Against lying
All liars shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone (Rev. 21:9)
It is plain that the words of a Christian must be truthful, must express only the truth, and must call forth in those who hear him full trust in the speaker. By the Lord's word, lying is of the evil one, for “he is a liar, and his father also is a liar” (John 8:44). And as the Holy Scripture teaches us: “All liars shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone” (Rev. 21:8).
The Lord Himself is the Truth incarnate (John 14:6). And in a Christian Christ must dwell. Therefore a Christian remains a Christian only so long as he lives by the truth and flees falsehood in all its kinds and showings.
Lying is not proper to the soul of man as the likeness of God. A child, while he is not yet spoiled, neither can nor knows how to lie; and if he does it, he blushes for shame, as one who has done something utterly foul that has defiled his soul.
So too will every undefiled soul answer, to which lying is loathsome. If such a man tells a lie, he feels it as though he had splashed with mud the garment of his soul, until then clean and white.
Among all peoples, in all ranks of society and in all times, liars have called forth and still call forth loathing; but it must be said that, while all so hate open lying, refined and hidden lying of every kind is spread everywhere, and many Christians too do not flee from it.
Such scarcely noticed lying is, in conversation, the tendency to embellish, exaggeration, a deliberate inexactness in setting forth facts, a one-sided lighting of a matter, and so forth. Even though these are not sharp black stains upon our spiritual garment but grey ones, yet by their multitude they still rob the garment of our soul of its cleanness.
A kind of lying is hypocrisy, which is the opposite of the virtue of sincerity. The latter will be firmly made our own if our heart is open to all and sincerely wishes good to all, condemns no one and judges no one.
Then our double-mindedness will vanish as of itself, for we shall have no need to cover with words our unkindly feelings towards people. Very widespread is the thoughtless giving of promises, followed by their not being kept. The not keeping of a promise is held to be something small, whereas this is real lying.
A Christian must give a promise very carefully, and that in a conditional form, with the reservation: “if it be the will of God” — that is, if nothing that does not depend upon man hinders me. But if the promise has been given, then everything must be done to fulfil it exactly and in good time. A Christian must be spiritually pure and conscientious even in small things, for “thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things” (Matt. 25:23).
In the old Christian Russian way of life great attention was paid to the exact keeping of what had been promised. For example, among the best of the Russian merchants there was this view: if a man borrowed and gave a promise to return the money on an appointed day at twelve o'clock, then he had to bring that money at exactly twelve. And if he brought the money, even on the same day, but late, then all trust in him was lost.
The gravest sin against truth is the breaking of an oath — of a promise given before holy things, before the cross and the Gospel.
Dreadful is God's punishment for this sin, and sometimes this punishment falls not only upon him who broke the oath, but upon his descendants as well.
