My dear brother. I have seen the evidence of your need to comply with the Law of God. The truth is however that you seem to have misunderstood that which you are trying to keep.
The 9th commandment says, “Thou shall not lie”. I think quoting the scripture wrongly is a bigger sin than lying. What Exodus 20:16 and Deuteronomy 5:20 actually say is “Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.” For the sake of our conversation here, that makes a huge difference, because now it’s not talking about lying in general but a very specific form of lying.
Bringing a false accusation against someone is an affront to the justice of God. So it is very clear that God hates this kind of lying. This thought is repeated over and over in the book of Proverbs. That book has many references to lying but they are all in the context of lying against one’s brother or neighbor to accuse them wrongfully.
Then we have discussed Rahab several times. She was convinced that God was with the children of Israel, so she hid their spies in her house when they were being pursued by their enemies. When the soldiers questioned Rahab about the whereabouts of the spies, she said "they went that way", thus leading them in the wrong direction. A blatant lie to save the spies' lives. The point of this thread was...."would you lie to save the life of an innocent person?"
Now you ask me how would I know a lie would save the life of an innocent person? I do not know that it would because it has not happed yet. But I do know what happened when Rahad did it. Some people say that Rahab didn't have to lie, and God would have given Israel the victory even if she had told the truth. Maybe He would have, maybe He wouldn’t have. All we know is what God actually did, not what He would have done or could have done.
But this is completely missing the point. The question is not whether God would have given Israel the victory, but whether Rahab’s life and her family’s would have been spared when Israel invaded the land. I doubt very much that Israel would have spared her life if she had sold the spies out and then conceded, “Sorry guys, I couldn’t bring myself to lie.” Besides how would the rest of the army have found out about the red ribbon plan if the spies weren’t alive to tell them (Joshua 2:18)?
So the Bible clearly condemns 3 types of lying:
1. bringing false accusation against others.
2. using dishonest means to get ahead.
3. and preaching false doctrines that lead people away from Christ.
These are clearly labeled as sin, not telling a lie to save an innocent person. The Bible remains silent on any other type of lying, and so should a lot of people. There may be social consequences associated with certain types of lying, but to call them sin is to run ahead of the scriptures.
Lets look at this saying, " I would lie to save a life". The "I" is who? The "I" is you. The problem is the "I" died on the cross with Christ 2000 years ago and it is no longer "I" that liveth but Christ liveth in me. Now you can either choose to walk in the flesh and let the "I" rule and do its thing, or you can walk in the Spirit and let Christ work through you. If you choose the flesh then you would say, "I will lie to save a life" If you let Christ live through you he will never lie, no matter what the circumstances might be. He is much smarter than the "I" that can never do a righteous act. God can not lie, neither can Christ since he is God. Saying "I will lie to save a life" requires you to be a prophet, and you should be able to tell the end from the beginning which I know you can not. Not being able to guarantee your actions means you are speaking of things you have no idea what would happen. All things that do not come from faith is sin.