Does God ever deny the truth to maintain a relationship?
Imagine you became an employee of a small startup company whose owner invented a revolutionary medical device for doing blood tests in half the time and expense of any current technology. Your starting salary is more than you ever imagined you could earn, and in less than a year the owner informs you she is so impressed with your work she wants to promote you, double your salary, and give you hundreds of shares of company stock. She also suggests that if you keep up your good work, you could be a vice president in no time.
Your head is spinning. You feel as though you have struck gold.
But a few months later you discover something troubling. Reviewing one of the company’s marketing presentations for use with venture capitalists, you find it contains what appear to be false claims. What should you do? Who is the source of these claims?
You go to the person in charge of the presentation and investigate. “All the data in this presentation came from the top,” says your colleague.
“But I don’t think all of this is true,” you insist.
Your colleague replies, “The owner told me the data is based on information that up till now has been secret.”
For the remainder of the day you ponder what to do. The need for secrecy is a given in this business, but you are being asked to put your approval on a presentation that appears to you to be fraudulent. That’s criminal. On the other hand, there are many things you don’t know about the company. You are not yet in the inner circle. It seems more reasonable to trust the owner because she has information you do not. You don’t want to challenge her information and imply she is lying. In the end, you decide to keep your mouth shut.
To your relief, the marketing presentation eventually goes nowhere with potential investors, and you resume your ambitious work. Within months, the owner promotes you again, and you find yourself now working closely with her. In fact, you have become good friends, eating together often, even hanging out at one another’s homes.
One day she calls you into her office and puts you in charge of making an investment appeal to a huge venture capitalist. She hands you a folder. “Here is the current information to use in your pitch,” she says. You return to your office and get right to work. As you read the documents in the folder, though, to your astonishment you once again find data you know to be false, and this time you have enough firsthand access to know the truth is not hiding behind a wall of secrecy. The owner is lying.
Your path forward is a simple, though painful, one. You believe in telling the truth. You are committed to honesty in business. Although you don’t want to lose your job, income, or friendship with the owner, integrity is more important than this relationship.
The next day you meet with the owner, confront her regarding the facts, and immediately you are fired. You return to your office, pack your belongings, and walk from the building knowing you have done the right thing.
Love must be truthful
Truth can bring people together, and truth can separate them (Matthew 10:34–38). Whenever people do wrong, the truth becomes their enemy (John 3:19–20), and truth-seekers become their enemy (Galatians 4:16). In such a situation, truth becomes divisive, but there is no avoiding this divisiveness if we are to be people of integrity (John 8:31–47).
Satan is a liar and the father of lies. Jesus said there is no truth in him (John 8:44). Lies and evil walk hand in hand. Evil-doing needs lies and depends on deception (2 Timothy 3:13).
God is a truth-seeker, a truth knower, a truth teller. He is light and brings all things sooner or later into the light (1 John 1:5–7; Matthew 10:26). The Lord hates lies (Proverbs 6:16–19). He loves truth (Psalm 15:1–2). He is the truth (John 14:6).
The unavoidable casualty of God’s commitment to truth is some relationships. When Satan fell from his exalted place and became a committed liar, God’s loving relationship with Satan ended. When a host of angels followed Satan and likewise became committed deceivers, God’s relationships with them ended.
When Adam and Eve fell into evil and began their cover-up, God’s relationship with them changed dramatically.
Jesus had to choose between truth and relationships
God’s love for us rests on the foundation of truth. He does not compromise truth to begin or maintain a relationship (for example, see Mark 10:17–23). Anyone who enters into a relationship with God must be willing to hear the truth and follow it (John 6:51–67). Those who stubbornly hold to a lie in order to maintain their evil-doing will eventually find that their relationship with God has ended (1 John 2:3–5), for when there is a necessary choice between truth and a relationship, the God of truth and righteousness will always choose truth (for example, see Matthew 16:21–23).
He is patient and long-suffering in cleansing sinners of their deceiving ways, but there comes a point when that patience ends. God is love, but he is not a liar. So, his love for you will always be a truthful love (1 Corinthians 13:6).
Our way and God’s way
Our way: Fallen sinners need lies and tell lies. They compromise truth in order to maintain relationships they don’t want to lose. They can be loyal to a fault, loyal to the point of believing and supporting lies. They shade and twist the truth in order to please people they love. Postmodernism, which is the prevailing worldview of Western culture, is a belief system riddled with falsehoods, exemplified in phrases such as “your truth,” “everyone has their own truth,” and “follow your heart (even when your heart contradicts moral truths revealed in Scripture).”
God’s way: He cannot lie. He speaks only truth. This harmonizes with his love, for lies destroy. He is not sentimental, not guided by feelings over against truth and righteousness.
Does this mean there is no hope for deceived sinners? No, God, in love for evildoers, found a way to follow truth and still adopt them as his children. He sent his holy Son to die on the Cross to take the punishment that truth and justice require of deceived evildoers. As a result, God in love can uphold truth and forgive sinners. That is, sinners who confess the truth by repenting of their rebellion against him and trusting in Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of sins.
Life principle: Those who love God must love the truth he reveals in Scripture even when it counters falsehoods that our fallen, deceived minds have followed for years. God knew the deceptive power of Satan and the falsehoods that would fill our fallen world and its fallen systems, so he gave a book of inerrant truth. Jesus, who is the Truth, always treated the Scriptures as a fully inspired, word-for-word, revelation of God’s truth. If you are wise, you will follow the example of Jesus, who as the divine Creator knows infinitely more than you do, and infinitely more than the deceived people who shape our confused culture.
Jeremiah 9:23–24: “Thus says the LORD: ‘Let not the wise man boast in his wisdom, let not the mighty man boast in his might, let not the rich man boast in his riches, but let him who boasts boast in this, that he understands and knows me, that I am the LORD who practices steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the earth. For in these things I delight, declares the LORD.’” (ESV)