A speaker argues that hypocrisy undermines your testimony. If you're angry, lustful, proud, or judgmental while preaching the gospel, observers won't believe the message. Personal purity doesn't mean perfection, but unrepented sin confuses people you're trying to reach.
Your purity gives power to your testimony. You can't witness to someone that you're sinning with. You can't effectively evangelize towards someone that you're participating in ungodly behavior with. If they're influencing you to live in darkness, how can you influence them to come into the light? Hypocrisy will ruin the effectiveness of your evangelism. Are you a good testimony? When they look at you, do they see Jesus? Now, I'm not saying you have to be perfect, nor am I saying that if you're not perfect, you're somehow responsible for them going to hell. I'm not putting that burden on God's people because the Lord doesn't put that burden on you. But the question has to be asked, is the way I live getting in the way of the message I preach? If all they know of Jesus is what they see in me, Can they see even a glimpse of him? Am I loving? Am I kind? Am I patient? Am I merciful? Or am I angry, tense, negative, and judgmental? Do they see me praising God, or am I constantly complaining? Do they see me living by the word, or do I live in contradiction to truth? Can they feel the love of God flowing through me? Can they see the purity of the Spirit upon my life? Or am I prideful, argumentative, boastful, arrogant, confrontational? Am I given to bouts of lust? Am I given to bouts of anger? These are questions you have to ask yourself, because if you're proclaiming Jesus as being one way, but you're living as if he's another, that's going to confuse the one you're trying to win to the Lord. The effectiveness of your evangelism is increased as purity is increased.
