Introduction
In the previous lessons we have considered how we ought to deal with other people in the light of the gospel of Jesus Christ. We use our Christian freedom to respect life, relationships, and property of ourselves and others, and to use them according to God’s design. To this list we now add respect in communication with others. How do we communicate with other people in a way that gives glory to the Lord? The answer is simple yet profound: Speak the truth!
This is the principle behind the ninth commandment, which is no less important than the commandments that came before. In line with LD 43 from the catechism, we will consider how Jesus Christ gives us—
Freedom to love the Truth.
1. The nature of the lie
2. The essential Truth
3. The practice of loving speech
The nature of the lie
Just like the previous commandments, the ninth commandment was published as a negative statement, which the catechism echoes directly. I must not give false testimony against anyone. The Hebrew text literally says: “against my neighbor”, but Jesus made clear to us that our neighbor is anyone whom the Lord places on our path.
“Giving false testimony” is a legal term, and highlights the worst kind of violation of the ninth commandment. Picture a courtroom. A man is sitting there, in prison garb, handcuffed, because he has been accused of murdering someone in a dark alleyway, and arrested. But he will only be punished if it can be established that the accusation is true. It would be terribly unjust to give him a long jail sentence on the basis of a mere suspicion. Now suppose that you happen to be one of the few people who walked by this dark alleyway when the murder supposedly took place. You are asked, under oath: “Did you see this man commit that murder?” If you say and other witnesses say “yes”, the court will consider it established that this man did actually commit the murder. And if you did actually see him do it—if what you are saying is the truth—then this is a just outcome. But if you and other witnesses lie, and you did not actually see him commit the murder, you may be the cause of great injustice, as an innocent man will be punished.
Giving false testimony against an accused person is a great sin, because it obviously has immediate consequences that are obviously unjust. The Bible speaks sternly about it. It gives the example of Potiphar’s wife, who falsely accused Joseph to take revenge on him. It gives us the example of King Ahab and Queen Jezebel, who had a man executed based on false testimony, so that they could steal his land. It points out that Jesus, Stephen, and Paul were all victims of false testimony by their enemies.
But just as “killing” is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to sins against people’s lives, and “adultery” is only the most obvious in a large cluster of sexual sins, so “giving false testimony” is only the worst example of a group of related sins. Outside of the courtroom, a lie may result in less obvious injustice, but it can still do great harm. A key example is slander, where we hurt a person’s reputation by telling falsehoods about him or her. There are also more subtle forms of perverting the truth. Half-truths, for instance, where you tell part of a story but don’t mention all the salient facts. Or you report what someone said but inaccurately: you twist his words, and make him look bad. Or maybe you hear a rumor about someone and pass it on, without first carefully checking that it’s actually true. The catechism talks about condemning or joining in condemning someone rashly and unheard: based on what others say, you jump to a negative conclusion about a person without giving him or her the opportunity to explain what happened.
So the ninth commandment covers a wide range of sin in communication. Saying things that are not true is lying; saying things in such a way that your listener draws unfair conclusions is deceit. The catechism says that I must avoid all of it, even the slightest bit of untruth.
Why is this so important? The Bible famously teaches, in James 3, that we shouldn’t underestimate the danger of speaking improperly. It compares the tongue to the rudder of a ship: a rudder is a little piece of wood, but it can change the direction of a big ship. It compares the tongue to a fire, a small spark that can cause a forest fire that destroys acres of trees. James says: “It sets on fire the entire course of life, and is set on fire by hell.”
“Hell!” That is strong language! And our catechism follows suit: I must avoid all lying in deceit, is says, as the devil’s own works, under penalty of God’s heavy wrath. If you lie, you do the devil’s work and you deserve hell. Lies come out of the pit of eternal fire and bring you to the pit of eternal fire. In this strong language, both James and the catechism are faithful to what Jesus himself said. He called those who did believe the truth children of the devil, “for he is a liar and the father of lies.” When Peter spoke out against Jesus’ announcement that he would die, Jesus said: “Get away from me, Satan!”
That lying is the devil’s work is also clear from the beginning of history. What led to the fall of Adam and Eve? Slick half-truths and lies from the old serpent, who is Satan himself. “God probably told you to keep your hands of all the nice trees here, didn’t he?” “Well, Mr. Serpent, it was something like that, but not exactly. I mean, we can eat from all trees, really, except those two special ones, because then we’ll die.” “Ah… That’s what he said, did he? Figures. Pure selfishness, really. Those trees won’t kill you; on the contrary, God knows very well that they will turn you into gods!” And so it happened. Half-truth, deceit, lies, suggestion, slander—that is how evil entered the world. And whenever we lie, in whatever form, we take a page out of the playbook of that old serpent, do harm to others, and greatly anger God.
The essence of the truth
Why is it such a big deal, the truth versus the lie? It has everything to do with what truth is. Philosophically, you could define truth as “that which corresponds with reality.” If I say: “It is raining,” and it is actually raining, then I speak the truth; but if it is not actually raining, my statement is a lie.
Truth corresponds with reality, and that reality is God’s reality. The Bible tells us that he created our reality by speaking his word—God is such a powerful truthteller, that what he says becomes reality. And as creature made in his image and as his servants, our calling is to speak his words after him: our words cannot create our own reality, but they ought to reflect God’s reality. If we love the Lord who made us, and the world in which we live, then it only makes sense for us to love the truth, as the catechism tells us ought to, and to show that love in practice: to speak and confess the truth honestly. Lies and dishonesty are a denial of the reality the Lord has given us.
When the Old Testament speaks about our God YHWH, it especially uses two words. The first word is translated “gracious” or “merciful”; the second can be translated “truth” or “faithfulness”. The ninth commandment is based on that second core trait of our Lord. Truthfulness is at the heart of who he is; when he said “Let there be light!” it became true, and when he said: “I will bless you,” it is a promise that he kept and will certainly keep. The New Testament follows up in this; John proclaims that “grace and truth”—precisely these core characteristics of God—”have come in Jesus Christ.” He is the embodied Word of God—the powerful Word that corresponds to reality and even creates reality. We may therefore say, without exaggeration: our Lord Jesus Christ is the Truth in his very person.
Jesus said it himself: “I am the Way and the Truth and the Life.” Not just truth in an abstract propositional sense, such as the fact that “1 + 1 = 2”. The words “Way” and “Life” show that Jesus is the Truth in the full sense that really matters; that who he is and what he says and does corresponds exactly to the reality that God has opened the way to eternal life for falling people.
For a Christian, all truth is in line with Jesus Christ as the central truth. Even the mundane truth about earthly matters, such as “it is raining” and “1+1 = 2” have deeper meaning in the perspective of the heavenly Kingdom Jesus brought. The way we deal with thoughts and ideas, talking and writing in everyday life is informed by the Holy Spirit our Lord has given us. He is, after all, the Spirit of Truth, who tells us everything we need to know, not just for this life, but also and especially for the spiritual life in the Kingdom of God.
In that light, saying things that are true is merely the beginning of the freedom we have in Jesus Christ. If we love the Lord Jesus, we put even more stock in his teachings, the spiritual truth about the Kingdom of Heaven, the mystery of the faith. Not only do we say truthfully “it is raining” when it is actually raining, but we also truthfully proclaim to people: “Believe in Jesus Christ, and you will be saved.” Christian learn to worship with their words, even in the life of everyday: we worship “in Spirit and in truth”, as Jesus said in John 4; and Paul calls us to cultivate “speaking among yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs,” which of course sing of the highest Truth there is.
So speaking the truth, both about mundane things and about the gospel reality, ought to be a natural thing for Christians. The Spirit of Jesus himself teaches it to us. But maybe we need to remind ourselves of this fact; maybe we should learn to listen better to that Spirit. Let us be deliberate to translate our love for Jesus into love for the truth, and our faith in Jesus into speaking up for the truth. Then we will no longer be children of the father of all lies—the devil—but of our Father in heaven, whose glory is his grace and his faithful truth.
The practice of loving speech
I speak about the essence of the truth in these broad terms, not only because the Bible does so, but because it provides important guidance in what it means to speak the truth.
Consider the little boy who comes running to his mother and complains: “My sister took an extra cookie without permission!” That may be very true; and the sister may well be at fault. Yet there is something wrong with what the boy says. He is being a tattle-tale, a snitch. How can his speaking the truth be wrong?
It is because the activity of speaking the truth is about more than the factual correspondence of our words. We should also consider the motivation and the effects of our words. Speaking the truth can do unnecessary damage. Especially in a fallen world. Since we live among sinners, we could probably find flaws and bad behaviors in anyone, and then we could truthfully report it to others. Everything we say could be factually true; yet our saying it would be a sin if it harms the other person by ruining his reputation. This is precisely what is wrong with gossip, which our catechism mentions together with slander. Slander is spreading false rumors, gossip is passing on rumors that are likely true—yet both are to be avoided.
We are to speak the truth in love, as Paul teaches in Eph. 4:15. We know that expression, but do we really understand it? We tend to think of “the truth” and “in love” as two opposite forces here: on one hand, it would be true to say that Mr. So-and-so yelled at the mailman, but on the other hand, it would not be loving to tell that story. I would suggest that speaking the truth in love is a natural conclusion if we understand the nature of Truth more broadly.
The Truth, as it is in Jesus Christ, is that he is the Savior who reconciles a fallen world to God. The Truth is, that in him God’s love has been revealed to us in the most profound way. The overarching Truth is that the Lord is merciful and gracious, patient and kind, forgiving and generous, that he finds no joy in the loss of a sinner but rather in true repentance and restoration. This Truth is the heart of our faith; it is the basis of our new life. This Truth is taught in the Bible as the Word of God, and by the Holy Spirit as the Spirit of Truth.
So if we are going to open our mouth and say something, it ought to be guided by this Truth. Not only that what we say should be factually true and fair. But also that what we say, and how we say it, reflects the character of God, which through the Holy Spirit becomes our character. Let every word we say show a basic understanding of grace and mercy, kindness and charitable judgment, care and generosity. Let the Truth we speak reveal the core of God’s law for living, that we love God and love others for his sake.
This means, in practice, that we should take care how we say things. Our tone of voice. Our timing. If there is a painful truth we must tell, let’s tell it where it belongs. It may mean that we should keep our mouth shut instead of joining a conversation. It may mean that we gently change topics when gossip rears its ugly head. It may mean leaving a party early.
Christians do well to train themselves in this respect, for instance by consciously adopting the THINK approach. T-H-I-N-K: is what we are going to say not only True, but also Helpful, Interesting, Necessary, and Kind? If it is not all these things, we should seriously consider not saying it, because it might well violate the nature of the Truth as defined by our loving Savior Jesus Christ.
The catechism translates this into a most positive principle. If you want to actively work on Christian living, here is some great homework: do what you can to defend and promote your neighbor’s honor and reputation. Do what you can. Not just keeping silent when someone is slandered, but speaking in his defence. Not just avoiding gossip about someone, but saying positive things about her. We should be quick with compliments, encouraging words, and positive references to others. What we say should be true, of course; but above all, let it be loving and supportive, just as our Lord has spoken to us the most loving and supportive gospel we could possibly hope for.