When Christians speak lies

Jesus personified truth, and the Father is described as light with absolutely no darkness at all (Jn.14:6;1Jn.1:5). That is the integrity of God because of which we can trust Him with our life through eternity. To become like Him is the goal we declare, but yet there is so much careless lying going on without any fear of God or a thought of having to give an account to Him one day. That is the nature of our former father which we have to put away (Jn.8:44).

Parents tell their children that Santa brought them their gifts, and as the children get older, they are forced to admit that this was not true, not realising that they have lost a bit of their credibility. Think of a Christian preacher who spread a story saying that there was a narrow gate called a needle's eye in Jerusalem in the days of Jesus where camels had to unload before getting in, making up an explanation for what Jesus said about rich people finding it difficult to enter the kingdom of God. This makes us wonder how many of those explanations preachers give about the problems in Corinth, Ephesus, etc., are stories they have made up in order to tell us that certain passages are not applicable to us!

Using lies to get out of difficult situations is a common practice that our old nature teaches us from childhood. But many do not get out of that habit even after we are born again and have supposedly started to partake of the divine nature. The cleverer we are, the more explanations we find to say that the end justifies the means! We can't find excuses for our lying by quoting the examples of Abraham and Isaac, because in those cases the Bible is only honestly reporting their failures rather than telling us it is all right to tell lies! Every word we speak must be what we can vouch for before God (Mt.12:36).

One lie needs another one soon to cover up the first one. Sometimes people build up such a structure with their lies that they can't remember what they said! Some wise man has said that if we speak the truth, we don't have to have such a struggle in our memory! Each time a person tells a lie, his reputation is being built up as an unreliable person whose words cannot be believed! In close relationships such as marriage, one lie is sometimes enough to break the other person's confidence, and then it becomes a long, difficult struggle to regain that trust.

Sometimes speaking the truth can be costly. But many people bank on grace from God, thinking that God will understand them and condone their action as something that became unavoidable. They give in to lies hoping to escape from the immediate situation. But isn't it cheaper to pay that cost than to live the rest of life fearing if we are going to be caught? Sometimes it is a test from God to see if we can be relied on. We must remember that such unexpected tests are what God uses to decide if we can be trusted with some valuable ministry. Faithfulness in small things is big, isn't it (Lk.16:10)?