Proverbs 25:18 Commentary and Bible Study

The command to love our neighbour as ourselves is written on every human heart and ought to be natural to us all. So important is trust in human society that any behaviour which undermines it is as if we were to pick up weapons and actively attack those we live amongst. This is madness because it is they who we depend on for friendship, cooperation, community, and security. No community which is divided can be strong, and there is nothing more divisive than false witness. There are times when we must bear witness against evil done by those who are our neighbours, but this is about the necessary discipline and possibly expulsion of one who has already broken the bond of trust by his actions. False witness on the other hand brings a charge against another when they have done nothing to provoke it, and may do them tremendous and lasting harm. The lie may well be believed and can cause close friends to be torn apart for no reason so that their friendship never recovers. The liar wants credit to be given to his testimony which he is utterly unworthy of. He claims to be a man of truth concerned about right conduct – otherwise he could not stand as a witness – but in fact he is a worthless individual who has abandoned the truth for his own mean spirited reasons. So harmful is his false witness that it is as if he comes with weapons drawn to murder his neighbour. To destroy another’s reputation may cause more long term damage than to destroy his property or even to attack him physically.Within the church of God the apostolic rule is, ‘Putting away lying, speak every man truth with his neighbour: for we are members one of another’ (Ephesians 4:25). We are members of the same body, and how can the members of one body lie to each other? They may have to suffer each other’s pain and the pain of one member causes pain to the other members also, but they would rather have that than to have another member lie to them or send false signals, for then they can no longer combine together to form a single body with a single aim. The body does not easily agree to the removal of a member however much pain that member is communicating to the rest of the body. But to lie is to choose to be excluded from the body and the body would rather exclude a member that has voted so convincingly that it no longer wishes to belong than to continue to accept false messages from it which disrupt the unity of the body. This is obviously true of a physical living body, and it is also true of the body of Christ, the church. That body does not communicate through nerve impulses sent between physically linked members, but it communicates via words and perceived intentions through nerves of trust and of love which unite the body together as one.