Proverbs 12:19 ESV
Truthful lips endure forever, but a lying tongue is but for a moment.
[https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=proverbs+12%3A19&version=ESV]
The sovereignty of God means that the good guys are going to win; more precisely, it means that our good Lord is going to win. After all, if He is with us, who can hope to stand against Him (Romans 8:31-39)? This truth has implications, to say the least, one of which today’s proverb illuminates for us.
God created the world by His Word, commanding with supreme power and superlative authority that it should come into being (Genesis 1-2). Sinful man, of course, desperately denies this fact, but we are “fearfully and wonderfully made” (Psalm 139:14). The truth cannot, in the end, be denied, save by an act of willful delusion (Philippians 2:11). This world that God has created, because He created it, is His.
Because this world is His, He is forming it into an ever more perfect world that it might bring glory to Him (Exodus 15:1-21). In this world which He is redeeming, a lie has no place. A lie, being evil, is an ephemeral thing, limited in life to the time which God has allotted it and no longer.
The truth, in contrast, is in harmony with God. He is the origin and teacher of all truth (Psalm 51:6). The truth, therefore, cannot pass away, because God maintains it whole. All truth is of God, however it may be misused by sinful man. God, who knows all, therefore knows all truth, and God does not forget nor does He lie (Psalm 119:160; 1 Samuel 2:3).
The mortality of lies and the immortality of truth has consequences.
Liars don’t last forever: they’re liars. Either they turn from their lies and repent, or they persist in their evil and burn in eternal death. Lies cannot sustain them in the face of the God of truth (Isaiah 65:16; Acts 5:1-11). The lie always breaks eventually because it does not conform to reality, does not conform to the truth. If the liar persists in cleaving to his lying tongue even as his lies break around him, then he is lost, beyond all mortal hope to save. Only by the grace of God can a liar be persuaded to utterly forsake his lying- not just the particulars but the entirety- and to turn towards the Savior for forgiveness.
Truthful lips, though, are eternal, as this proverb proclaims. Man is made in the image of God (Genesis 1:27). When he honors God with that image, when he speaks truth in imitation of God, then his life is a testament to God’s glory. Truth is of God, and therefore truth is eternal. Truth is eternal, and therefore God preserves the lips that speak it.
Of course, this goes both ways. God preserves His people, granting them eternal life (Romans 5:18-21). Those who ‘endure forever’ should have ‘truthful lips’; the one necessitates the other and is necessitated in turn. For the one God has saved to speak lies in contravention of His nature and grace is a great evil indeed, like a man given ten talents who then uses them to hire a hit man on his master (Matthew 25:14-30). The duty of the Christian is therefore to have truthful lips in order that he might endure forever in the glorification and praise of God, to Whom be all glory.
God bless.
Sanctuary Functional Medicine, under the direction of Dr Eric Potter, IFMCP MD, provides functional medicine services to Nashville, Middle Tennessee and beyond. We frequently treat patients from Kentucky, Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, Ohio, Indiana, and more... offering the hope of healthier more abundant lives to those with chronic illness.
