By Elizabeth Prata
SYNOPSIS: This essay explores God’s hatred of lying, tracing deception through Scripture, modern culture, media, government, and everyday life. Using biblical examples and commentary from pastors and theologians, it argues that dishonesty corrupts society, reflects Satan’s influence, and violates God’s standards. Yet through repentance, Christ offers forgiveness, restoration, and the call to pursue truthfulness.
God hates- Haughty eyes, a lying tongue, And hands that shed innocent blood, says Proverbs 6:17.
You might think to yourself, ‘I’m humble, not haughty, and I certainly never shed innocent blood!’
But have you lied? We all have. Even if you tell your spouse, “No you don’t look fat” when they really do or “Yum, this meal was delicious!” when it wasn’t…this is a lie for which we would be condemned, unless we repent unto salvation and His righteousness credited to us for ALL our sins. After salvation, the Lord wants us to be honest and if we do lie, to repent. He will forgive.
Lying is an issue. Honesty is in short supply these days.
So many scriptures warn about lying! Intentional concealment and slander are forms of lying, as this Proverb reminds us-
One who conceals hatred has lying lips, And one who spreads slander is a fool. (Proverbs 10:18).
Look at the strong wording the Holy Spirit inspired this verse!
Lying lips are an abomination to the Lord, But those who deal faithfully are His delight. (Proverbs 12:22)
An abomination! He says that about honosexuality, too, if you are comparing sins and still trying to downsize the sin of lying.
We can and should marvel that the Bible is a totally honest book. It doesn’t hide the fact that many of our Bible heroes were flawed ethically and were self-serving sinners to boot, and in so many different ways. Many of these heroes and heroines were liars, believe it or not!
Abraham twice claimed his wife Sarah was his sister out of fear (Genesis 12, 20). Sarah lied about laughing at God’s promise.
Jacob deceived his father Isaac to steal his brother Esau’s blessing (Genesis 27).
Ananias & Sapphira falsely claimed to give all proceeds from a land sale to the church, lying to God (Acts 5).
Peter lied three times about knowing Jesus. (Matthew 26).
Joseph’s brothers lied to their father Jacob about Joseph’s death, covering up their complicitness. (Genesis 37).
David lied to cover up his affair with Bathsheba, leading to murder (2 Samuel 11). David Also lied to Ahimelech the priest about being on Saul’s business when he wasn’t. This lie later caused Ahimelech to be killed.
John MacArthur wrote about David’s lie, “David, fearing someone might tell Saul where he was, deceived Ahimelech the priest into thinking he was on official business for the king. He supposed, as many do, that it is excusable to lie for the sake of saving one’s life. But what is sinful can never, because of circumstances, change its immoral character.” (Ps 119:29).
I am aware that the Egyptian midwives lied to Pharaoh and that Rahab lied to the king of Jericho’s messengers (or soldiers) who were searching for the two Israelite spies she was hiding. These two scenarios seem to be ones where the lie was to protect someone else at great risk to themselves, whereas the other liars were self-serving in wanting to protect their own lives or goods. Gehazi lied to Naaman in order to obtain the silver for himself, and lied to Elisha to cover up his first lie. He was given leprosy as a punishment (2 Kings 5:27).
The Rahab lie has caused debate for decades. John MacArthur took up the question of the thorny problem of Rahab’s lie here: “Is a lie ever white?“
Was hers the rarest of circumstances in which lying was the right thing to do? Scholars and ethicists have argued over that question, going all the way back to the earliest rabbinical history. Let’s face it, it’s not an easy question.
Rather than lie, You don’t have to volunteer information if you’re not asked. MacArthur recounts an incident where he had traveled to China with his family, where Protestantism was illegal. He’d been asked to bring some Bibles and some of his books that had been translated to Chinese. These would be contraband and not allowed. So he told his children not to volunteer information but if they were asked, to tell the truth about possessing and intending to smuggle the books. In God’s providence, they weren’t asked.
He also related Corrie ten Boom’s WWII story that the family had nailed their table to the floor. When the table was lifted, a trap door was opened and the space where they hid fleeing Jews was revealed. When soldiers burst in to try and find the hidden Jews, the family would answer truthfully- they are under the table. The soldiers would look under the table and of course, no one was there, they just didn’t know how FAR under the table the people were. It was technically true.
There are a million ways to lie. Slander is a lie, false witness is a lie. There are lies of omission which conceal a fact or facts. Lies of omission leave out crucial information to mislead without actively making up a story.
We have become all-too-familiar with lies of commission- flat out falsifying. Presenting untruths as true.
Exaggeration & minimization are lies that distort the scale of the truth i.e. ‘the fish was THIS big!’ or ‘ It was only a mistake’ (not a sin).
Weighted scales are a lie. I remember buying farm-grown tomatoes in Naples FL in the 1990s. It was a busy farm stand with lines of people. The farmer was working quickly to weigh and bag the produce so people could check out fast. His demeanor was like a carny at the fair hawking his booth, or a pickpocket with nimble fingers, or a magician with sleight of hand…because as I went through I saw his rapid body movements were a way to cover up that he was putting his thumb on the edge of the scale to make the produce weigh more and of course, obtain a higher price.
Proverbs 11:1- A false balance is an abomination to the Lord,
But a just weight is His delight.
You shall not have in your bag differing weights, a large and a small. 14 You shall not have in your house differing measures, a large and a small. 15 You shall have a correct and honest weight; you shall have a correct and honest measure, so that your days may be prolonged in the land which the Lord your God is giving you. 16 For everyone who does these things, everyone who acts unjustly is an abomination to the Lord your God. (Deuteronomy 25:13-16).
This one is interesting- “Paltering” is telling the truth, but in a way that manipulates the listener into a false conclusion. It is defined as ‘the active use of selective, truthful statements to mislead someone, creating a false impression while avoiding a direct lie.’
Did you know so-called journalists can and do ‘report the facts’ but in such a way that the shape of the story presents a false reality or mischaracterizes a situation? Julie Roys of The Roys Report does this masterfully, often shaping the narrative in a sly way that skirts outright lies and in the end, presenting a falsified version of events to the reader. She is finally getting sued for this, in a large defamation lawsuit from The Newsboys.
Roys hated John MacArthur had written over 45 ‘news stories’ against him during his lifetime before his death. Even as she ‘reported’ about the pastor’s death she used her platform again to slander his reputation by paltering.
A local newspaper were I lived also did this masterfully. The constant misrepresentation, bias, slanting the facts, and mischaracterizations finally agitated the local populace so much that I decided to start my own newspaper in order to present to the people what true reporting looked like. People knew they were being lied to and it is upsetting in the extreme to be lied right to one’s face. And in indelible print, no less.
When I mentioned we have an honesty problem in this country, I meant it. As the higher ups go, so goes the country. The entire medical profession lied to us in 2020 about Covid. The entire government lied to us under President Biden’s presidency about his mental faculties. The entire legacy mainstream media outright lied to us about a number of issues, often ignoring plain facts or simply making up things to advance their liberal agenda.
When whole segments of the highest authorities in a nation consistently present an alternate view of reality by lying it is no wonder that the people dwelling under them will pick up the habit of lying, too.
I’ve been in education on and off since 1983. In the old days when a child was caught cheating or stealing and then confronted, they would often cry, crumble, and admit pretty quickly. Their guilt was seen all over their face, and we could soon worm the truth out of them.
Today, even 5-year-olds hold fast to their lie, strongly denying they did anything wrong. Even when faced with a towering adult glaring at them telling the child they were seen stealing it, they still deny and lie right to your face without blinking and without wavering an inch. It is remarkable, actually, in a ghastly way, that a small child can withstand an authority figure’s moral pressure.
The Lord values truth and honesty. Honesty is defined as behavior, in action and words, that aims to convey truth. As one of His attributes, God is truth itself. Jesus stated in John 14:6 that he “is the way, the truth, and the life”. The Holy Spirit is the spirit of truth.
There’s so much falsehood in the world, and Satan himself is the father of lies. What nourishes and nurtures our souls more than anything is the truth of God. I don’t want to devote my life to something that isn’t true. Again, that truth is defined by God Himself, who is the Author of truth, the Fountainhead of truth, the Source of all truth.
GotQuestions notes that “The Bible often compares relationships between righteousness and truth, and between unrighteousness and falsehood. For example, Paul refers to people who “do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness” (Romans 2:8), and he highlights the equality of unrighteousness and lies and righteousness and truth in Romans 3:5, 7. From this we learn that God’s moral attribute of truth is also tied to His attribute of holiness.“
Since the Father of Lies is god of this world, it is imperative we retain our worldview through the most truthful book ever written- The Bible. God’s truth is our anchor in this topsy-turvy world of lies.
The Bible is an honest book, and as such, it does not hesitate to present humans in all our failed morality that display our sins, including lying. God is a God of faithfulness, mercy, and grace. Most of the liars named above they were later forgiven. David repented and was called a man after God’s own heart. Jacob was blessed and renamed Israel. Rahab became a person in the genealogical line of the Messiah. Peter was restored.
Because God has high standards (the highest) it’s important we do not lie. But when we do, and we will, run to Him immediately in repentance, and He will forgive. Although He is a God of justice he is also a God of mercy!
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