A false witness will not go unpunished, and he who breathes out lies will perish.
Proverbs has a habit of repeating itself. Just as Psalm 14:1-3 and Psalm 53:1-3 are nearly identical, so Proverbs will on occasion repeat verses. By the rules of common sense, we can guess that these repetitions are important. God does not want us to miss or underestimate the gravity of what He says once, let alone twice. So let’s pay attention. Why is God so emphatic that false witnesses will be punished, will perish?
Lying is fundamental to human sin. Romans 1:18-25 makes clear that fallen man is almost universally engaged in a conscious lie to himself to avoid his duty to God; the only alternate is outright blasphemy, ala the devils (James 2:19). God’s people, meanwhile, have those channels for falsehood still carved deep into their bones, and we lie: to ourselves, to each other, to the world, even to God. This last is the worst (Acts 5:1-11), but it is also crucial to many of the other lies.
But we all know that lying to bring harm to another is an evil deed (Ex. 20:16). We easily recognize the sin of lying to harm ourselves, whether by deceiving ourselves or by seeking to deceive God. We debate, with reason on both sides, about whether lies are permitted in certain circumstances or even requisite (they are (Jam. 2:25)). But all these are the forthright lies; we too easily forget their subtler cousins. We can lie not with words or communication but with the import of our actions.
The central truth of the Christian life is that we are devoted completely to His service (Deut. 6:5). With every sin, therefore, we commit a complex of lies. We say, first, that we are not His; second, that we despise him; and third, that those are His need not honor Him. The origin of all these lies is the imperfection of our love for Him, of course; we are wholly devoted to Him in principle and in eternity, but we have not yet been purged of our habits and affections for sin. The guilt of these sins He bears (Is. 53:10-12); the passion within these sins He takes from us slowly (on earth) and totally (in the completion of the second resurrection). But they are lies we tell by our words, compounding each sin.
One common lie in the modern church is to proclaim only half of the counsel of God by proclaiming a grace without context of the law. On the one hand, this offer often borders on nonsensical. Sin is the violation of God’s law, and grace is the remedy for sin. Without the law, there is no sin (Romans 7), and therefore without the law we would have no need for grace (and no capacity for righteousness, lest you desire such an animal state). Of course, without the law, man would have much less capacity for blessedness (Ps. 119).
On the other hand, even for the redeemed man, the law is an integral part of life. No longer is he doomed by his disobedience, yes, but that does not make the law irrelevant. The law still discloses His character to His people, reason enough in itself. His law is still the path to glorify Him (John 21:29; 1 Cor. 6:20) and thus the guide to the Christian’s ultimate and deepest desire, to which he seeks to subordinate all his unruly flesh. The law is still the path by which He blesses us (Ps. 94:12) and those around us (Rom. 13:8-10).
The lie of proclaiming the gospel without care for His law, therefore, is that the gospel stands alone. We mutilate the gospel when we do such, sometimes fatally, and we lie as to the character of God, hiding His full glory and graciousness, to give us true insight into His intention and desire for us.
Such specific lies crop up in our lives, in the specifics of our commissions and omissions as they relate to our profession. The nature of these lies is generally hypocrisy, to witness by action a disbelief in what is professed (Matt. 6:2). Sometimes that hypocrisy rises from truly not believing what we say; sometimes it rises from improperly understanding; sometimes we act better than we say (in which case the lie is in the words, not the deeds (words are a variety of deeds, morally, so the reversal is unsurprising. Each could be substituted for the other, in this discourse, with little difficulty or change.)).
The structure of such particular lies is often of paying lip service to a principle, of adhering to it in some parts, those obvious or unmistakable, and of acting against it in other, more subtle or unrecognized ways. For instance, think of a man who adheres scrupulously to the Fifth Commandment. He honors his parents; he is Godly authority to his children; he tends well to his wife. He recognizes the Fifth Commandment is a command establishing the sanctity of the family, and he seeks (with, he thinks, general success) to live up to that standard, though conscious of lapses based in impulse or error.
But there is a second side to this man. He is a proponent of public schooling, for one, of handing over a substantial portion of the parental authority to the state. He sees nothing wrong with debt-based economics, with their corrosive effect on family integrity. He finds property taxes problematic not because they are evil but because they are annoying. He accords the church institution more reverence than the family and more primacy. In all these ways (and perhaps more), he violates the Fifth Commandment. He gives the lie to his profession of adherence to the Decalogue, for he does not bring his every act in accord with it.
All of us sin. All of us lie. The point of this proverb is neither to deny that fact nor to drive us to despair. The point is to give us a clear sight of our sin and its gravity in order that we may flee from, abhor, and work against it (Col. 3:5). Christ bears our sin and brings us righteousness (Rom. 6:1-5). We, therefore, must strive to make ourselves holy in Him, even as He is holy (Eph. 5:1).
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.
Colson Potter writes copious fiction and nonfiction, including a weekly Proverbs post and his blog at Creational Story.
