Is It Ever OK to Lie?

“And the woman took the two men, and hid them, and said thus, There came men unto me, but I wist not whence they were.”  Joshua 2:4

Is it ever OK to lie?  Well, since the ninth commandment tells us to not bear false witness against our neighbor, that is very straightforward.  Do not lie, do not fib, and do not “skirt” the truth.  Most of us are well aware that lying only leads to more lying to cover up the first lie, and nothing is usually gained by not being truthful with one another.  The old saying is so true:  “if you always tell the truth, you don’t have to remember what you said.”  There were a few times in scripture when folks who were followers of God didn’t exactly tell the truth.  One of those people was a woman named Rahab.  She lived in a city called Jericho.  It was inhabited by Canaanites, descendants of Canaan, the son of Ham and grandson of Noah.  The Canaanites were idolaters and were living on land that God had promised to Israel.  After Moses died, Joshua was appointed by God to lead Israel into the promised land.  Jericho would be their first stop.  To prepare for their invasion, Joshua sent two men to spy out the land.  They arrived in Jericho and lodged at Rahab’s inn.  She had been a prostitute in her past life, but had come to embrace the God of Israel.  When the king of Jericho heard about these two visitors, he sent officers to take them.  Rahab was aware that the king would come looking for them, so in order to protect them, she hid them up on her roof among some stalks of flax that she was drying likely to make linen fabric.

God had revealed to her through the accounts of God’s gracious care and protection for Israel that Jericho rightly belonged to Israel, thus she was determined not to do anything to try to thwart God’s plan, which, by the way, is an exercise in futility.  Having come to place her faith in the LORD God, she knew that she would be required to act on her faith.  James has told us in his book that faith without works is dead (James 2:20).  Of course, Rahab lived a long time before James wrote his book, but she knew instinctively that a true faith will be evident by one’s works.  In protecting these men, she knew that she would have to use whatever means were necessary.  If that included lying to the king of Jericho, then so be it.

When the officers came to her door, she had already hidden the two spies.  The king’s men demanded that she bring them out to them, but she proceeded to lie to them.  She said that the men had come to her inn, but she had no idea who they were, from where they came, nor why they had come to Jericho.  Because she ran an inn, she likely had guests from time to time and probably did not enquire from them their whereabouts or what business they had in Jericho.  So far, the officers were believing her.  She continued with her fake story by claiming that the two men left town about dark just before the gates would have been closed for the night.  She told them that she did not know which way they went, but if the officers hurried, they might be able to catch them.  Rahab was a convincible liar to these officers.  In her past life, as a prostitute before she came to know God as the sovereign Ruler over all, she may have told many lies, thus it wasn’t that hard for her to be believable.  (That is just speculation, but folks who habitually lie get pretty good at it.)  The officers left her door immediately and went out of the city.  The gates closed behind them, which would made it very difficult for the two spies to leave the way they came.  Rahab also helped them to escape another way.

What we have here is a woman who lied to protect two of God’s men who were obeying the command of their leader, Joshua, chosen by God to fulfill His plan for His people.  This was an exceptional case.  What if Rahab, who had become a believer in and worshipper of God, told the officers the truth?  The officers would have captured the men, taken them to the king, and it was possible that he could have had them executed for spying.  God’s plan would have proceeded by another way, but Rahab would have not shown herself to be faithful to God and likely would not have been in the lineage of Jesus Christ (Matthew 1:5).  She did not set a precedent.  This was her only option to protect the two spies.   Over 600 years later, James wrote that Rahab was justified in showing her faith by her works.  She took a huge risk for which she could have suffered greatly if the king found out she had lied to protect these two spies who were considered enemies of the king of Jericho.

I sort of doubt that any of us have been or ever will be in this type of situation where we have to protect some of God’s people from the enemy, but the way that the world is going, who knows?  Many of us have heard of Corrie ten Boom, a Dutch woman, a believer, who hid Jews in a secret room in the ten Boom home, The Hiding Place, as it has come to be known.  She and her family became enemies of the Nazis for their bold attempt to keep Jews safe who were trying to escape the wrath of Hitler.  She and her family were eventually caught, imprisoned, and tortured.  She became a highly successful witness for Christ in her later years.  To sum up, unless we are in a life and death situation, one where we must act on faith, then it is always better to be honest and tell the truth.