Love the Truth

Again he said to me, “Love the truth, and let all truth come out of your mouth, so that the spirit God settled in this flesh may be found truthful by everyone — and so the Lord who lives in you will be glorified, because the Lord is truthful in every word, and there is no falsehood in him. “So people who lie set the Lord aside. They become men who defraud the Lord, because they do not hand back to him the deposit they received. What they received from him was a spirit with no falsehood in it. If they give that back false, they have defiled the Lord’s command, and they have become men who defraud.” [a]

So when I heard this I wept hard. He saw me weeping and said, “Why are you weeping?” “Because, sir,” I said, “I do not know whether I can be saved.” “Why?” he said. “Because, sir, I have never in my life spoken one true word. I always spoke cunningly with everyone, and I passed my lying off as the truth in front of them all, and no one ever contradicted me — my word was believed. So how can I live, sir, after doing all that?”

“Your thinking is right and true,” he said. “For as a servant of God you should have walked in the truth. You should not have let a bad conscience live alongside the spirit of truth, and you should not have brought grief on the spirit, which is dignified and true.” “Sir,” I said, “I have never listened to words like these so closely before.”

“Well, you are hearing them now,” he said. “Keep them. Then even the lies you told before in your business dealings will become believable, once these present words of yours are found to be true — those old words can be believed too. If you keep these commands, and from now on speak the whole truth, you will be able to win life for yourself. And whoever hears this command and turns away from lying, that most wicked thing, will live to God.”