Trusting the Ten #9: No More Lies

“You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.”—Exodus 20:16

We can call this commandment, “No Lying.” Lying is one of the most practiced sins in our world today. We lie to our spouses, friends, family, coworkers, fellow students, and even our brothers and sisters in Christ. But, lying is an affront to a holy God. We may think the lies we tell are “little white lies” but there is really no such thing. The very first lie was told to Eve by Satan, the father of lies. Satan lied in order to get Eve to doubt the goodness of God. And he is lying still today, lying to us about who we are in Christ and still trying to get us to doubt the goodness of God.

Bearing false witness suggests lying in a legal trial that could result in one’s neighbor being punished for something they did or did not do. It’s lying with intent and it flies in the face of God’s justice. God is just, or even may be considered the very definition of justice. How? Justice means understanding what is right, wrong, and fair. In order to understand what is right or wrong, one must have a perfect standard by which to measure it. For example, one cannot know what darkness is apart from understanding what light is. One cannot know what is good or bad without having a standard by which to measure it. God must be the perfect standard that everything must be measured by. He must be perfect in who He is and what He does, and everything that we know or understand must be measured against Him. Therefore, if God is perfect in every facet of His being, then that means there must be a perfect standard of justice.

Bearing false witness means perverting justice for one’s own benefit or another person’s hurt. It is a direct assault on loving one’s neighbor, and God calls those who have “lying lips” an “abomination” (Proverbs 12:22). As believers in Christ, we must be different. We have the opportunity to show Christ to the world by loving others. And we love others by telling the truth. As Paul tells us,  

“Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator”—Colossians 3:9-10.

Lying is a product of the old life that we had before we came to know Christ. It is the modus operandi of Satan, and his principle tool in order to deceive the nations. Whenever we lie, we are tools in his hands, enabling him to accuse us before the throne of God. But, when we tell the truth, we are showing ourselves as children of God, embracing him who is truth (John 14:6; 8:32), not him who is the father of lies.

Telling the truth may not be easy, but we must entrust ourselves to the hands of our Lord and Savior, knowing that He will uphold us and protect us from Satan’s schemes. Let’s not lie to one another and be agents of the enemy, but may we be ambassadors of righteousness, telling the truth, living in the light of the knowledge of Christ, in order that He may be seen within us and others may come to see, hear, and know Him as well. Amen.