I can’t remember the preacher, but I remember the line: “Abraham would have traded places with us in a heartbeat.” It caught my attention because I so often read my Bible and wish I could have the experiences that Abraham had. Or Moses. Or Joshua. Definitely David.

But the preacher was right. In fact, he wasn’t saying anything different from what Jesus says to his disciples: “Blessed are your eyes, for they see, and your ears, for they hear. For truly, I say to you, many prophets and righteous people longed to see what you see, and did not see it, and to hear what you hear, and did not hear it” (Matthew 13:16–17). Now, in other words, really is better than then: better than Abraham’s experiences at Haran (Genesis 12:1–5), Moses’s at Sinai (Exodus 19), Joshua’s at Jericho (Joshua 6), or David’s in the Valley of Elah (1 Samuel 17). Now — the present chapter in God’s story — is better, and it’s better for all kinds of reasons.

Here I want to draw our attention to one often-overlooked reason. It’s found at the end of Hebrews, and it’s full of implications for how we read our Bibles — and whom we baptize.

Running with a Limp

Right at the end of the “Hall of Faith” in Hebrews 11, the pastor concludes his list of Old Testament heroes by telling us this: “All these, though commended through their faith, did not receive what was promised, since God had provided something better for us, that apart from us they should not be made perfect” (verses 39–40). We find the same idea in two other places in the chapter (verses 1–2, 13): the Old Testament faithful lived and died without receiving what God had promised them.

The promise in view is variously described as a “land” (verse 9), a “city” built by “God” (verse 10; see also verse 16), a “homeland” (verse 14), and a “better” and, indeed, “heavenly” country (verse 16). In other places, Hebrews calls this same place “the world to come” (2:5; 1:6), “a Sabbath rest” (4:9), “the inner place behind the curtain” (6:19; 9:11–12, 24), “the promised eternal inheritance” (9:15), “a better possession” (10:34), “Mount Zion, the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem” (12:22 NET), “a kingdom that cannot be shaken” (12:28), and a “city that is to come” (13:14).

It’s a place the Old Testament faithful never reached. They didn’t reach it because God had planned “something better for us.” Or, to say it another way, God had decided “that apart from us they should not be made perfect” or fit to enter God’s presence. That’s what perfection means in Hebrews. It’s a fitness made possible by Jesus’s sacrifice (10:14), and it includes new and immediate effects upon the believer’s conscience (9:9, 14; 10:2, 22) and, one day, on his body too (see 11:35). It also gives believers new spiritual access to God now (4:16; also 4:3; 12:22–23), and bodily access to the heavenly city when Jesus returns (12:22; 13:14). It’s an extraordinary gift and one, Hebrews insists, that Old Testament believers, from Abel to Zechariah (Hebrews 11:4, 37), ran their race without.

“In the new covenant, God enables every member to keep covenant. He enables every member to persevere in faithfulness.”

The author couldn’t make his point more forcefully. When his friends asked whether it was possible to run the Christian race, they needed only to remember the “great cloud” of the Old Testament faithful, who lived and died full of faith (Hebrews 12:1 NET). These heroes were tempted in every way, just like we are, yet without giving up. Like us, they too ran their race through many dangers, toils, and snares. But, on top of all this, they also ran with a limp. They ran their race without the gift of perfection (11:39–40). Surely (and this is Hebrews’s point) if they could run and finish full of faith, so can we!

Three Lessons from Perfection

This brand-new gift of perfection makes our place in God’s story better and, at the same time, teaches us fresh lessons about how we should read and understand God’s written word, including the relationship between the covenants, the nature of Christian apostasy, and the proper subjects of Christian baptism.

1. Relationship Between the Covenants

According to Hebrews, Jesus’s perfection-bringing death inaugurated a new covenant (9:15–17, when properly translated). Hebrews calls this covenant “better” when comparing it with the old covenant that Moses inaugurated at Sinai (8:6; 9:18–22) and under which most of the faithful in Hebrews 11 lived (11:23–38).

It’s better because it’s “not like” the old covenant that God made with Israel and that Israel didn’t keep (8:8–9). Unlike the new covenant, the old covenant couldn’t guarantee its members’ faithfulness. It couldn’t keep itself from being broken or its members safe from its curses (3:11, 17–18). It had no power to ensure that its members would, like the heroes of Hebrews 11, live and die full of faith. It was good but, owing to these deficiencies, not good enough.

The new covenant’s new provisions, therefore, supply precisely what the old covenant lacked. God now puts his “laws into” his people’s “minds” and writes “them on their hearts” (8:10). In short, he enables his people’s obedience. In fact, he does this for each and every covenant member: “all” the members of God’s new covenant “know” God, from “least” to “greatest” (verse 11). The days of a believing remnant inside a hardened majority are forever ended. In this new covenant, God enables every member to keep covenant. He enables every member to persevere in faithfulness.

All of this, however, can be gifted to sinful people only because our thrice-holy God, in unfathomable love, finally and fully forgives his people’s sins through Jesus’s perfecting sacrifice (8:12; 10:14, 18).

Hebrews 11:39–40, therefore, teaches us that Jesus’s perfecting death inaugurated a covenant that is better than the old covenant precisely because it includes benefits never before experienced. None, in fact, could be experienced in earlier eras of God’s story, neither through God’s earlier covenants nor proleptically through the new, because “God had planned something better for us” (11:40 NIV).

To say it again, the Old Testament faithful were not perfected. The new covenant was not inaugurated, nor its better promises experienced, until Jesus died. This means that the new covenant is not simply a further revelation of the one covenant of grace, but a substantively new covenant, new in its revelatory content and in its soteriological provisions (1:1–3).

2. Nature of Christian Apostasy

The new covenant’s superiority implies that apostasy in the new-covenant era is substantively different from apostasy under the old covenant. While an old-covenant member might fail to “continue in” the covenant (and, sadly, many did; Hebrews 8:9), a new-covenant member cannot. It’s this very distinction — the unbreakable-ness of the covenant — that makes the new covenant better. Thus, the warnings against apostasy in Hebrews, which some in the author’s audience did not heed (10:25), refer to new-covenant experiences available to members and nonmembers alike (see 6:4–6 and 10:29). After all, the covenant is either better or breakable. There is not a third option.

3. Proper Subjects of Christian Baptism

Considering the inviolability of the new covenant and the connection Hebrews draws between faith, perfection, and covenant membership (3:6, 14; 10:14, 18, 22–23), Hebrews gives us no encouragement to treat non-professing individuals (those who do not profess faith in Christ) as covenant members. Rather, the (sad) reality of apostasy suggests that the visible new-covenant community will be phenomenologically mixed until Jesus returns, with real and false professors, while the superiority of the new covenant suggests the true covenant community will remain ontologically (and gloriously) unmixed.

To admit non-professing people into the visible (professing) community confuses these two realities. It fails to recognize the crucial difference between a professing member who claims to “know the Lord” and a non-professing member who doesn’t — and who therefore requires something that new-covenant membership itself specifically provides (8:11).

Our Place in God’s Story

What more shall I say? Time would fail me to tell of what Hebrews 11:39–40 teaches us about Levitical sacrifices or circumcision or regeneration or the intermediate state. Time and space fail already to give anything more than a cursory look at the three implications I’ve sketched above.

Still, what we’ve seen gives us more than enough reason to agree with Jesus (and the nameless preacher) about the goodness of our place in God’s story. We have even more reason to persevere in our race of faith as we await Jesus’s return, a perfected body, and life with God and in his city forever and ever.

We live in an age that has become painfully cynical about leadership — some of it for good reason. Much of it is simply the mood of our times. And the underlying mood has only seemed to thicken and become all the more manifest in recent years, and perhaps especially in the last eighteen months.

Stories of use and abuse abound, and the letdowns make for big headlines. In the Information Age, we have more and quicker access than ever before to tales of bad leaders. In our own lives, we all have felt the sting of being let down by some leader in whom we had placed our trust. The pain and confusion are real. The wounds can be deep. We learn to guard ourselves from future disappointment. Cynicism can feel like a worthy shield.

But high-profile failures can mask the true source of our discontent with being led: we love self and come to pine for self-rule. Couple that with our generation’s distorted sense of what leadership is. When leadership has become a symbol of status, achievement, and privilege — as it has in many eyes — we desire to “be the leader” ourselves, not to bless others but to bless ourselves, get our way. And understandably, we become reluctant to grant anyone else that authority over us.

Led by God — Through Others

Into such confusion, the Christian faith speaks a different message. You need leadership. It is for your good. You were designed to be led. First and foremost by God himself — through the God-man, Jesus, who now wields all authority in heaven and on earth at the Father’s right hand. God made us to be led, every one of us. He designed our minds and hearts and bodies not to thrive in autonomy but to flourish under the wisdom and provision and care of worthy leaders — and most of all, under Christ himself. But there is more.

The risen Christ has appointed human leaders, in submission to him, in local congregations. Precious as the priesthood of all believers is — a remarkable truth that was radically counter-cultural from the first century until the Reformation — today we have need to articulate afresh the nature, and goodness, of leadership in the local church. We have an important kind of gracious inequality within our equality in Christ.

One of the ways Christ governs his church, and blesses her, is by giving her the gift of leaders under him: “He gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ” (Ephesians 4:11–12). The mention of “shepherds and teachers” is of special significance because it is intensely personal to you as a Christian. It includes the pastors of your particular local church (and note that pastors is plural). You’ve never met one of Jesus’s apostles (even as their writings remain precious to us beyond words!), but chances are you know a pastor. Faithful pastors are a gift from Christ to guide and keep his church today.

Are they flawed? Of course. Sinful? Regrettably. Have some pastors made terrible mistakes, sinned grievously, fleeced their flocks, and harmed the very ones they were commissioned to protect? Sadly, yes, some have. But such failures were not the fulfilling of the vision of what true Christian leadership is. Such failures fell short of God’s vision, or departed from it altogether. In fact, such failures show — by contrast — what real leadership in the church should be.

That’s our focus this morning: what Christ calls leaders in his church to be — especially the “lead office” or “teaching office” in the church, that of “pastor” or “elder” or “overseer,” three terms in the New Testament for the same lead office. My prayer is that these minutes will be useful to congregants and leaders alike in considering Christ’s call and what vision he himself has cast for leadership in the local church.

Teamwork: Good Men with Good Friends

I mentioned that pastors is plural. One of the most important truths to rehearse about pastoral ministry is that Christ means for it to be teamwork. As in 1 Peter 5, so in every context in which local-church pastor-elders are mentioned in the New Testament, the title is plural. Christ alone reigns as Lord of the church. He is head (Ephesians 1:22; 5:23; Colossians 1:18), and he alone. The glory of singular leadership is his. And he means for his undershepherds to labor, and thrive, not alone but as a team.

The kind of pastors we long for in this age are good men with good friends — friends who love them enough to challenge their instincts, tell them when they’re mistaken, hold them to the fire of accountability, and make life both harder and better, both more uncomfortable and more fruitful.

Shepherds Old and New

Let’s start with the main verb in 1 Peter 5:1–5, which is Peter’s charge to the elders: “shepherd the flock of God.” Shepherd, as a verb, is a rich image. Consider all that shepherds do: they feed, water, tend, herd, protect, guide, lead to pasture, govern, care for, nurture. To shepherd is an image of what we might call “benign rule” (the opposite of “domineering”), in which the good of the shepherd is bound up with the good of the sheep.

Preparing the Way

The concept of shepherding also has a rich Old Testament background, not just in the Patriarchs, and Israel in Egypt and in the wilderness, but also in King David, the shepherd boy who became the nation’s greatest king, the anointed one, who anticipated the great Anointed One to come. So, with David, shepherding takes on messianic meaning. David, of course, had his own grave failures in shepherding the nation, but after David the trend of the nation’s kings became worse and worse.

Five centuries later, the prophet Ezekiel condemned the nation’s leaders for “feeding themselves” rather than feeding the sheep:

Ah, shepherds of Israel who have been feeding yourselves! Should not shepherds feed the sheep? You eat the fat, you clothe yourselves with the wool, you slaughter the fat ones, but you do not feed the sheep. The weak you have not strengthened, the sick you have not healed, the injured you have not bound up, the strayed you have not brought back, the lost you have not sought, and with force and harshness you have ruled them. (Ezekiel 34:2–4)

The leaders of Israel should have fed the people, not fed on them. They should have strengthened the people, and healed them, bound them, brought them back, and sought them, but instead they have ruled them “with force and harshness” — not benign rule but malignant rule. The people long for a shepherd, a king, who will rule them with gentle strength, with persuasion and kindness, with patience and grace, even as he protects them from their enemies. And God says, in response, again and again, “I will rescue my flock,” but also, “I will set up over them one shepherd, my servant David, and he shall feed them: he shall feed them and be their shepherd” (Ezekiel 34:22–23). Note the prominence of feeding in shepherding.

Good Shepherd and His Help

Micah prophesied that from Bethlehem, the city of David, will “come a ruler who will shepherd my people Israel” (Micah 5:2; Mark 2:6). During his life, Jesus himself says he is the good shepherd (John 10:11), who, rather than taking from his sheep, comes to give them life, and even give his own life for them.

Then, amazingly, at the end of the Gospel of John, when Jesus asked Peter three times — this same Peter — if he loved him, Peter said yes, and then Jesus said, “Feed my lambs,” “Tend my sheep,” and “Feed my sheep” (John 21:15, 16, 17). Here “feeding” and “pastoring” are synonymous. Jesus is the good shepherd, but he is leaving, and he will now pastor his sheep through Peter and other undershepherds — not just apostles, but local church elders, overseers, pastors, as Paul says in Acts 20:28 to the elders in Ephesus: “Pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock, in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to care for the church of God, which he obtained with his own blood.” The elders are also overseers, and they are to “care for” — or literally, “pastor the church of God” (elders = overseers = pastors).

Finally, in the book of Revelation, we have two images of Jesus as shepherd. The Lamb, as shepherd, “will guide them to springs of living water” (Revelation 7:17), and in three texts, he will rule “with a rod of iron” (Revelation 2:27; 12:5; 19:15), which doesn’t mean he is forceful or harsh with his people, but that he protects them from their enemies with his iron rod. The shepherd’s rod is for protecting his flock: “your rod and your staff, they comfort me” (Psalm 23:4).

So there’s just a taste of the richness in this shepherding image and action as a verb: centrally, feeding and watering (“green pastures” and “still waters,” Psalm 23:2), but also protecting. Shepherding means caring for the sheep, and leading with gentleness and kindness, with persuasion and patience, but wielding a rod of protection toward various threats to the flock.

Three Ways to Exercise Oversight

Back to 1 Peter 5, the verb that then augments “shepherd” is “exercising oversight.” It’s the verb form of the noun “overseer” used in Acts 20:28, as well as four other New Testament texts (Philippians 1:1; 1 Timothy 3:2; Titus 1:7; 1 Peter 2:25). “Oversee” in this context doesn’t mean only to watch and observe, but also to “see to it” that important observations about the flock, and any threats to it, also become tangible initiatives and actions in the church. In other words, as one of my fellow pastors, Joe Rigney, recently wrote about oversight, “Having seen clearly what they need to see about their flock, the pastors [need to] have the courage and compassion to act together with wisdom to do what is best for the sheep, especially through their teaching.”

Now, at the heart of this passage, Peter gives us three “not-buts” — not this but that. Verses 2–3: “Shepherd the flock of God that is among you, exercising oversight, [1] not under compulsion, but willingly, as God would have you; [2] not for shameful gain, but eagerly; [3] not domineering over those in your charge, but being examples to the flock.” Let’s take them in reverse order.

1. Not domineering but exemplifying.

We saw God’s condemnation for the leaders of Israel who ruled “with force and harshness.” Peter says “not domineering” — which is the same language we see elsewhere translated “not lording it over.” It’s built on a strong verb that can refer in other contexts to Jesus’s lordship (Romans 14:9; 1 Timothy 6:15); or the kind of lordship sin once had, and should no longer have, over us (Romans 6:9, 14; 7:1); the kind of lordship Christian leaders should not have over those in their charge (Luke 22:25).

First and Foremost Sheep

This prohibition against domineering applies even for an apostle, as Paul says to the Corinthians: “Not that we lord it over your faith, but we work with you for your joy, for you stand firm in your faith” (2 Corinthians 1:24). The intensified form of the verb here in 1 Peter 5 is the same one Jesus uses in Mark 10:42:

Those who are considered rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them. But it shall not be so among you.

Christian leaders, as workers for the joy of their people, should not be controlling and domineering and lording over them. Rather, they are examples to the flock. Twice Peter says they are “among” the flock: “I exhort the elders among you . . . : shepherd the flock of God that is among you” (1 Peter 5:1–2). Not above, or off to the side, or far away — not remote — but among.

“Good pastors are secure in soul and not blown left and right by the need to impress or to prove themselves.”

Good pastors are first and foremost sheep. They know it and embrace it. Pastors do not comprise a fundamentally different category of Christian. They need not be world-class in their intellect, oratory, or executive skills. They are average, normal, healthy Christians, serving as examples for the flock, while among the flock, as they lead and feed the flock through teaching God’s word, accompanied with wise collective governance. The hearts of good pastors swell to Jesus’s charge in Luke 10:20: “Do not rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.” Their first and most fundamental joy is not what God does through them as pastors but what Christ has done (and does) for them as Christians.

Good pastors, therefore, are secure in soul and not blown left and right by the need to impress or to prove themselves. They are happy to be seen as normal Christians — not a cut above the congregation, but reliable models of mature, healthy, normal Christianity.

Humbled and Happy

Another way to say it is that such pastors are humble, or humbled. After all, Peter charges “all of you” — elders and congregants — “Clothe yourselves, all of you, with humility toward one another” (1 Peter 5:5). Healthy churches are eager to clothe themselves in humility toward their pastors who have led the way in dressing with humility for the church.

Such pastors, humble in practice, not just theory, are present in the life of the church and accessible. They invite, welcome, and receive input from the flock. They don’t presume to shepherd God’s flock in all the world through the Internet, but focus on the flock “that is among you” (verse 2) — those particular names and faces assigned to their charge — and they delight to be among those people, not removed or distant.

2. Not for shameful gain but eagerly.

Shameful gain would be some other benefit than the gain of the flock — whether money as the driving motivation, or power, or respect, or comfort, or the chance to perform, enjoying being on the platform. In terms of “eagerness,” the epistle to the Hebrews gives this important glimpse into the dynamic of Christian leadership as workers for the joy of the flock:

Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they are keeping watch over your souls, as those who will have to give an account. Let them do this with joy and not with groaning, for that would be of no advantage to you. (Hebrews 13:17)

“Christ gives leaders to his people for their joy. Pastors are glad workers for the gladness of their people in God.”

Here is a beautiful, marriage-like vision of the complementary relationship between the church and its leaders. The leaders, for their part, labor (they work hard; it is costly work) for the advantage — the profit, the gain — of the church. And the church, for its part, wants its leaders to work not only hard but happily, without groaning, because the pastors’ joy in leading will lead to the church’s own benefit. The people want their leaders to labor with joy because they know their leaders are working for theirs.

Christ gives leaders to his people for their joy. Which turns the world’s paradigm and suspicions about leadership upside down. As Paul says in 2 Corinthians 1:24, “Not that we lord it over your faith, but we work with you for your joy.” Pastors are glad workers for the gladness of their people in God.

For Your Advantage

How eager, then, would the people have been to submit to such a leader? The prospect of submitting to a leader drastically changes when you know he isn’t pursuing his own private advantage but genuinely seeking yours: what is best for you, what will give you the deepest and most enduring joy — when he finds his joy in yours, rather than apart from or instead of yours.

The word “submission” has negative connotations today in many circles. But how might the charge to “submit” in verse 5, to “be subject to the elders,” change when we see it in the context of this vision of shepherding and oversight and pastoring that Peter lays out? There’s no charge to submit in verse 5 until verses 2–4 establish a context of “workers for your joy” who are willing, eager, and exemplary: they feed the flock, not themselves; they attend to the flock’s needs, not their own; they gain as the flock gains, not as the flock loses.

It’s amazing to consider what actions and initiatives and care are presupposed in the New Testament, from husbands and fathers and governors and pastors, before the command is given to submit:

husbands, love and be kind (not harsh) (Colossians 3:18);
fathers, do not provoke your children to anger (Ephesians 6:3);
civil governors are God’s servants for your good, avenging wrongdoing (Romans 13:1; 1 Peter 2:13);
pastors feed through public teaching (1 Corinthians 14:34) and pay careful attention (Acts 20:28) and keep watch over the flock (1 Timothy 4:16).

Pastors give of themselves, their time, their energy, their attention, to work for the joy of the flock. Therefore, church, submit to your leaders. In Hebrews 13:17, negatively, God will hold the pastors accountable, and positively, it will be to your advantage, to your benefit, to your joy, if you let them labor with joy, for your joy, and not with groaning.

Unfading Joy

For those who are skeptical of leaders in general, what if you knew that “those who are . . . over you in the Lord” (1 Thessalonians 5:12) were not in it to stroke their ego, or secure selfish privilege, or indulge desires to control others, but actively were laying aside their personal rights and private comforts to take inconvenient initiative, and expend their limited energy, to work for your joy?

For those who are formal leaders in the church, or in the home, or in the marketplace, what if those under your care were convinced — deeply convinced — that your place of relative authority (under Christ) was not for self-aggrandizement or self-promotion, but a sobering call to self-sacrifice, and that you were genuinely working for their joy? That your joy in leadership was not a selfish pursuit, not for shameful gain, but a holy satisfaction you were finding in the joy of those whom you lead?

When leaders in the church show themselves to be workers for your joy, they walk in the steps of the great shepherd — the great worker for joy — the one who bore the greatest cost for others’ good, and not to the exclusion of his own joy. He found his joy in the joy of his Beloved. “For the joy that was set before him [he] endured the cross” (Hebrews 12:2).

As workers for the church’s joy, pastors emphatically pursue gain — not shameful gain but shameless gain — their joy in the good of the church to the glory of Christ. Joy now, and joy in the coming shame*less* reward: “When the chief Shepherd appears, you will receive the unfading crown of glory” (1 Peter 5:4).

3. Not under compulsion but willingly.

Churches want happy pastors. Not dutiful clergy. Not groaning ministers. The kind of pastors we all want are the ones who want to do the work, and labor with joy for our joy. We want pastors who serve “not under compulsion, but willingly, as God would have you” (1 Peter 5:2).

God himself wants pastors who labor from the heart. He wants them to aspire to the work (1 Timothy 3:1), and do it with joy (Hebrews 13:17). Not dutifully, or under obligation, but willingly, eagerly, happily. And not just “as God would have you” but “as God himself does” — literally “according to God” (Greek: kata theon).

“God wants pastors to labor with joy because he is this way. He acts from fullness of joy.”

It says something about our God that he would have it this way. He is the infinitely happy “blessed God” (1 Timothy 1:11) who acts from joy. He wants pastors to labor with joy because he works this way. He acts from fullness of joy. He is a God most glorified not by raw duty, but by eagerness and enjoyment, and he himself cares for his people willingly, eagerly, happily.

Churches know this deep down: that happy pastors, not groaning elders, make for happy churches, and a glorified Savior. Pastors who enjoy the work, and work with joy, are a benefit and an advantage, to their people (Hebrews 13:17).

Chief We All Want

Such are the pastors we all want. Of course, no man, and no team of men, will embody these dreams perfectly, but men of God learn to press through their temptations to paralysis and resignation because of their imperfections. They happily lean on Christ as the perfect and great shepherd of the sheep, gladly roll their burdens onto his broad shoulders (1 Peter 5:7), remember that his Spirit lives and works in them, and then learn to take the next courageous, humble step — ready to repent and retry if it was the wrong one.

As pastors learn to live up to these realistic dreams — albeit not perfectly, but making real progress by the Spirit — some aspects of our broken leadership culture will find healing. At least our churches, if not our world, will learn to lay down suspicions and enjoy God’s gift of good pastor-teachers.

ABSTRACT: The two major positions on lying (lying as communicating contrary to neighbor love and lying as communicating contrary to what one thinks or knows), while offering helpful insights, do not fully account for the biblical data. A Christian ethic of truth-telling begins by defining truthfulness and lying in conformity with God’s character as the primary principle, allowing the previous emphases on love for neighbor and conformity to thought to function as regulating principles.

For our ongoing series of feature articles for pastors and Christian leaders, we asked Daniel R. Heimbach (PhD, Drew University Graduate School), retired senior research professor of Christian ethics at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, to explain how Christians have approached the ethics of truth-telling and to assess how those positions align with the complexity of biblical testimony.

Augustine once said, “Whether we should ever tell a lie if it be for someone’s welfare is a question that has vexed even the most learned.”1 And that is because, while the Bible shows that God demands truthfulness (Exodus 20:16; Zechariah 8:16; Ephesians 4:25), it also shows that God expects less than complete candor in some circumstances (1 Samuel 16:1–5; 2 Kings 6:14–20), that he uses lies for divine purposes (1 Kings 22:19–23; 2 Thessalonians 2:11), and that he commends people who demonstrate faithfulness to God by misleading enemies of God (Joshua 2:4–6; Hebrews 11:31; James 2:25).

These anomalies have led Christians to formulate two quite contrary positions on how best to interpret what the Bible says on the ethics of truth-telling: the first, formulated by the early church, views lying as communicating contrary to neighbor love; the second, first formulated by Augustine, views lying as communicating contrary to what one thinks or knows.2

The first position holds that communicating contrary to what one thinks or knows is sometimes right and true, because what makes communicating wrong and untrue is betraying a relational trust. According to this tradition, communicating in ways driven by neighbor love is right and true even if one’s words do not always align with what one thinks or knows is true.

The second position holds that communicating contrary to what one thinks or knows is necessarily wrong because inconsistency between what is communicated and what one believes to be true is always wrong. According to this tradition, speaking in line with what one thinks or knows is always right, even at the cost of betraying good people and allowing bad people to do wicked things.

I believe both traditionally held positions are partially right but also fall short of what the whole word of God says about communicating faithfully. In this essay, I aim first to review what the Bible says on this important subject and then argue for a position that helps resolve some of the tension between the traditionally held views.

Six Observations from Scripture

We can make at least six important observations concerning what the Bible says about communicating truthfully and being true.

1. God is the standard of truth.

First, the word of God identifies speaking truthfully with God and speaking untruthfully with opposition to him. God declares, “I the Lord speak the truth; I declare what is right” (Isaiah 45:19). God not only speaks truthfully but is the source and measure of truth. God is essentially “righteous and true” (Deuteronomy 32:3–4 CSB). He does not measure up to truth but rather is Truth Itself. When the Bible says God is “the God of truth” (Isaiah 65:16), it means not just that he is truthful, but that he is the standard to which everything true aligns.

Thus, everything God says is necessarily true (2 Samuel 22:31; Psalm 119:160), everything he reveals is necessarily true (Proverbs 30:5), everything he does accords with truth (Deuteronomy 32:4; Psalm 25:10; 145:17), and he can never be untrue (Numbers 23:19; Titus 1:2). When God says he delights in truth (Psalm 51:6) and commands us to speak truthfully (Zechariah 8:16; Ephesians 4:25), he calls us to be like him (Leviticus 19:2; 1 Peter 1:16).

2. The Bible sometimes commends misleading speech.

Second, while the Bible stresses the sanctity of truth and condemns what is untrue, it also includes passages in which communicating contrary to what is known so as to mislead bad people is treated either without disapproval or with commendation.

The Hebrew midwives deceive Pharaoh to save babies (Exodus 1:15–21).
Rahab deceives a king to save spies (Joshua 2:1–7; 6:17, 25; Hebrews 11:31; James 2:25).
God orders Israel to ambush the men of Ai (Joshua 8:3–8).
Jael deceives the Canaanite general Sisera (Judges 4:18–21; 5:24–27).
God develops a cover story to deceive Saul (1 Samuel 16:1–5).
Michal deceives Saul to protect David (1 Samuel 19:12–17).
David tells Jonathan to cover his absence by deceiving Saul (1 Samuel 20:6); Jonathan then deceives Saul to protect David (1 Samuel 20:28–29).
David deceives Ahimelech the priest about the mission he is on (1 Samuel 21:2).
David deceives the people of Gath by feigning madness (1 Samuel 21:13).
David deceives Achish about where he was raiding (1 Samuel 27:10).
David deceives Achish about his real allegiance (1 Samuel 29:8–9).
David tells Hushai to deceive Absalom by giving bad advice (2 Samuel 15:34); Hushai then deceives Absalom this way (2 Samuel 17:5–13), and God ensures Absalom is ruined by Hushai’s deceitful advice (2 Samuel 17:14).
A woman deceives Absalom’s men to save David’s men (2 Samuel 17:19–20).
Elisha deceives Syrians sent to arrest him (2 Kings 6:14–20).
Jeremiah deceives people to keep secret God’s message to Zedekiah (Jeremiah 38:24–27).
God says he will himself deceive false prophets (Ezekiel 14:9).

In these passages, bad people are misled, and Scripture treats these episodes either as if nothing wrong happened or as if the deceptions were good. While God never is false and never wants us to be, the Bible shows that God sometimes wants good people to mislead bad people.

3. God’s speech fits the worthiness of the recipient.

Third, God himself is not always straightforward. In several places, the Bible refers to God sending “a lying spirit” or “strong delusion” by which bad people are led to think and believe something untrue (1 Kings 22:19–23; 2 Chronicles 18:20–22; 2 Thessalonians 2:11). In such scenarios, theologians debate whether God uses the sinfulness of bad people against them or whether he deceives them himself. However these passages are interpreted, Psalm 18:25–26 indicates that God adjusts how he communicates to fit the worthiness of those addressed.

There David says, “With the merciful you show yourself merciful; with the blameless man you show yourself blameless; with the purified you show yourself pure; and with the crooked you make yourself seem [something else].”3 Translators struggle with that last word. The Christian Standard Bible and the New International Version use “shrewd,” the English Standard Version uses “tortuous,” the New American Standard Bible uses “astute,” the King James Version uses “unsavory,” and the New Revised Standard Version uses “perverse.” No English word easily captures what it means.

“The Bible never separates communicating truly with being true.”

But the core idea is plain: God communicates clearly with people who want to hear and accept what is true, and he communicates in ways hard to grasp when speaking with people who do not want to hear and accept what is true. Some people, it would seem, are not worthy of receiving clear communication. Nothing God says is untrue (Psalm 25:10), but he adjusts how he communicates to fit the worthiness of those to whom he speaks.

4. God’s ways transcend our comprehension.

Fourth, the Bible insists God’s ways are beyond human ability to fully comprehend. God is infinite. Everything he does or says has dimensions transcending human comprehension. For God, communicating truly is not the same as communicating exhaustively (and that is true for us as well). So, when interpreting what the Bible says about the ethics of faithful communication, we accept what we read, even if it does not fit what we expect or what we think it should say.

So, if someone explains the biblical truth ethic in a manner that makes perfect sense to us, we do well to suspect either that the explanation is wrong or that it distorts how God defines truth-telling in some way. When Scripture says, “God is not man, that he should lie” (Numbers 23:19), it suggests that God’s definition of truth and the truth ethic is not affected by human conventions and that none of the ways humans define or interpret truth-telling on their own are entirely correct.

5. Truth is practiced, not just spoken.

Fifth, the Bible never separates communicating truly from being true. God not only communicates truly but is Truth Itself. He is the essence, measure, origin, and definer of truth. He is the one without which nothing is true. As we communicate truly, we become more godly; as we become more godly, we communicate more truly.

First John 1:6 expresses this reality: “If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth.” John later adds that “when [Jesus] appears we shall be like him,” and “everyone who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure” (1 John 3:2–3). In other words, the truth ethic is something practiced, not just verbalized.

6. Communicating accurately is sometimes wrong.

Sixth, in two places the Bible treats communicating accurately as morally wrong. The first is where Doeg the Edomite betrays David (1 Samuel 22:9–10), and the second is where Judas Iscariot betrays Jesus (Matthew 26:21–25). Each speaks in line with what he has in mind and states facts accurately, and yet the way each speaks is viewed as untrue in the sense of being morally wrong.

As James explains, communicating truthfully the way God defines it depends more on a speaker’s heart condition than on mere self-consistency or neighborliness. “If you have bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast and be false to the truth. . . . For where jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there will be disorder and every vile practice” (James 3:14, 16). A bad heart can make what one says ethically false even if it is factually correct, aligns with what one thinks, and is considered neighborly in some way.

Anthropocentric Divide

Although both traditional explanations are able to account for some of the above observations, neither has been able to draw all of them into a coherent ethic of truth-telling. The reason seems to be that both approach the matter from an anthropocentric posture. One measures truth by consistency with human neighbors and the other by consistency with what a person has in his own mind.

By contrast, the Bible treats truthful communication in a theocentric manner and assumes that anything else distorts the biblical norm. Thus, in order to account for all six observations, we could describe lying not as communicating contrary to neighbor love or communicating contrary to what one thinks or knows, but as communicating contrary to God. This third position understands that what biblically true communication requires cannot be grasped apart from God. In this view, truth is not something by which we measure God, but something by which God measures us.

Division between the inherited traditions reduces to different ways of conceiving the wrong that occurs in untrue communication. If truthfulness means preserving relational trust (position one), the wrong of untruth occurs in betraying a trust relationship, as measured by others trusting us. If truthfulness means accurate alignment of words with thoughts (position two), the wrong of untruth arises in discord between them. If truthfulness means fulfilling a mission assigned by God (position three), however, the wrong of untruth occurs in hindering a divine mission or purpose, however words align with thoughts and however they affect those trusting us for their own reasons.

The main difference between the first and second positions has to do with how communicating truly and lying are defined. What Christians held before Augustine was not precise, but they generally aligned communicating truly with neighbor love, thus making it relational. During the early years of persecution before Constantine (AD 35–313), they justified communicating contrary to thought in order to save innocent people. The weakness of this approach is that neighbor love can be interpreted in subjectively sentimental terms.4

Augustine meant to purge the church from ethical relativity and generally did so by applying Scripture. But when it came to interpreting the sanctity of truth, he started with definitions of truthfulness and lying that came from Greek philosophy and not actually from the Bible itself. Thus, neither of the traditions dividing Christian ethics on this point actually defines truthful communication in biblically grounded, God-centered terms.

Theocentric Solution

Although Christianity has historically been divided on the ethics of truth-telling, God’s ethical reality is not. The coherence of God demands a single, coherent answer, and there are just three possibilities: (1) lying as communicating contrary to neighbor love; (2) lying as communicating contrary to what one thinks or knows; or (3) a category that transcends both — one that defines truthfulness and lying in ways that are neither neighbor-focused nor self-focused, but rather God-focused.

Ultimate Truth is a person (John 14:6); therefore, the sanctity of truth is ultimately personal and relational, not abstract and impersonal — not a concept, principle, or rule standing off by itself over and against God. All truly true truth comes from, relates to, and serves God (Romans 11:36); therefore, the obligation to communicate truly and to be true reduces to fidelity to God. In other words, moral communication primarily concerns fidelity to the One who is Truth Itself.

How this communication relates to neighbors, thoughts, or facts is secondary. While fidelity to our neighbors, our own thoughts, and to facts makes good sense, this fidelity is not an absolute in its own right. What it means and requires in any given situation depends on what the word of God says. After all, God is he who “[declares] what is right” (Isaiah 45:19), and fearing God is the only way to avoid “perverse speech” (Proverbs 8:13 CSB).

Jesus declares that he is himself “the truth” (John 14:6), and John says he is “full of . . . truth” (John 1:14). Jesus did not measure up to any humanly conceived notion of truth. Rather, being God, he was and is the source, measure, and end of everything true, including truthful speaking. He is not an instance of truth conceived in terms other than himself, but rather is Truth Itself.

When Jesus said, “Everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice,” Pilate asked, “What is truth?” (John 18:37–38). Pilate understood Jesus to be saying something momentous. Jesus was claiming that all true communication and being true, all accuracy and meaning, all genuinely reliable existence, behavior, understanding, and conveying of information one to another is of and through himself — and that conceiving otherwise is false.

The lying as communicating contrary to God position subordinates, but does not discard, the traditional positions. It allows the other positions to serve subordinate roles. That is, loving neighbors and self-consistency can be viewed as regulating principles pointing toward what faithful communication most often requires. Pleasing Christ is the only absolute governing the biblical truth ethic. The regulating principles tell us what that ethic usually requires. But where the word of God says otherwise, we must follow. The primary principle of cohering to God himself supersedes the regulating principles of loving neighbors and self-consistency.

In the Bible, obligation to communicate truly and be true has two dimensions: one vertical in relation to God and one horizontal in relation to others. Communicating truly and being true involves both God and others. They are unconditional in relation to God, but they are conditional in relation to others, always depending on how they affect fidelity to God. The Bible refers to this condition as “the fear of God.”

Scripture tells us that “to fear the Lord is to hate . . . perverse speech” (Proverbs 8:13 CSB), and then it also tells us the Hebrew midwives and Rahab communicated as they did because they “feared” God (Exodus 1:17–21; Joshua 2:9–11). Because of this, and because Scripture regards the act by which Rahab protected the spies as a good example of faith pleasing to God (Hebrews 11:31), we should stop treating these accounts as “difficult” and should instead accept them as places where God explains how the way he defines communicating truly and being true differs from what we expect.

God uses these accounts to show that communication must be unconditionally true and faithful to himself and conditionally true and faithful to anyone or anything else. The midwives and Rahab demonstrated truthful communication the way God defines it.

The God Who Is Truth

Ethics is, at heart, a matter of worship that leaves two options. We can worship God or some guise of the devil; there is no middle ground. “Whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God” (James 4:4). We communicate either in step with God or in step with the devil. Conceiving of truth any other way skews or ignores the essential ethical questions at the heart of all truly true truth: “True by what measure?” or “True to whom?”

You cannot be true to the devil and to Christ at the same time, and you cannot communicate truly with both, in reference to both, or with the emissaries of both at the same time. Fidelity to ultimate truth requires infidelity to ultimate falsehood. Which is to say, communicating truly comes from Christ (1 Peter 3:15–16), and communicating untruly comes from hell (James 3:6).

This third position resolving the divide between self-consistency and neighbor love agrees with Allen Verhey’s caution: “God is Truth, but truth is not a second god.”5 There is a connection between God and truth, but it is not reciprocal. What we know of truth says something of God. But what we think of truth does not define God. Our understanding of truth does not limit God; at best, it only reflects God. To know truth truly, one must focus on God as he has revealed himself. Faithful communication depends on him and centers on him, not on us.

This study of the truth ethic reveals how God’s ordering of ethical reality is at once highly complex and united by a deep simplicity centered on God himself. It also demonstrates the paradoxical nature of revealed ethics. The biblically revealed ethic of communicating truly and being true, while consistent, absolute, universal, and unvarying, also runs contrary to human expectations. It is not self-contradictory but has marks of a mind transcending our own. It is not what most people think because it is more complex, deeper, and measured by a higher standard than most expect.

Yet at the same time, it is easy enough for anyone believing in the One who transcends human understanding to grasp, plain enough to convict sinners of deserved judgment, and sufficient to guide what we say and do in all situations arising in this fallen, fallible world.