Bodie Hodge, M.Sc., B.Sc., PEI
Biblical Authority Ministries, March 27, 2025 (Donate)
After writing about Rahab’s allegedly being praised for lying—for which I carefully checked this claim against the Scriptures and found it wanting. Nevertheless, someone decided to respectfully challenge this position. Their two emails are reprinted below in bold and my response to the main points follow.
Email 1: You, know I almost hate to do this
because I know how much email you guys handle…But I want to respond to
Email 2: Wow, you put a lot of work in to that answer
Bodie, and from a biblical basis too. I agree with you 100% about lying to
protect yourself, that could be interpreted as mere cowardice, and I think most
of your biblical examples dealt with that. However there is a scripture in
Exodus ch.1 vs.15-22, in which the Jewish midwives are told to kill all the
male babies they delivered but refused to do so. When asked why they hadn't
destroyed the babies, they told the Egyptians the Hebrew women simply gave birth
faster than the Egyptian women, and had the babies before the midwives got
there. Vs.17 however says that the Jewish midwives saved the male children
alive, so here they are lying not only to save the male babies but probably to
escape punishment from the Egyptians. Vs. 20 says that God dealt well with the
midwives for doing this. I think this is one of the rare examples or cases
where lying would truly not be offensive to our Creator. At any rate, I think
this scripture shows that not all lies are equal, at least to my mind. In that
most lies are done for self advancement, self protection, greed, etc., but some
are done at least with the intention of protecting others, their reputations or
physical selves. I can't fault your stance though, your conscience and the Word
must be your guide. Keep up the good
work,
Main Point Of Email 1:
Aren’t there righteous lies such as lying to Nazi soldiers during the Holocaust to protect a Jew that may have been hiding at your house? After all, the ninth commandment doesn’t say lie but merely “bearing false witness”.
Thank you for contacting me and thanks for the comments. J I know this can be a touchy subject but please bear with me as I try to explain and keep in mind that I too am not perfect but will try to answer as scripturally as possible. Also, sorry for the length—but I wanted to be little more thorough on this than the short contradiction article on Rahab on the website.)
Righteous lies?
Bearing false witness is a lie and in Hebrew the word for false in Exodus 20:16 is sheqer, which literally means “lie”. It is derived from the Hebrew word shaqar, which means deal falsely, be false, trick, and cheat. There are many verses in the Bible that reaffirm the 9th Commandment and a couple are:
Leviticus 19:11 ‘You shall
not steal, nor deal falsely, nor lie to one another. (all passages NKJV)
1 John 2:21 I have not written to
you because you do not know the truth, but because you know it, and that no lie
is of the truth.
The devil is the father of lies (John 8:44) and one lie to God—the Holy Spirit, was worthy of instant death for Ananias (Acts 5:3-5). Paul points out that even if he were to lie for the glory of God; he would be deemed a sinner for such an act:
Romans 3:7 For if the truth of God has increased through my lie to His glory, why am I also still judged as a sinner?
In light of such passages, does a “righteous lie” really exist? The most common example sent to me was envisioning the holocaust and being placed in the position of lying to potentially protect someone’s life. Like most, if placed in such a difficult situation…it would be very difficult. In fact, I could never be sure what I would do, especially if it were a loved one.
But consider for a moment that we are all already sentenced to die because we are sinners (Romans 5:12). It is going to happen regardless. But in the grand scheme of things, if a lie helps keep someone alive for a matter of moments compared to eternity, was the lie, which is high treason against the Creator, worth it? It would be like sitting in a cell on death row and when the guards come to take your roommate to the electric chair, you lie to the guards and say you don’t know where the person went—while your roommate is hiding under their covers on the bed. Does it really help? Since we are all sinners (Romans 3:23), death is coming for us and there is an appointed time (Ecclesiastes 3:2).
Proverbs 12:19 The truthful lip shall be established forever, But a lying tongue is but for a moment.
Is it worth sinning against God to try to buy a moment of time next to eternity—intentionally lying is foolish and would only harm the extent of your own life (Ecclesiastes 7:17). Looking further at Scripture, it gives some great examples of situations where a lie could easily save a life.
Stephen
Stephen in Acts 6 and 7 was preaching Christ and men came against him and it culminated with a question by the high priest in Acts 7:1 who said: “Are these things so?” At this point, Stephen could have done a “righteous lie” to save his life so he could many more years to preach the gospel.
However, Stephen laid a long and appropriate foundation for Christ then preached Christ. And they killed him. But this event triggered a persecution that sent the gospel to the Gentiles (Acts 11:19) and peaked with Paul, who consented to Stephen’s death, coming to Christ and taking the message to the Gentiles and writing several books of the New Testament. The Lord had a greater purpose for Stephen who stood for the truth.
Christ
When Christ was standing before Pilate and the Jews, Scripture records in Mark 15:
2 Then Pilate asked Him, "Are You the King of the Jews?" He answered and said to him, "It is as you say." 3 And the chief priests accused Him of many things, but He answered nothing. 4 Then Pilate asked Him again, saying, "Do You answer nothing? See how many things they testify against You!"c5 But Jesus still answered nothing, so that Pilate marveled.
Jesus could have performed a “righteous lie” and could have been set free and not went to the cross. But Jesus is the King of the Jews and answered in the affirmative but went no further to answer the other false claims. In this, Jesus sacrifice on the Cross brought salvation to mankind (Romans 1:16) and became the ultimate sacrifice to cover sin (Hebrews 10:12). The Lord had a much greater purpose.
Do we know what God had in mind?
I often wonder, if someone during the holocaust would have stood firm on the Bible’s teaching about lying…and if a Nazi soldier asked if someone was there hiding, had they told truth before God, did the Lord have in mind a greater purpose? Would God have used that person to free a great many people who ultimately died in the Holocaust? Or have done something to stop the war earlier? Or cause a great number of Jews and Nazi’s to come to know Christ? It is possible but we simply cannot know. And one should not dwell too long on “what ifs” anyway.
Since God has been adamant to stand for truth and not to lie; there is great value in it (John 8:32). As fallible sinful human beings, our imperfect thoughts may not be able to comprehend what God has in mind and we need to strive to trust God when He speaks on this subject, regardless how hard it may be. We need to place our faith fully in Christ and trust in God in all things—and not lean on our own understanding:
Proverbs 3:5 Trust in the LORD with all your heart, And lean not on your own understanding;
I’m not saying this to be “preachy”, because I really don’t know what I would do in such a situation but I would be praying that the Lord would grant me the wisdom to know what to say and how to say it…but more preferably—how to avoid being in that situation in the first place.
If forced into this situation…what then?
The result is often called the “greater good” or “lesser of two evils”. Let’s consider again the Nazi-Holocaust situation: there seems to be a conflict of situation to lie before God to try to save someone’s life.
I’ve been told in the past that the lesser of these two evils would be to lie to save a life – hence the common phrase “a righteous lie”. This is often justified by “loving thy neighbor”—by saving their life (Romans 13:9).
But how does God view this? To God, a lie was worthy of death to Ananias. In fact, just one sin was worthy of death to God (Genesis 2:17). (This should be a reminder that we should continually praise God for His grace that is bestowed upon us). But let’s look at Scripture again. The two greatest commandments are in Mark 12:
28 Then one of the
scribes came, and having heard them reasoning together, perceiving that He had
answered them well, asked Him, "Which is the first[1] commandment of
all?" 29 Jesus answered him, "The first of all
the commandments is: ‘Hear, O
Jesus informs us that there is a level of commandments and these two are the greatest and the others can be summed up into these. But of these two, the first is to love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength. So, this would trump the second. Our actions toward God should trump our actions toward men. Peter also affirmed this:
Acts 5:29 But Peter and the other apostles answered and said: "We ought to obey God rather than men.
If we love God, we should obey Him (John 14:15). Since God says not to lie, this is one of His commandments, then to love God first means to obey Him first – before looking at they neighbor. So, is the greater good trusting God when He says not to lie or trusting in our fallible, sinful minds about the future…that one cannot be sure about?
Consider this carefully, in the situation of a Nazi’s beating on the door, we have assumed a lie would save a life but really, we don’t know. Therefore, one would be opting to lie and disobey God without out the certainty of saving a life—keeping in mind that all are ultimately condemned to die physically by God anyway. Besides, whether one lied or not may not have stopped the Nazi solders from searching the house anyway.
As Christians, we need to keep in mind that Jesus Christ is reigning. All authority has been given to Him (Matthew 28:18) and He sits on the throne of God at the right hand of the Father (Acts 2:33, Hebrews 8:1).
Nothing can happen without His say. Even Satan could not touch Peter without Christ’s approval (Luke 22:31). Regardless, if one were to lie or not, Jesus Christ is in control of timing every person’s life. It is not for us to worry over what might become but rather place our faith and obedience in Christ to let Him do the reigning. For we do not know the future, whereas, God has been telling the end from the beginning (Isaiah 46:10).
Main Point of Email 2:
What
about the midwives in
I looked up the passage about the midwives and I don’t believe they lied at all and Scripture doesn’t say they did. Please see the context:
15 Then the king of
18 So the king of
21 And so it was, because the midwives feared God, that He provided households for them. 22 So Pharaoh commanded all his people, saying, "Every son who is born you shall cast into the river, and every daughter you shall save alive."
Naturally, their fear of God led them to refuse the order to murder. It makes more sense they informed the Hebrew wives what the Pharaoh had commanded and thus, many of the Israelites women were giving birth before the midwives would arrive so they could not be in a position of killing the child before the parents realized it was alive and healthy.
Perhaps the midwives took their time to arrive as well. It allows the children to survive and the midwives to speak the truth to Pharaoh.
What would make pregnant mothers more vigorous or lively to have the child born? Make them aware that if they do not give birth quickly their child’s life may be in danger.
With
humbleness in Christ,
Bodie
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