Can we really trust what we see and hear? In the news and on social media, there is a crisis of confidence as people take an increasingly sceptical and cynical approach to some of the content they consume alongside a gullible and naively accepting approach to other sources. What we then share with others may not be disinformation — deliberately intended to deceive — yet it may still be misinformation, spread on the mistaken assumption that it is valid. With technological advances in social media and now AI, falsehoods can now easily be shared to large audiences in a plausible way that affects people’s thinking and behaviour. When we are all floundering in a fog of half-truths and uncertainties, the outcome is not to make people believe a specific lie, it is to make us distrust the possibility of a final truth. Yet there is a tension between the recent cultural assumption that truth is relative and flexible enough to be different for different people and the more immediate contemporary realisation that when people accept falsehoods as true there are real-life damaging consequences, both for individuals and the fabric of society more widely. Our culture, while naturally wanting to escape from lying and falsehood, is simultaneously ambivalent about truth and hungry for it. What God offers, by contrast, is the truth, and God’s people reflect this in their aversion to all forms of lying and falsehood. Thomas Manton (1620–1677), one of the clerks to the Westminster Assembly, preached on David’s prayer in Psalm 119, “Remove from me the way of lying, and grant me thy law graciously.” In the following updated extract, Manton shows how David is a pattern for us in begging to be free from lying and to be granted the gracious gift of God’s truthful law.

What is lying?

Lying is when people knowingly and willingly, and with purpose to deceive, signify what is false by gestures, actions, or (especially) words. The matter of a lie is a falsehood, but the form of a lie is with an intention to deceive (therefore a falsehood is one thing, a lie another). We lie when we not only speak falsely but knowingly, and with purpose to deceive.

There are two ways of lying in our words. One way is by asserting as false what you know is true, or by asserting as true what you know to be false. The other way of lying is when we promise things we do not intend to perform.

There is also a lying to God and a lying to other people.

Lying to God is the worst sort, because it indicates unbelief and atheism, low thoughts of God, as if He was not omniscient.

How do we lie to God? Partly when we put Him off with a false appearance, and make a show of what is not in the heart, as if He would be deceived with outsides and vain pretences (Hosea 11:12). Partly too, when we do not perform the promises we made in a time of trouble. We throw out promises to flatter God till we get out of trouble, but we do not seriously set our hearts to accomplish them.

As for lying to other people, there are three sorts of lies. There is the mendacium jocosum, when an untruth is devised for merriment. (This does not refer to fables or parables, which are only an artificial way of representing the truth in terms which more people are able to grasp; nor to irony, which is a notable way of making truth strike the heart with force). There is also the mendacium officiosum, the “officious lie,” for the help of others, such as when Rebekah taught Jacob to lie so that he would get the blessing (Gen. 27:1). There is also the mendacium perniciosum, the “pernicious lie,” to harm others.

All these sorts of lies are sins. Scripture condemns all lying without restriction (Eph. 4:25; Rev. 22:15).

Why should the children of God be far from lying?

For the good of human society

What is contrary to human society should be odious to the children of God, who are members of the same society or body politic. Human society is upheld mostly by truth. Where there is no truth, there can be no trust; where there is no trust, there can be no commerce. It makes people unfit to be trusted. Indeed, our neighbour has the right that we should speak truth. Because truth is the foundation of human society, lying should be far from the children of God.

For preserving the order of nature

The tongue is the interpreter of the mind, and there is great disorder when the tongue speaks otherwise than the person thinks.

To show who they belong to

We resemble Satan in nothing so much as in lying, and we resemble God in nothing so much as in truth. Falsehood is the devil’s character (John 8:44). But truth is no small part of the image of God, for He is called “the God of truth,” who “cannot lie.” Ephesians 4:22–24 says, “Put off the old man, which is corrupt, according to the deceitful lusts, and put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and holiness.” Then straight away, “Wherefore put away lying; speak every man truth with his neighbour” (v.25). “Wherefore,” that is, from your regeneration, when the image of God is planted in you. It’s the same in Colossians 3:9, “Lie not one to another, seeing that ye have put off the old man with his deeds.” There may be sin in the child of God, but there should be no guile in them. Habituated guile is the old man which is deceitful; the new man is framed to truth, and according to the will of God.

Because deceit is disgraceful

By the light of nature, deceit is odious. We love those who are just and true; we acknowledge it as a moral perfection. But a lie is counted the greatest disgrace; we revenge even the accusation of it; it is accounted a base thing to lie. It comes from fear, and it tends to deceit, both which are contrary to human dignity. It is therefore shameful in the eyes of nature, and those who are most guilty of it cannot bear to be accused of it (1 Kings 20:23).

Because deceit is detested by God

Lying is a sin which is most hateful to God; therefore it should be far from the children of God. There are six things God hates, and a lying tongue is one of them (Prov. 6:17, 19; see also Prov. 12:22). Because God hates it, we should hate it (Prov. 13:5).

Because deceit deserves punishment

Lying is a sin which God has expressly threatened to punish in this life (Psa. 5:6) and in the life to come (Prov. 19:5). The first time God’s vengeance was shown in the New Testament it was for a lie (Acts 5:5). “By swearing and lying, therefore doth the land mourn” (Hosea 4:2). God’s advice to His people how to avoid His judgments is, “These are the things that ye shall do: Speak every man the truth to his neighbour, execute the judgment of truth, love no false oath …” (Zech. 8:16–17). In the life to come, “there shall no wise enter into it anything that … maketh a lie” (Rev. 21:27); “All liars shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone” (Rev. 21:8); “For without are … whosoever loveth and maketh a lie” (Rev. 22:15).

Are there any remedies against lying?

Hate it

Do not think it a venial matter. David says, “I hate and abhor lying” (Psa. 119:163). Slight hatred of a sinful course is not sufficient to guard us against it — instead, hate and abhor it with a deadly hatred.

Love the law of God

If the law of God is dear to you, you will not lightly break it.

Remember your spiritual conflict

You never give Satan so great an advantage as by falsehood and guile. The devil assaults by wiles, but your strength lies in downright honesty. Satan’s strength lies in wiles, but you must beat him down in sincerity. The first piece of the spiritual armour is the girdle of truth, the grace of sincerity, by which you are to God and others what you make yourself out to be.

Take heed

Set a watch on your tongue. “I said I will take heed to my ways, that I sin not with my tongue” (Psa. 39:1). Let us speak of what we think, and think of what we speak, so that the mind may conform itself to the nature of truth.

Avoid the causes of lying

There are three.

Boastfulness. The spirit of vainglory is the mother of vain talking, and therefore of a lying tongue. “Flattering lips” and “the tongue that speaketh proud things” are joined together in Psalm 12:3.

Flattery, or the desire to ingratiate yourself with those who are great and mighty in the world. “With flattering lips, and a double heart do they speak” (Psa. 12:2).

Fear and distrust. Carnal fear was what put David to his evasive strategies in his times of danger. He was apt to deal a little deceitfully in time of temptation and danger (for example in his interactions with Ahimelech the priest (1 Sam. 21:8), Achish (1 Sam. 27:8; 10), and in what he got Jonathan to tell his father (1 Sam. 20)).

What is the blessing David prays for instead?

David asks for a benefit, “Grant me thy law,” and on the terms of grace, “graciously.”

He already had the book of the law. Every king was to have a copy of it written before him. But he doesn’t mean the law written in a book, but the law written on his heart. This is a privilege of the covenant of grace (Heb. 8:10).

The grant of the law

The law is “granted” to us when we understand it and our hearts are framed to love and obey it.

Urge God not only to grant His word to the church in general, but to you, to yourselves, each in particular. Literal instruction belongs to the first covenant, but when the word is made ours, that is a privilege of the second covenant.

And check to make sure that the law has been granted to you. A ready and cheerful obedience to God’s will is the surest sign that the law has been “granted” to us — when studying it and putting it into practice is the great employment and pleasure of our lives.

The law in our heart

The same law that is odious to the flesh is acceptable to a gracious heart. What others count a restraint, the gracious count a great benefit and favour. The “carnal mind” (Rom. 8:7) shuns all means of searching and knowing themselves, wishing that certain things were not sins, or not wishing to know that they are sins. They hate the law, and will not come to the light (John 3:20).

But a gracious heart desires nothing more than the knowledge of God’s will. However contrary it is to their sinful desires, they approve it (Rom. 7:12). They desire the knowledge of it more than “thousands of gold and silver” (Psa. 119:72). The best thing they can enjoy is to have full direction in obedience.

And putting the law into practice is welcome to their souls. “His commandments are not grievous” (1 John 5:4). They are grievous to others, but not to them, because their hearts are suitable to the law and it suits them.

Do you count the law an enemy or a friend? The law is an enemy to those who count it an enemy, and a friend to those that count it a friend. It is a rule of life to those who delight in it, and count it a great mercy to know it and to be subdued to the practice of it, but it is a covenant of works to those who pull away from it, and count it a heavy burden not to be borne. Which do you complain of, the law, or your corruptions? What are you troubled with, light or lusts? A gracious heart groans, not because of the strictness of the law but because of the body of death — not because God requires so much but because they can do no more.

The grace of the law

If the law is “granted” to us, or written on our hearts, it is out of God’s mere grace. “Grant it graciously,” says David. The conditions of the covenant are conditions in the covenant, and the articles that bind us are also promises in which God is bound to bestow such great benefits on poor creatures. This encourages us to wait for His work with all the more confidence, when we are conscious that we do not have the law applied so intimately and closely as we should.

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