DOES GOD APPROVE OF LYING?

There are at least 100 verses in Scripture showing that God condemns the practice of lying and point to Satan as the father of lies. So this preponderance of evidence must be weighed against those few biblical passages that might point in another direction.

There are a number of examples of Patriarchs and other Old Testament “heroes” lying for one reason or another, but they are never commended for doing so. Some commentators suggest that the Bible teaches that telling a lie is the lesser of two evils if the other alternative is death and cite the story of Rahab and the spies, for example. But note that James (2:25) and the author of Hebrews (11:31) commend her for welcoming the spies, not for lying. The only instance in which it might be argued that God teaches deception in this circumstance is found in I Samuel 16:1-3, where God suggests a subterfuge, but not an actual lie, to keep Samuel from being killed by Saul.

The most problematic verses are three that involve God sending a deceiving spirit to cause false prophets to give false testimonies. This happens in I Kings 22:19-23 (parallel passage in II Chronicles 18:18-22); Deuteronomy 13:1-3; and Ezekiel 14:7-11.

In the first of these passages, a heavenly agent of God (probably an angel) volunteers to lure the evil King Ahab to his death by placing a lying spirit in Ahab's prophets so that they will falsely prophesy success in battle. God agrees to the plan. As in Job 1-2, God is seen to be ultimately responsible for all actions in heaven or on earth, whether we interpret them as good or bad from our perspective. However, much of what we call evil falls under God's permissive will accomplished by other parties rather than as a result of His direct will and action.

In the Deuteronomy passage, Moses states that if false prophets tell the people of Israel that they should turn to other gods, they should not listen to them because God is testing their loyalty to Him. These prophets, however, still apparently have control over their own actions since they are to be stoned as punishment. It is uncertain, then, whether God actually enticed them into speaking falsehoods, especially in light of the direct teaching in James 1:13 that “God tempts no man.”

The Ezekiel passage concerns a situation in which people reject the teachings of God's true prophets and seek after false prophets instead. Ezekiel states that God will mislead them even further into speaking falsehoods and that they will be punished along with those who consult them.

All three of these passages are similar to the Exodus story of God's hardening pharaoh's heart after pharaoh had already hardened his own heart in order to show up his disobedience in even stronger contrast before judging him. John Wenham in his book The Enigma of Evil puts it this way: “Language which speaks of God sending lying spirits highlights the fact that God's attitude toward sin is not passive, allowing it to go on undisturbed. God is active; he so orders circumstances that sin is brought out into the open and judged. From the standpoint of those who listened, therefore, the lying spirits are said to have been sent by God, though from the viewpoint of the spirits themselves they were merely allowed to do what they wanted to do.” This same general process is taught in the New Testament in 2 Thessalonians 2:11-12.

Exodus 3:18-19

In this particular passage, it has been suggested that God was telling Moses to deliberately lie to pharaoh, indicating that the people would return to Egypt after a few days when they had no intention to do so. There are several possible answers to this apparent moral lapse by God:

1. R. Alan Cole (Tyndale Commentaries) suggests that this was merely meant to be the first offer in a series of typical elaborate Oriental bargaining sessions (note the counter offers by pharaoh in Exodus 8:25, 8:28, 10:11, and 10:24).

2. Since it is stated that God knew beforehand that pharaoh would not agree to any form of exodus, no subterfuge was needed in the request. The purposely modest offer of just a three-day journey, and the subsequent rejection of it, showed up clearly his hardness of heart from the very start.