A young gymnast lied to her coach. She insisted her assign- ment had been completed when it wasn’t. Her teammates listened to her try to deceive the coach. Because she had deliberately tried to mislead the coach, she was, as a consequence, given a double assignment.
When people lie, they are willfully trying to deceive another person. Even within the church this deception can be a problem. Some church goers claim to love God and then treat people shabbily. That is what the author of 1 John addresses, “If any- one says, ‘I love God,’ yet hates his brother, he is a liar” (4:20). To be a liar means a person is deliberately trying to dissuade another from knowing and following God and leading them away from faith in Jesus Christ.
In this early church the poor behavior of the liars created an obstacle to faith and hindered people from seeing the truth about God in Christ. These people lied about God through their calculated inconsistencies in word and action. People who will- fully deceive others are undoubtedly trying to deceive God as well.
The world accepts lies, and even considers some of them harmless, say, for instance, the little white lie. But for God any word that does not speak the truth about Jesus Christ is a lie; and the one who delivers this untrue word is a liar and opposed to God. “Who is the liar? It is the man who denies that Jesus is the Christ” (1 John 2:22).
Photo by Alexandru Zdrobău
Denise Larson Cooper has a passion for Christ and sharing His Word. A wife and mother of two daughters, Denise currently works as a gymnastic coach.
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