Lying and half-truths: confessing the lies we tell

A lie is any attempt to make someone believe what you know is not true. That includes the outright falsehood, but also the half-truth, the careful omission, the exaggeration and the technically accurate sentence designed to mislead. All of it is sin, because God is truth and we are made to reflect him. Confessing it means naming the actual lie to God, who you said it to and what you said, and asking forgiveness through Jesus. He forgives completely. But lying almost always leaves something false standing in someone else’s mind, so repentance usually includes one more step: going back and putting the record straight, where that is possible and wise.

Lying lips are detestable to the LORD, but those who deal faithfully are His delight. — Proverbs 12:22

Why God cares about small lies

Most of us lie in small ways and hardly notice. We say we are fine when we are not, blame the traffic when we left late, say something is in the post when it is not. It is tempting to treat these as social oil rather than sin.

Scripture does not rank lies by size. It treats truthfulness as part of belonging to each other.

Therefore each of you must put off falsehood and speak truthfully to his neighbor, for we are all members of one another. — Ephesians 4:25

A lie, however small, treats the other person as someone to be managed rather than a member of the same body. It also says something about whose family we are behaving like.

When he lies, he speaks his native language, because he is a liar and the father of lies. — John 8:44

That is sobering. Truth is the native language of God’s household. Lying is a foreign tongue we picked up and keep slipping back into.

The lies that do not look like lies

Honest confession means noticing the forms dishonesty takes when it is trying not to be caught.

• The half-truth. Everything you said was accurate, but you left out the part that would have changed the picture.
• The misleading silence. Someone drew the wrong conclusion and you let them, because it suited you.
• The exaggeration. The story got better, the numbers got bigger, your part got more heroic.
• The false impression. Your online profile, your CV or the way you talk about your marriage presents something you know is not so.
• The self-deception. The lie you tell yourself about why you did something, which makes all the other lies easier.

That last one matters most. David’s prayer after his great sin, which he had covered with an elaborate deception, asks for truth at the deepest level.

Surely You desire truth in the inmost being; You teach me wisdom in the inmost place. — Psalm 51:6

Lying to God as well as to people

The story of Ananias and Sapphira in Acts 5 is uncomfortable. They sold land, kept part of the money, and presented the rest to the church as the whole. Nobody had asked them to give everything. Their sin was pretending. Peter’s words to Ananias go to the heart of it.

Did it not belong to you before it was sold? And after it was sold, was it not at your disposal? How could you conceive such a deed in your heart? You have not lied to men, but to God! — Acts 5:4

The point is not that every lie will be judged as theirs was. It is that pretending before other Christians is, in the end, pretending before God. Confession is the opposite of that: letting him see what is really there.

How to confess it

Be specific. Not “I haven’t always been completely honest,” which is itself a small evasion, but “I told my manager the report was finished when I hadn’t started it,” or “I let my friend believe I had paid her back.” If there are many lies, or one long deception that has grown over years, write them down before you pray. Seeing them together is painful and clarifying.

Say what the lie protected. Usually it was your reputation, your comfort, or someone’s good opinion of you. Naming that helps you feel the pull next time and resist it.

Ask forgiveness because of Jesus, and believe it. God does not forgive lies grudgingly. The whole gospel is his free gift to people who had not been truthful with him.

Putting the record straight

Forgiveness from God is complete, but the lie may still be at work. Someone may be trusting false information, carrying blame that is yours, or making decisions on the strength of something you invented. Where that is so, love requires you to go back.

This is hard, and it needs wisdom. Some principles:

• Correct what is still doing harm. If a lie is affecting someone’s reputation, money, safety or decisions, it needs correcting, whatever it costs you.
• Be plain. “What I told you last week wasn’t true. The truth is this. I am sorry.”
• Take advice for big things. A long-hidden deception in a marriage, at work or involving the law is worth talking through with a pastor before you act. The guides on how to apologise and restitution may help.
• Do not confess to relieve yourself at someone else’s expense. Occasionally telling the full truth would wound an innocent person more than it helps anyone. That is a question to take to a wise Christian, not to decide alone at midnight.

Becoming someone who does not need to lie

Simply let your ‘Yes’ be ‘Yes,’ and your ‘No,’ ‘No.’ Anything more comes from the evil one. — Matthew 5:37

Jesus pictures a person whose ordinary word can be trusted, who does not need to swear or embellish. That comes slowly. Practise small truths: “I don’t know,” “I forgot,” “I was late because I left late.” Notice the moment before a lie, when you feel the pressure to manage an impression, and ask God for courage in it. Let people be disappointed in you rather than deceived by you.

Do not lie to one another, since you have taken off the old self with its practices, and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator. — Colossians 3:9-10

Truthfulness is not a new rule to keep. It is who you already are in Christ, being worked out in ordinary conversations.

Where Christians differ

Christians agree that lying is sin. They have long disagreed about hard cases, such as whether it is ever right to deceive someone intent on murder, as the Hebrew midwives in Egypt and Rahab in Jericho did. Some hold that every lie is wrong, even then. Others hold that deceiving an aggressor to protect innocent life is not the kind of lying Scripture forbids. That debate is real, but it concerns rare situations, and it offers no cover for the everyday lies most of us actually tell. Roman Catholics would also bring serious lies to a priest in confession.

A place to stand

O LORD, who may abide in Your tent? Who may dwell on Your holy mountain? He who walks with integrity and practices righteousness, who speaks the truth from his heart, — Psalm 15:1-2

No one meets that standard perfectly except Christ, and it is his truthfulness that is counted to you. Confess today the lie you already know about. Correct it, if it needs correcting. And ask God, each morning, for a heart that speaks the truth.