Why Lie?

In the first century two early missionaries named Paul and Timothy wrote a letter to the church in Colossae.  One line in the letter reads, “Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices.” (Colossians 3:9)

It is interesting to me that such a line would have to be included in a letter to Christians.  It comes toward the end of a list of behaviors that Christians should not partake in such as, sexual immorality, slander, malice, idolatry, and obscene language.  Lying fits right in with this list.  However, if we look closely, we see that Paul and Timothy did not simply write, “Do not lie.”  They wrote “Do not lie to one another.” (Emphasis added)

Now remember, this letter was written to a church.  That meant that he was writing to Christians.  Lying is clearly wrong.  Yet lying to your brother or sister in Christ is repugnant.  

 

It is very sad to see dishonesty among believers, though it is not surprising.  We are redeemed through Jesus’ atoning work on the Cross, but we still sin.  Sometimes that sin manifests in the form of lies, and sometimes those lies are directed at our brothers and sisters.

 

Lies are told for a number of different reasons.  Sometimes they are told to cheat.  Sometimes they are told to manipulate.  Sometimes they are told to cover up a truth that we are afraid to let be seen.  Yet they are clearly wrong.

 

Sadly, lies happen all too often, and when they do, they erode integrity and disintegrate trust.

 

What should we do?

For starters, do not lie.  Especially do not lie to your brothers and sisters in Christ.  The application of this verse is simple.

 

However sometimes we lie anyway.  If you do, come clean.  It is painful to be trapped in a lie.  If they do not know you lied, you do them a service by telling them the truth.  As a Christian, you have nothing to fear from the Truth.

 

If, on the other hand they know you lied then you do yourself a service.  You have already lost a lot of trust through your lack of integrity.  Without trust, you will not be able to engage with them in any meaningful way.  They know that you are an untrustworthy person, and they will not likely believe you, confide in you, or even talk with you much in the future.  Only through restoring your integrity can you restore a relationship, and this can only be done by confessing and repenting.  This integrity will be restored even further if you come clean before they call you out on the lie.

 

The Church is a family.  We are brothers and sisters.  Without trust, that family is broken.  Do not lie to one another.

Warnings are Good for the Soul

Michelangelo's depiction of Ezekiel

Thousands of years ago God spoke to the prophet Ezekiel:

 

“Whenever you hear a word from my mouth, you shall give them warning from me. If I say to the wicked, You shall surely die,’ and you give him no warning, nor speak to warn the wicked from his wicked way, in order to save his life, that wicked person shall die for his iniquity, but his blood I will require at your hand. But if you warn the wicked, and he does not turn from his wickedness, or from his wicked way, he shall die for his iniquity, but you will have delivered your soul. Again, if a righteous person turns from his righteousness and commits injustice, and I lay a stumbling block before him, he shall die. Because you have not warned him, he shall die for his sin, and his righteous deeds that he has done shall not be remembered, but his blood I will require at your hand. But if you warn the righteous person not to sin, and he does not sin, he shall surely live, because he took warning, and you will have delivered your soul.”  (Ezekiel 3:17-21 ESV)

 

These are powerful words, and I think they have application for us today.  There are two aspects to this interaction.

 

Relating to the Wicked

People do evil things.  Some people make such a habit out of doing evil that they can rightly be called wicked.  When we see such people, we have two possible courses of action.  We could say something or say nothing.  If we say nothing, and they continue to be wicked, they will get what they deserve.  They may even die for their wickedness.  However, though we will not be accountable for their actions, we may be accountable for their death because we did not warn them.

On the other hand, if we do warn them and they do not turn from their evil ways, what follows is completely on them.  They did evil.  They knew they did evil.  They did not stop doing evil, and they got justice.  We tried to turn them from their wickedness, and they did not listen.  We are guiltless for what happened to them.

 

Relating to the Righteous

Sometimes people are less sinful.  Such people are referred to as “righteous.”  Keep in mind, these are not good people.  They are just less bad.  Jesus made this distinction in Mark 10:18 when he said, “No one is good but God alone,” and Paul made a significant distinction between the good and the righteous in his letter to the Church in Rome (Romans 5:7).  Righteous people are still sinful people.

 

As such, sometimes a righteous person sins.  Left unchecked this sin will lead to all his righteousness being forgotten.  This is where we come in.  We could say nothing.  In doing so, he starts down the path of wickedness that eventually might even lead to him dying for his evil deeds.  Though he is accountable for his actions, we, who said nothing, are accountable for his death.

The other option is that we could warn him.  Because he is righteous, he may well turn from his transgressions and do what is right again.  He could take warning at our admonishment and turn back to the right path.  If this is the case, we would have done both him and us a service.  We will have saved his life and our soul. 

 

Application

When we see evil happening, we should speak up, regardless of whether the person is (in our eyes) righteous or unrighteous.  They may or may not turn from their actions, but we will have fulfilled our responsibility.  More importantly we will have done the right thing.

 

There is another application as well.  Everyone reading this is either righteous or wicked.  Yet regardless of which group we are in, we still sin.  It may very well be that at some points someone will confront us because of our wrongdoing.  At that point we have a choice.  We could continue in our evil deeds or turn back to God and be restored.

 

Whatever we chose though, the one who warned us has done his part.  At that point, what happens to us in on our own heads.

 

Warn others when they do wrong, and listen to others when they warn you.  Both are good for the soul.

A Prophecy to the Ministry Worker

Thousands of years ago the prophet Jeremiah prophesied that the nation of Judah and the city of Jerusalem would be overthrown by Babylon.  He told the people of a choice.  They could surrender to Babylon, or fight.  If they fought, they would die.  If they surrendered, they would live in exile.  God told them to surrender.  The theme repeats in his prophecies over and over that a choice must be made.  Obeying the Lord would lead to life.  Disobeying would mean certain death.

Naturally, the chief political officers considered Jeremiah to be a traitor, and he was faced with persecution.  He was imprisoned and mistreated.  His viewpoint was unpopular.  It also happened to be right.

 

His words came to pass.  Judah was conquered by Babylon and went into exile.  Those who resisted died.

Jeremiah’s prophecies can be read in the biblical book named after him.  His words were written down by a scribe named Baruch who is only briefly mentioned in the Bible.  I imagine Baruch looking around at the political turmoil that resulted from Jeremiah’s controversial prophecies and thinking that he made a mistake working for this guy, as his employment had only brought him persecution and pain.  He may have even thought of abandoning his principles to go along with the popular views of the time.  He obviously had marketable skills.  He could have sought great things for himself in Jerusalem.

 

God cared about Baruch, and he gave him a personal prophecy recorded in Jeremiah 45:

 

The word that Jeremiah the prophet spoke to Baruch the son of Neriah, when he wrote these words in a book at the dictation of Jeremiah, in the fourth year of Jehoiakim the son of Josiah, king of Judah: “Thus says the LORD, the God of Israel, to you, O Baruch: You said, Woe is me! For the LORD has added sorrow to my pain. I am weary with my groaning, and I find no rest.’ Thus shall you say to him, Thus says the LORD: Behold, what I have built I am breaking down, and what I have planted I am plucking up—that is, the whole land. And do you seek great things for yourself? Seek them not, for behold, I am bringing disaster upon all flesh, declares the LORD. But I will give you your life as a prize of war in all places to which you may go.”

 

Though this prophecy was given to Baruch years earlier it was not recorded in Jeremiah until after what Jeremiah had said was fulfilled.  It is as if Baruch looked back on what happened and remembered this personal prophecy.  He saw that he made the right decision by sticking with the unpopular choice of obeying the Lord, and as a result, he was alive to write the 45^th chapter of Jeremiah, a prophecy written to the ministry worker.

 

Obedience to the Lord, even when everyone else is against you, is better than going along with the crowd against the will of God.  Baruch made the right decision.  Will we?

 

An image of Baruch from Gustave Doré's illustrations for La Grande Bible de Tours.

 

Special thanks to Tonya Dove who encouraged me to start writing again.