"Lying lips are an abomination to the LORD, but those who deal faithfully are His delight."
— Proverbs 12:22 (NASB95)

Overview

Truthfulness is theology before it is etiquette: the God of the Bible is אֵל אֱמֶת — the God of truth (אֱמֶת, ʾemeth, Strong's H571 — firmness, reliability, truth; Psalm 31:5) who cannot lie (Titus 1:2; Numbers 23:19), while the devil "is a liar and the father of lies", in whom "there is no truth" (John 8:44). Every act of speech therefore takes a side. Integrity — תֹּם (tōm, H8537, "completeness, wholeness"; HALOT, s.v.) — is truth's structural form: the undivided person, same in the dark as in daylight, whose inside matches his outside. This study grounds the ethic in God's nature, walks the ninth commandment and the portrait in Psalm 15, hears Jesus on oaths and yes-meaning-yes, and takes warning from Ananias and Sapphira.

Passages studied: Exodus 20:16 with Proverbs 6:16–19; Psalm 15 with Proverbs 10:9 and Job 2:3; Matthew 5:33–37; Ephesians 4:15, 25 with Colossians 3:9–10; Acts 5:1–11.

Key Passages

Exodus 20:16 & Proverbs 6:16–19 — The Command and the Abominations

Exodus 20:16; Proverbs 6:16–19

NASB95 (Exod 20:16): "You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor."

NASB95 (Prov 6:16–19): "There are six things which the LORD hates, yes, seven which are an abomination to Him: haughty eyes, a lying tongue... a false witness who utters lies, and one who spreads strife among brothers."

The ninth commandment's setting is judicial — עֵד שָׁקֶר (ʿēd shāqer, "false witness"): perjury that weaponizes the court against a neighbor (the Torah's remedy was poetic — the false witness receives the penalty he schemed, Deuteronomy 19:16–19) — but Scripture extends it across all speech that damages by falsehood: slander (Leviticus 19:16), false reports (Exodus 23:1), deceptive weights (commerce's lie, Proverbs 11:1), flattery (the lie that strokes, Psalm 12:2–3; Proverbs 26:28 — "a flattering mouth works ruin"), and gossip (truth told treacherously, Proverbs 11:13; 17:9). Proverbs' seven-abomination list is a lie-heavy indictment: two of the seven are falsehood ("a lying tongue," "a false witness"), and a third — strife-spreading — usually rides on the first two. Deception's genealogy is Eden's ("Indeed, has God said...?", Genesis 3:1–5); the whole biblical drama is truth against the lie (Romans 1:25 — "they exchanged the truth of God for the lie"; 2 Thessalonians 2:9–12).

Psalm 15 — The Portrait: Who May Dwell With God

Psalm 15

NASB95 (vv. 1–2, 4b): "O LORD, who may abide in Your tent? Who may dwell on Your holy hill? He who walks with integrity, and works righteousness, and speaks truth in his heart... He swears to his own hurt and does not change."

David's entrance-liturgy sketches integrity in eleven strokes, and its center is speech: "speaks truth in his heart" — truthfulness beginning in self-honesty before God (Psalm 51:6 — "You desire truth in the innermost being") — no slander, no evil to a neighbor, no reproach carried against a friend, promises kept at personal cost: "swears to his own hurt and does not change" — the deal honored after it turns bad, integrity's costliest and most distinguishing test. Integrity as wholeness runs through the wisdom books: "He who walks in integrity walks securely, but he who perverts his ways will be found out" (Proverbs 10:9) — the integrated life needs no bookkeeping of stories; God's own commendation of Job uses the word — "a blameless (tām) and upright man... he still holds fast his integrity" (Job 2:3) — integrity as grip retained under loss; and its guardianship is mutual: "Let integrity and uprightness preserve me, for I wait for You" (Psalm 25:21). Daniel supplies the narrative portrait: hostile auditors "could find no ground of accusation or evidence of corruption, inasmuch as he was faithful" (Daniel 6:4) — the man whose enemies' only hope was his praying.

Matthew 5:33–37 — Let Your Yes Be Yes

Matthew 5:33–37

NASB95 (v. 37): "But let your statement be, 'Yes, yes' or 'No, no'; anything beyond these is of evil."

Second Temple casuistry had built an oath-taxonomy — swearing by heaven, by earth, by Jerusalem, by one's head — grading which formulas actually bound the swearer (Jesus dismantles the loopholes: heaven is God's throne, earth His footstool — every oath reaches God, Matthew 23:16–22). His remedy is not a new oath-code but a truthful person: speech so reliable that "yes" and "no" carry full weight unassisted — "anything beyond these is of (ἐκ τοῦ πονηροῦ) evil / the evil one": the need for verbal escrow testifies that lying is assumed. James repeats the charge verbatim for the church (James 5:12). This targets manipulative and evasive swearing, not the solemn oath as such — God swears (Hebrews 6:13–17), Jesus answered under oath at His trial (Matthew 26:63–64), Paul calls God as witness (2 Corinthians 1:23; Galatians 1:20) — the point is that the disciple's ordinary word should already be oath-grade. Bearing the name of the God who cannot lie (Exodus 20:7 — the third commandment's deepest sense), His people's speech is part of His reputation.

Ephesians 4:15, 25 & Colossians 3:9–10 — Truth in Love, Truth in the New Self

Ephesians 4:25; Colossians 3:9–10

NASB95 (Eph 4:25): "Therefore, laying aside falsehood, SPEAK TRUTH EACH ONE OF YOU WITH HIS NEIGHBOR, for we are members of one another."

NASB95 (Col 3:9–10): "Do not lie to one another, since you laid aside the old self with its evil practices, and have put on the new self who is being renewed to a true knowledge according to the image of the One who created him."

The epistles ground truthfulness in the new creation: lying belongs to the laid-aside old self; the new self is being renewed toward the image of the Creator — the God of truth — so falsehood is now out of character, a dead man's habit. Paul's motive clause is corporate: "for we are members of one another" — lying to a fellow believer is the body deceiving itself, a nervous system sending false signals. And the manner is fixed by Ephesians 4:15: ἀληθεύοντες ἐν ἀγάπῃ — "speaking the truth in love" (literally "truthing in love") — the church's growth mechanism, which excludes both counterfeit kindness (love-flavored evasion that withholds needed truth: flattery's cousin, Proverbs 27:5–6 — "faithful are the wounds of a friend") and weaponized honesty (truth fired without love: accuracy in the devil's tone). Zechariah had already made truthful speech covenant-community policy (Zechariah 8:16–17); the consummation seals it — nothing false enters the city, and the lake receives "all liars" (Revelation 21:8, 27; 22:15). On hard cases (the Hebrew midwives, Rahab — commended for faith while the texts never prescribe their deceptions): Scripture shows God's mercy toward His people under murderous coercion without converting the exception into a policy; the believer's rule remains Psalm 15, and his model the One in whose mouth "there was no deceit" (1 Peter 2:22; Isaiah 53:9).

Acts 5:1–11 — Ananias and Sapphira: The Lie God Judged

Acts 5:1–11

NASB95 (vv. 3–4): "But Peter said, 'Ananias, why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit and to keep back some of the price of the land?... You have not lied to men but to God.'"

The young church's first internal judgment fell not on immorality or heresy but on image management: land sold, part given, and the part presented as the whole — a lie enacted more than spoken, purchasing a reputation for generosity at a discount. Peter's anatomy: the money was theirs to keep (v. 4 — giving was voluntary); the sin was the performance; its true audience was "the Holy Spirit... God" (the Spirit's deity in passing); its instigator, Satan the father of lies filling the heart; its wage, immediate death and great fear on the church (vv. 5, 11) — a founding-moment severity (like Nadab and Abihu, Leviticus 10:1–3, and Achan, Joshua 7) establishing that God will not build His house on pretense. The standing lesson is about hypocrisy — ὑπόκρισις, the actor's mask — religion performed for human eyes (Matthew 6:1–5; 23:25–28 — cups clean outside, whitewashed tombs): the precise opposite of integrity, and the sin Jesus denounced more fiercely than any other.

Conclusion

Truth and integrity descend from the character of the God who cannot lie into the speech and structure of His people: perjury and every damaging falsehood forbidden at Sinai and hated in Proverbs; the whole, undivided person sketched in Psalm 15 — truth in the heart, promises kept to one's own hurt; yes-grade speech commanded by Jesus against every oath-loophole; lying rendered out of character by the new creation and re-tuned as truth-in-love within the one body; and hypocrisy — the acted lie — judged at the church's founding as a lie to God Himself. The stakes are ultimate (the city admits nothing false) and the resource is personal: the disciple follows the One who is the truth (John 14:6), is indwelt by the Spirit of truth (John 16:13), and is sanctified by the word of truth (John 17:17) — integrity, finally, is simply living unmasked before the God who sees in secret.