When Adam sinned, he abandoned his Father to become a child of the devil, the father of lies. Ever since, the history of humanity has been a history of lies. “All men are liars, the Psalmist says. Paul agrees: “Their throat is an open grave, with their tongues they keep deceiving. The poison of asps is under their lips.”

Paul says two things about lying. First: Lying is universal. We may rarely tell an outright falsehood, but we spin and edit to make ourselves look better or another look worse. We hold back truth out of fear or indifference, or tell part of the truth to distract others from more important but embarrassing truths. We cover our sins and shortcomings. To top it off, we lie by denying that we are liars.

Second: Lying is deadly.

It kills the people we lie about. A flattering mouth works ruin, and a flatterer spreads a net for his neighbor. A false witness is a sword or sharp arrow. A slanderer separates friends. Our hypocrisy drives people away from Jesus. Lying also kills the liar. “Whoever slanders his neighbor, him I will destroy,” Yahweh says, and liars are thrown into the lake of fire.

God desires truth in the inmost parts, truth in the heart that produces truth in the mouth and life. Our first act of truth-telling is to confess we are liars, for if we say that we have not sinned we make Him a liar and His word is not in us.