Speak Truth at All Costs

Christian Living 101.

Christians must speak truth, at all costs.

Why is the truth so important?

1. God loves truth. He is actually the God of truth. He is abundant in truth. His truth reaches to the skies. Jesus is full of grace and truth. He is the truth. The truth is in Jesus. The Spirit is the Spirit of truth. God’s Word is the word of truth. Christianity is called the way of truth.
2. The devil is the source of lies. He’s called the father of lies. Part of what makes lying so awful is not simply that it is bad form or not good manners, but that lying is ultimately of the devil. In fact if you think about how sin came into the world, you remember that it was a consequence of listening to a lie from the devil himself.
3. Speaking the truth in love is how Christians grow.
4. Lying has devastating consequences. If we want to know how important it is we speak the truth we only need look at all the misery and unhappiness that lying has produced. Just take a step back and think about how lying complicates life. This habit of lying is one of the main reasons for how complicated life gets. We can’t trust anybody so we have to have all these crazy rules and administrative procedures to keep us from stealing each other blind. In our own lives, we do something wrong, we lie about it, and then the moment we do that, we have to tell another lie to cover up that lie and then all of life becomes more and more complex and complicated until we are caught up in this whole web of lies and deceit.  
5. God hates deception and he will judge it. Psalm 5:6 says that God abhors the liar. In Proverbs 12:22 we read, “Lying lips are an abomination to the Lord but those who deal faithfully are His delight.” Revelation 21 and 22 sum it all up. Listen to this frightening warning in Revelation 21:8, “But for the cowardly and unbelieving and abominable and murderers and immoral persons and sorcerers and idolaters and all liars, their part will be in the lake of fire and brimstone. “ Or quoting Revelation 22:14 and 15 which speaks of heaven, “Blessed are those who wash their robes, that they may have the right to the tree of life, and may enter by the gates into the city. Outside are the dogs and the sorcerers and the immoral persons and the murderers and the idolaters and” get this “everyone who loves and practices lying.” Unrepentant lying has eternal consequences.

When you begin to think about all the emphasis the Scripture places on the truth, it is really no surprise that speaking truth is one characteristic of the radical transformation being saved should make in the way you live your life. Truth is an essential difference between the new way we look at the world as believers and the old way we used to look at the world as unbelievers, and should be an essential difference between the way believers communicate to others on a daily basis.