“You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.”
— Exodus 20:16
Time magazine ran a cover story decade ago with a striking title: “Is America Telling the Truth?” It opened with three words: lies, lies, lies. The survey they cited indicated that the majority of Americans lie regularly, not just occasionally, not in moments of crisis, but as a routine feature of daily life. Many said they could not get through a single week without lying. We are living in a truth-decaying society. And we have been losing the decay battle for a long time.
The Ninth Commandment is simple and direct: you shall not bear false witness against your neighbor. In its original context, it addressed false testimony in a court of law, the willingness to lie under oath to damage or destroy another person. But Jesus took it to the heart level, as He does with all the commandments. You are never more like Christ than when you are telling the truth. You are never more like the devil than when you are telling a lie. Jesus said Satan “is a liar and the father of lies” (John 8:44). And Jesus said of Himself: “I am the way, and the truth, and the life” (John 14:6). Truth is not just a virtue. In Jesus, it is a person.
The forms of bearing false witness are many. There is the outright lie. There is the half-truth, which is often the most dangerous lie of all. There is flattery, saying to a person’s face what you would never say behind their back, to manipulate rather than to bless. There is insinuation, the raised eyebrow, the knowing smirk, the leading question that implies without asserting. There is gossip, which passes information without regard for the damage it does to the person being discussed. And there is hypocrisy, the lie of a life that professes one thing and practices another.
Character is not what people see in the daylight. Character is what you are in the dark. Reputation is what others know about you. Character is what God knows about you, and what you know about yourself. A life of integrity means that those three things, what people see, what you know, and what God sees, are the same. That is what the Ninth Commandment is calling you to.
Tell the truth. All of it. All the time. It is the most countercultural thing a Christian can do in this generation.
YOU ARE NEVER MORE LIKE CHRIST THAN WHEN YOU TELL THE TRUTH, AND NEVER MORE LIKE THE DEVIL THAN WHEN YOU DON’T.
