Let’s look at the truth about the awful practice of lying, as Jesus revealed. The ten commandments do not exactly forbid it. There is a commandment against bearing false witness against a neighbour, which is not quite the same. You can lie without necessarily bearing false witness against anyone, yet it could still be a bad lie. Jesus revealed that lying is like a natural language. If your first language is lying, then you have the same first language as Satan. Just like our normal learned languages, we usually learn one language first and it is often the language in which we think. Then we might have a second language too which we might be able to use to speak or write, but it is not our usual language. Jesus (John 8 ) taught how Satan has a first language, in a metaphorical sense, which is lying. When he lies it is like his first language. If we too are like that then we are really his offspring, living like him, expressing ourselves in falsehood primarily, not truth. I remember the awful way I was once like that. Before becoming true children of God, we might be just like that, even after we believe in Jesus. Now Jesus did not claim it was against any of the ten commandments, yet it is against the commandments to love God and our neighbours. These are even greater commandments than the ten, because they are the basis for all commandments, and laws of God and prophecies of God. We need a new first language. Lying might still be possible for us in direst circumstances like matters of life and death, but it must be second language, not first. To be a child of God, lying must be far from our lips: Even from our thoughts. As we think, so do our mouths speak. How? You can learn a new language but you cannot change your first language to be something different. Maybe you can so much practice telling the truth that it becomes your first language and even the language you think in. That is the aim. But that is a tough thing to hope for. Something must happen first. Languages are not easy to learn in isolation. To really speak a language you need to live among those who also speak it. So much more so if you want to be like a native speaker of it and think in it. Just a language class is not enough. So too with speaking truth. There needs to be a culture and people who have it as their first language and you need to join them. To join the disciples of Jesus who have learned to put their lying language away and take on a language of truth telling, you need to not just be with them, you need to become such a disciple too. First you need to believe in their teacher, Jesus, like they do. Then you need to hold firmly to his teachings. Until you know the truth. But at some point you become part of the same body which they too are part of: the body of Christ Jesus, with Jesus Christ as head, as Lord. This is by the Holy Spirit. Baptism by water but also by Holy Spirit. It is like Isaiah 6 where Isaiah bewailed his unclean lips and the uncleanness of the lips of those around him, his people. He had experienced the glory of God, and of the coming Jesus and had believed. We too might believe, by hearing the message of Jesus and the Father, seeing its glory. Then we feel awful about our lying lips. He was given a coal from a heavenly altar to touch and cleanse his lips. The Holy Spirit power of heaven can be to us like that too, cleansing our lips. Then we need to be in the body of Christ where heavenly principles of truth telling take priority and lies are put away from us. There is no need to lie when we are all one body with Jesus the truth teller as our head. His truth teaches us this. His truth is known by those who become true disciples of him and of the truth he teaches. He commands we live by his truth.
