Is it ever right to lie? I am encouraged as I read about Abraham’s experience in Genesis 12.
Sarai his wife was a beautiful woman and Abraham knew how the minds of pagan men worked. So he said to Sarai: “Indeed I know that you are a woman of beautiful countenance. 12 Therefore it will happen, when the Egyptians see you, that they will say, ‘This is his wife’, and they will kill me, but they will let you live. 13 Please say you are my sister, that it may be well with me for your sake, and that I may live because of you.”

Why does that encourage me? because as you read on from there you find that God didn’t give up on Abraham because of his lying lack of faith. Abraham’s lie was really a half-truth if there is such a thing. Sarai was really his half-sister, having the same father but a different mother. (Genesis 20:12)

The story emerges that Abraham’s fears were well-founded. Sarai was taken to the royal palace with the intention of making her a wife of Pharaoh. If it had not been for the intervention of God, Abraham would have lost his wife and Sarai… who knows what her fate would have been? In his love for them both, God caused a sickness to fall on Pharaoh’s house and Pharaoh was wise enough to join the dots and make enquiries regarding her relationship to Abraham.

The moral of this story as I see it is this. Lying is a sure evidence of lack of faith in God! If we believe that God is in control of all and that He loves us and wants the best for us, we do well to simply be truthful and trust Him to get us through difficult situations.

I am also encouraged by the fact that although Abraham told this very same lie again, with the very same result in Genesis 20, to deceive king Abimelech, God still forgave him and treated him as His friend! That’s grace! God is wonderfully gracious with us as we learn to trust Him and stop trying to fix things ourselves by doing wrong!

May God help us to remember the commandment about bearing false witness and to be transparently honest today! God ALWAYS has a way without us having to do wrong!
Have a great day.