The Ninth Commandment by Milton C. Wilcox

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Apr 27, 1916

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 93, No. 21.

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The Ninth Commandment

By Milton C. Wilcox

The Law of God — No. 14

The Ninth Commandment

MILTON C. WILCOX

“THOU shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.” Ex. 20:16.

In other words, thou shalt not tell an untruth; thou shalt not lie. The greatest sin is when the lying is used to injure another.

We like people upon whom we can depend. When they tell a story or make a statement, we like to believe it to be true, or at least be assured that the one who tells it believes it to be true. Does such a one make a bargain with us? We know he will stand to it if possible. Does he make a pledge to God’s cause? He will pay it. It is a sacred vow, and he cannot respect himself and leave it unpaid. He has given his word; let that suffice. Yet somehow there are those who seem to feel that it is not important to pay pledges to the Master’s work if not convenient. They reason, Let it go; God will forgive.

God may forgive the delinquency, morally and financially, but the man has himself lost, lost the strength of character that accrues by keeping promises under difficulties. Such failures are false notes in our song of character, breaks in the lute, jars in the harmony of life.

Lying is one of the most essentially evil habits that one can form. What a blow it is to character to mold it after that which is false and undependable! It strikes at the very foundation of character—intrinsic truth. It is disintegrating, cancerous. Montaigne truly says, “Lying is a hateful and accursed vice. If we did but discover the horrors and consequences of it, we should pursue it with fire and sword, and more justly than other crimes.” “If it be well weighed, to say that a man lieth, is as much as to say that he is brave toward God, and a coward toward man. For a lie faces God, and shrinks from man.” But the man who lies, generally forgets God, and therefore has no sense of his presence.

The habit of lying has various sources. It sometimes begins in exaggeration. A story needs embellishing, and it is done at the expense of truth. Not long ago a minister told a story in the writer’s presence of an incident that he had witnessed in a certain State, when the writer positively knew that it had occurred years before in another State, and that that minister was not even in the State when it occurred. It had been heard, appropriated, and finally, perhaps, sincerely passed as his own. But one would not so exaggerate or falsify a story if telling it to Him who knows the hearts of all men. Why, then, do so when telling it in his invisible presence?

Sometimes men lie to hide mistakes or cover negligence in duty. They are ashamed to tell the truth, and commit a sin still more shameful. And as the liar talks on, his web of speech becomes more and more tangled. He may think others do not see it, but the discerning do, and the liar has lost the confidence of his fellows. Addison has well said, “A lie is troublesome, and sets a man’s invention upon the rack; and one trick needs a great many more to make it good. It is like building upon a false foundation, which continually stands in need of props to shove it up; and proves, at last, more chargeable [expensive] than to have raised a substantial building at first upon a true and solid foundation.”

Lying or bearing false witness is not always a matter of plain words or even of any words. It is sometimes an insinuation, an innuendo, a suggestion of evil regarding some one. Sometimes it is a sneer, a curl of the lip, a gesture. But they are baneful poisons that stab some one’s reputation, blast some one’s good name, poison some one’s mind against another. God’s commandment is exceeding broad, and condemns anything that bears false witness against another. That commandment is so broad that it condemns the false and sinful life that continually bears false witness against God.

Note what the Scriptures of truth say as to the sin of lying and how God regards it.

First of all, God “cannot lie;” he is intrinsic, personified Truth. Titus 1:2.

A lie is of the devil. “When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own; for he is a liar, and the father of it.” John 8:44.

We may readily see to what class we belong. He that is of the truth heareth Christ’s voice; he that loveth and maketh a lie is of the devil. Therefore “lying lips are an abomination to Jehovah; but they that deal truly are his delight.” Prov. 12:22. Among the seven things which are abominable before God are a “lying tongue,” and “a false witness that speaketh lies.” Prov. 6:16-19.

In the books of Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Isaiah, God has much to say against the men who teach that which is not true; who prophesy lies, and do it in God’s name; who make the people trust in a lie. Such teachers may themselves be deceived, but the lies they tell are no less potent for destruction to the souls that believe them. See chapters 27, 28, 29 of Jeremiah; chapters 13 and 22 of Ezekiel;

and chapters 28 and 29 of Isaiah.

Those preserved through the last plagues of wrath have for shield and buckler God’s truth (Ps. 91:4), while those lost under the strong delusions of the last days will be those deceived by the “working of error, that they should believe a lie.” 2 Thess. 2:10-12.

All liars shall have their part in the terrible woes of final destruction, among “the fearful, and unbelieving, and abominable, and murderers, and fornicators, and sorcerers, and idolaters.” See Rev. 21:8; 22:15.

They are there now, though they know it not. Lying is in various degrees respectable among men. God classes it now where he will class it then. Let us accept his classification now, and leave off lying forever.

“O what a tangled web we weave, When first we practice to deceive!”

It may mean confession and humility to our proud heart to get out of our maze of falsity. But it is worth the while at any cost. We are ever the gainers in choosing the truth instead of a lie, the genuine instead of the counterfeit. It is worth while to break partnership with “the father of lies.” It is worth while to take the gilded rotten stones out of our building of character, and replace them, by the grace of Christ, with the precious stones of righteousness and truth. It is worth while to be true to our own conscience, our own convictions, and to our God.

Truth is unpleasant, inconvenient at times, to our limited human vision; but in God’s great plan it is always right, and will so be seen when the divine judgment shall sweep away the refuge of lies, and God shall bid the righteous nation that keepeth truth to enter into the eternal kingdom (Isa. 26:2), led by Him who is “the way, the truth, and the life” (John 14:6).

Dear soul, have you fallen under the power and darkness of deception or deceiving? Break away from your bonds. The Lord’s injunction, “Wherefore putting away lying, speak every man truth with his neighbor: for we are members one of another,” is in Christ Jesus an enabling act to us. There is power in Christ to cleanse. There is power to break the tangled, twisted threads. There is power to wash the stains away, and put into the erstwhile deceptive human heart the beauty and love of truth.

“Dare to be true, nothing can need a lie; A fault which needs it most grows two thereby.”

“Then to side with truth is noble when we share her wretched crust, Ere her cause bring fame and profit and ’tis prosperous to be just; Then it is the brave man chooses, while the coward stands aside, Doubting in his abject spirit till his Lord is crucified, And the multitude make virtue of the faith they had descried.”

Mountain View, Cal.