HAPLOTES (Sincerity)
What is the Word?
“There is a time and place for everything under heaven,” notes Solomon, the author of Ecclesiastes. While there is certainly a time and place for levity and lightheartedness in our lives, there is also a time for seriousness and sincerity – and there is wisdom in knowing when each manner of expression is appropriate for any given situation. This is relationship wisdom, and in the Bible, the Greek word used for sincerity is haplotés.
How does the Bible use this word?
Haplotés is somewhat of a fickle word. Translated straight-up, it means something like an “unfolded cloth” or something seamless or without creases. What can we take from this? Well, we might think of it as “uncomplex” or something that doesn’t need to be “figured out.” What you see is what you get, as it were. Practically applied, we can understand this as approaching God with a simple, almost child-like sincerity in our spirit –something for which God is able to work into a true and grounded faith.
Where in the Bible?
In Ephesians 6, Paul instructs those who are bondservants to obey those in authority as one would obey Jesus himself:
“Bondservants, obey your earthly masters with fear and trembling, with a sincere (ἁπλότητι) heart, as you would Christ, not by the way of eye-service, as people-pleasers, but as bondservants of Christ.”
Paul reminds us not to begrudgingly obey those in authority simply because we must. Rather, we submit to earthly authority in sincerity and in love for Christ and our neighbor that everyone around us might be blessed through our sincerity. This is important to Paul, who warns us against becoming susceptible to manipulation:
“But I am afraid that as the serpent deceived Eve by his cunning, your thoughts will be led astray from a sincere (ἁπλότητος) and pure devotion to Christ.”
When our simple devotion to Christ is compromised by worldly concerns and the cunning and craft manipulation of others, we can easily be led off the narrow path and into calamity for ourselves and for others.
In All Sincerity
Many people have an uncanny ability to sense whether or not we are being sincere. This is important, as trust is often built out of sincerity. Our simple and sincere faith in Christ should be a blueprint for the way that we conduct ourselves in the whole of life. Just as we should eliminate all unnecessary complexity in our relationship with God, so also should we do this in our relationships with one another. When we are sincere in our vertical relationship with God, this tends to spill out into our horizontal relationship with our neighbor and allows us to build honest relationships with a sure foundation that will not easily crumble under life’s pressures.