Is Lying Always a Sin?
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We know lying is a sin. It is listed as the ninth commandment among the Ten Commandments God gave Moses in Exodus 20: “You shall not give false testimony against your neighbor” (v. 16).
Numerous Scriptures drive home the point that lying is not good, nor is it godly. We know God never lies. Numbers 23:19 says, “God is not human, that he should lie, not a human being, that he should change his mind. Does he speak and then not act? Does he promise and not fulfill?” Titus 1:1-2 notes that truth leads to godliness and that God “does not lie.”
Yet there are a few key examples in the Bible where lying — while not described as the right thing to do — produced a favorable outcome.
This begs the question: Is lying always a sin? Let’s take a look at what the Bible says.
What Is a Lie?
According to Dictionary.com, a lie is a false statement made with deliberate intent to deceive; an intentional untruth, or something intended or serving to convey a false impression.
In the Bible, “false testimony” is considered synonymous with lying. In Exodus 20:16, where God forbids lying, the words used here are šeqer ed. Strong’s Hebrew Lexicon translates šeqer to mean lie, lying, falsehood, or deceit, and ed to mean testimony or witness.
In the Bible, lying is the opposite of truth. The psalmists particularly warn against all falsehood.
Hebrews 6:18 maintains, “It is impossible for God to lie.” God is good and truth — nothing false or deceitful is in him.
What Does the Bible Say about Lies?
Besides telling us not to lie (Exodus 20:16), the Bible has many other things to say about lying. “A lying tongue” and “a false witness who pours out lies” are listed among the seven things detestable to the Lord in Proverbs 6:16-19, and Proverbs 12:22 declares that God “detests lying lips.”
In Psalm 119:29, the psalmist scorns “deceitful ways,” asking the Lord to keep him from doing these things, and Psalm 120:2 begs, “Save me, Lord, from lying lips and from deceitful tongues.”
Ephesians 4:25 urges Christian believers to “put off falsehood and speak truthfully to your neighbor,” and in Colossians 3:9, the apostle Paul urges the people, “Do not lie to each other, since you have taken off your old self with its practices.”
Revelation 21:8 has even stronger words about liars, noting “all liars” will be condemned to the fiery lake of burning sulfur along with the cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, those who practice magic arts, and the idolaters.
The Bible is clear that lying is wrong.
In Acts 5, the Bible tells about a couple in the early church, Ananias and his wife, Sapphira, who lied and kept for themselves part of the money intended for God. Not only were they publicly shamed for their actions, but the couple died as a result of their sin (v. 5, 10).
Does Lying Ever Have a Positive Outcome?
But there are some occasions in the Bible that tell about good, godly people lying with seemingly good intentions.
For example, in Exodus 1, the Israelites were living as slaves in Egypt under the oppressive Pharaoh, who sought to reduce the number of male births among the slaves because the Israelites were becoming too populous. Pharaoh ordered the Hebrew midwives to kill boy babies born to the Israelites, but to let the girls live.
However, the midwives feared God far more than they feared Pharaoh. They let the boy babies live — then lied about it when questioned by the king of Egypt.
As the Bible says, “The midwives answered Pharaoh, ‘Hebrew women are not like Egyptian women; they are vigorous and give birth before the midwives arrive.’ So God was kind to the midwives and the people increased and became even more numerous. And because the midwives feared God, he gave them families of their own” (Exodus 1:19-21).
Another example comes in Joshua 2, when the Israelites under Joshua had entered the Promised Land and were preparing to take possession of what God had pledged to them. The Bible tells us two Israelite spies from Joshua went to Jericho and were staying at the house of Rahab, a prostitute. The king of Jericho was warned about the spies, and he ordered Rahab to send them out.
But Rahab lied, not only saving the two spies’ lives but also her own, and ensuring the Israelites’ victory.
“She said, ‘Yes, the men came to me, but I did not know where they had come from. At dusk, when it was time to close the city gate, they left. I don’t know which way they went. Go after them quickly. You may catch up with them. (But she had taken them up to the roof and hidden them under the stalks of flax she had laid out on the roof.) So the men set out in pursuit of the spies on the road that leads to the fords of the Jordan, and as soon as the pursuers had gone out, the gate was shut” (Joshua 2:4-7).
Rahab then smuggled the spies out through her window to safety. In exchange, when the Israelites returned and conquered Jericho, only Rahab and her household were spared (Joshua 6:25).
A third example is in 1 Samuel 19, when King Saul — who had fallen from God’s favor — tried to kill the anointed one, David, who was to be the next king. When David’s wife, the king’s daughter Michal, learned Saul planned to kill her husband, she encouraged David to flee, then piled items in the bed to make it look like David was asleep there. When questioned about the location of her husband, she not only lied and said he was sick in bed, but later, when they discovered her deception, she further lied and told King Saul, “He threatened me. He said, ‘Help me out of here or I’ll kill you’” (1 Samuel 19:18).
Her lies might have saved David’s life.
Not long after, when David — called “a man after God's own heart” (Acts 13:22) — was living in exile under King Achish of Gath, David and his men spent their days raiding the Geshurites, the Girzites, and the Amalekites, killing all who lived in the towns they attacked.
When Achish asked what he had been doing, David lied, telling the king he had been raiding elsewhere, against the Negev of Judah, of Jerahmeel, or of the Kenites.
David’s falsehoods led Achish to trust him.
Lies with Positive Outcomes outside of Scripture
Beyond these examples in Scripture, there are other times when lying seems to bring a positive outcome. For example, Marion Pritchard, a Dutch social worker, saved approximately 150 Jewish people, mostly children, during the Holocaust by lying on paperwork, concealing them, and even falsely registering herself as the unmarried mother of some of the newborns in order to conceal their Jewish identity. In 1991, Israel made her an honorary citizen, and at Yad Vashem, their memorial to the Holocaust, she is designated as a “Righteous Gentile.”
Similar situations are faced by Christians living today in places hostile to Christianity.
Also during World War 2, but in a different matter, American military experts thought they understood the meaning of the Japanese enemy’s naval attack codes. So they lied to test their theory. The Americans sent a coded but very false message stating one of their water stations in the Midway had broken and needed water. Shortly after, they intercepted a message from the Japanese about their false message — and that message confirmed their hypothesis about the Japanese code. This knowledge, achieved through a lie, enabled the Americans to prepare for what became a victorious attack on Midway and ultimately helped them win the war.
Is Lying Ever the Right Thing to Do?
While the Bible is clear that lying is a sin, and that God never lies, there are times when it seems lying is the right thing to do, or at least in the best interest of good.
For example, a lie that saves thousands from evil is perhaps better than not lying at all.
Then again, maybe our lies are an interference with God’s plan. We don’t know what God had planned in the case of Rahab or the Hebrew midwives; perhaps if Rahab had not lied, God would have saved the spies or ensured the Israelite victory some other way, or saved the Hebrew baby boys.
No one knows, though it seems lying as the best course of action would be a rarity, rather than commonplace.
As Jesus taught in the Parable of the Shrewd Manager, “Whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much, and whoever is dishonest with very little will also be dishonest with much” (Luke 16:10).
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