forms in which love for God is expressed, or it can be a means of walling oneself off from God. The word "hypocrisy" in Greek means first of all pretense. Here is what matters to understand: we can pretend to love God, but we will manage to deceive only ourselves, not the All-Seeing One.
These words of Christ are given in the Gospel not only, and not so much, in order to condemn our hypocrisy. It is simply that since God sees us in truth, hypocrisy becomes meaningless, and therefore there is hope that He will help us be freed from it.