What the Bible Says About Lying
The short answer
The Bible's teaching on lying begins with a command most people can recite: "You shall not give false testimony against your neighbor" (Exodus 20:16). From there the theme runs through the whole of Scripture. Proverbs says "lying lips" are detestable to God, while those who deal truthfully are his delight (Proverbs 12:22). The prophets accuse Israel of preferring comfortable falsehoods to hard warnings. In the New Testament, Jesus calls the devil "a liar" and the source of lies (John 8:44), and Paul tells the church plainly, "Don't lie to one another" (Colossians 3:9), urging believers instead to "speak truth" with their neighbors (Ephesians 4:25).
It would be easy to read all this as a rule aimed only at the person doing the lying. But the Bible's diagnosis cuts deeper. Lies do not survive in a vacuum; they survive because someone welcomes them. The prophets were rejected not because their hearers could not tell truth from flattery, but because flattery felt better. Paul warns Timothy of a time when people will gather teachers who say what "itching ears" want to hear (2 Timothy 4:3).
So the question "what does the Bible say about lying?" has two halves. One is about the tongue: God calls his people to be truthful because he is truthful, and a community built on falsehood cannot hold together. The other is about the ear and the heart: we are asked to examine our own appetite for pleasant untruth. A person can keep the ninth commandment technically while still curating a life full of voices that only soothe. Scripture treats truthfulness not as a mere social courtesy but as a form of love—for God, for neighbor, and for the self we would rather not see clearly.
What scholars say
James C. Howell asks why falsehood works so well on us, and his answer is uncomfortable: hearers have receptors for it—we want to be flattered and told what we already expect, even in the sermons we praise.
“At one level BS is a problem, but BS is so pervasive and so much beloved in our culture because … well, because people have BS receptors in their souls. We may feel annoyed by all the BS out there. Yet BS seems to work—but why? Not only does the BSer say whatever he needs to say to dupe the BSee into doing whatever; the BSee is not all that fond of truth, the BSee wishes to be flattered, to be told exactly what they want to hear. People love BS in the sermons they hear. Give them what they expect, what soothes their egos; avoid what might trample on their sensitivities—and they will love you and rank you as a great master of the pulpit.”
What it means for you
Most of us police the lies we tell far more carefully than the lies we invite. This week, notice what you do when someone tells you something true but uncomfortable—about your work, your habits, your relationships. Do you weigh it, or do you reach for a friendlier voice? The biblical call to truthfulness includes cultivating a taste for truth: choosing friends, teachers, and even sermons that will occasionally trample on your sensitivities rather than merely stroke them.
And when you speak, ask whether you are telling people what is real or what will make them like you. Flattery is a lie with good manners. Truth spoken with love is rarer, and worth far more.
In context
Because this is a topic rather than a single passage, the relevant texts span the whole Bible. The prohibition on false witness sits in the Ten Commandments (Exodus 20), where it protects courts and communities from corrupted testimony. Proverbs treats honesty as a matter of character formed over a lifetime. The prophets confront a people who preferred pleasant messages to true ones. The New Testament letters make truthful speech a mark of the new life in Christ, and Jesus himself ties lying to a deeper spiritual allegiance—truth belongs to God, deception to his enemy.