“For I heard many mocking: ‘Fear on every side!’ ‘Report,’ they say, ‘and we will report it!’” (Jer. 20:10, NKJV)
We are currently examining the fourth demonic spirit that the Bible explicitly names – the spirit of lying. In the previous teaching we pointed out that the Bride is characterised by her truthful nature. Any aspect that affects the integrity of a life built on/in truth, must be dealt with in a most serious manner. In this teaching some of the most important manifested fruit of this spirit of lying are briefly looked at.
The most important manifestation of the spirit of lying is slandering (Eph. 4:31), along with other equivalent terms, such as “evil speaking” (1 Pet. 2:1), “backbitings, whisperings” (2 Cor. 12:20; Rom. 1:30), and those who charge others “with shameful conduct, and brings a bad name” on them (Deut. 22:14).
This case is for instance very prevalent when reading David’s plea for a devoted life to God in Ps. 15:1-3: “Lord, who may abide in Your tabernacle? Who may dwell in Your holy hill. He who walks uprightly, and works righteousness, and speaks the truth in his heart, he who does not backbite with his tongue …” Please note that the absence of the slanderous tongue is one of the requirements for being able to draw near to God. Selah.
A definition of the Hebrew term from the International Standard Bible Encyclopedia is quite insightful: “translations of דּבּה, dibbāh, ‘slander,’ from dābhath, ‘to slander,’ or spread an evil report, and βλασφημέω, blasphēméō, ‘to speak injuriously’ of anyone … ‘To defame’ differs from ‘to revile’ in that the former refers to public slander, the latter to personal abuse.”
This is not necessarily about widely spreading public negative opinions, but also that which is perhaps merely hosted in the arena of your mind, slanderous thoughts aimed at others. Deut. 19:16 refers to such a person as a “false witness”.
The spirit of lying then leads you to take up a position of witnessing against another person (whether what you’re saying is true or not, is irrelevant), and God and his angels are called in as witnesses: “Do not let your mouth cause your flesh to sin, nor say before the messenger of God that it was an error. Why should God be angry at your excuse and destroy the work of your hands? For in the multitude of dreams and many words there is also vanity. But fear God.”
Why is there an explicit decree against slandering in Lev. 19:16? “You shall not go about as a talebearer among your people; nor shall you take a stand against the life of your neighbor: I am the Lord.” The Amplified Bible spells out the last part of the verse in quite clear terms: “You shall not go up and down as a dispenser of gossip and scandal among your people, nor shall you [secure yourself by false testimony or by silence and] endanger the life of your neighbor. I am the Lord.”
Please note – it is not only “false testimony” that is included here, but also “silence” – in other words if your silence thus serves to confirm any form of false testimony about someone else. This Scripture makes it clear that your words threaten the life of the other person. But, and this is a levelling reciprocus – Prov. 18:20-21 explains in no uncertain terms: “A man’s stomach shall be satisfied from the fruit of his mouth; from the produce of his lips he shall be filled. Death and life are in the power of the tongue, and those who love it will eat its fruit.” We are very familiar with this Scripture, we often repeat it to one another, but we do not always realise the implications thereof. The person who speaks death over another (anything that does not serve to promote life, encouragement, and consoling – see 1 Cor. 14:3), will THEMSELVES eat the fruit of their words! In the same vein: those who speak life over others will eat the “fruit of righteousness” (2 Cor. 9:10).
In Phil. 1:9-11 Paul explains that this “fruit of righteousness” is characteristic of the godly nature: “And this I pray, that your love may abound still more and more in knowledge and all discernment, that you may approve the things that are excellent, that you may be sincere and without offense till the day of Christ, being filled with the fruits of righteousness which are by Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God.” Note that there can be no fruit of the Spirit (as manifestation of the growing godly nature in your life) as long as you participate in the spreading of the lie that the Father of the lie, Satan, is trying to establish about another person. Two Scriptures that confirm this loaded statement, is firstly Eph. 5:9: “for the fruit of the Spirit is in all goodness, righteousness, and truth”. (Take note – without that it cannot exist!) And secondly, James 3:18: “Now the fruit of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace.” The Message phrases it beautifully: “treating each other with dignity and honor”.
In my opinion Eph. 4:29 is vital in this regard: “Let no corrupt word proceed out of your mouth, but what is good for necessary edification, that it may impart grace to the hearers.” A “corrupt word” encapsulates a host of terms – “corrupt speech” (ASV), “foul or polluting language, … evil word(s) … unwholesome or worthless talk” (AB), “harmful language” (CJB), “abusive language” (NLT) and “putrid discourse” (Rotherham). Especially the latter has great implications, as Webster explains the term putrid: “tending to disorganize the substances composing the body”. Selah.
The NASB translates this phrase as an “unwholesome word”, in other words which do not bring forth life. Everything you speak over another should impart grace.
In this light it is then also quite profound that the gospel of glory is manifested in “grace and truth” (John 1:14), but that speaking the truth about someone else cannot, and may not, occur if it is not done with a generous dose of grace. And grace is an attitude of the heart, and is only gained through faith (Rom. 5:14).
We are thus called to “the ministry of the grace of God” (Eph. 3:2). 1 Pet. 4:10 states it beautifully: “As each one has received a gift, minister it to one another, as good stewards of the manifold grace of God.” The Spirit of grace (Heb. 10:29) is also the Spirit of the Truth (John 14:17), and thus it will offer no place (Eph. 4:27) to the spirit of lying.
Satan often misleads us through the motives of our hearts. Christians have the nasty habit, for instance, of telling each other terrible stories about other believers under the guise of being concerned, or of being worried that greater consequences can befall the sinner’s life, or even through supposedly asking for intercession and prayer for the sinning party. Often a spirit of gossip and false testimony underlies the whole thing, two fundamental characteristics of the spirit of lying. This is an extremely important matter, as the spirit of lying often misleads us with the idea that the truth brings the lie to light (2 Cor. 4:2), but if it occurs without grace, we are only aiding Satan in his agenda (Job 1: Zech. 3:1).
The spirit of lying also lies at the root of an obsession with “disputes and arguments over words, from which come envy, strife, reviling, evil suspicions, useless wranglings” (1 Tim. 6:4-5).
Paul then draws the interesting link between this behaviour and our old identity in Adam: “But now you yourselves are to put off all these: anger, wrath, malice, blasphemy, filthy language out of your mouth. Do not lie to one another, since you have put off the old man with his deeds.” (Col 3:8-9). This brings about that our slandering of all that we do not know or cannot discern (Jude 1:10) is the greatest testimony against our godly nature.
Therefore James speaks so clearly against believers with lying tongues: “Do not speak evil of one another, brethren. He who speaks evil of a brother and judges his brother, speaks evil of the law and judges the law. But if you judge the law, you are not a doer of the law but a judge. There is one Lawgiver, who is able to save and to destroy. Who are you to judge another?” (James 4:11-12).
The spirit of lying deceives the believer to not only instate himself as judge over others, but also as judge over the law. This is scary. Matt 7:1 is quite explicit about this matter: “Judge not, that you be not judged.” Read this again and again; ask God to write it on your heart.
If this does not happen, the deception that the spirit of lying brings about becomes an enormous trap, and Rom. 1:28-30 as spiritual principle comes into play: “And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a debased mind, to do those things which are not fitting; being filled with all unrighteousness, sexual immorality, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, evil-mindedness; they are whisperers, backbiters, haters of God, violent, proud, boasters …” In other words – we eat the fruit of the words of death we have spoken, and thus it becomes the fruit of our lives. This is a deadly cycle.
One can then thus understand the Psalmist’s plea in Ps 140:11: “Let not a slanderer be established in the earth; let evil hunt the violent man to overthrow him.”
A last aspect of slander, gossip and false testimony is immensely subtle. I call it the art of insinuating. This word, derived from the Latin, means the following, according to Webster:
- The act of insinuating; a creeping or winding in; a flowing into crevices.
- The act of gaining on favor or affections, by gentle or artful means.
- The art or power of pleasing and stealing on the affections.
- A hint; a suggestion or intimation by distant allusion. Slander may be conveyed
by insinuation.
Many believers have developed the ability to not offer any detail, but to leave the listener with a mere suggestion of scandal, a light reference or assocation which casts the person in question in a bad light. Heb. 12:15 states that this cunning gossip only serves to cause greater unrest. Insinuation is a deadly weapon speaking of “cunning at heart” (Pro. 7:10, NASB), especially because nothing is explicitly stated, and the schematic nature of what is shared makes much greater and more imaginitive interpretations of the matter possible. Ps. 64:6 describes the strategy of a man working with slanderous suggestions: “They devise iniquities: ‘We have perfected a shrewd scheme.’ Both the inward thought and the heart of man are deep.” James 3:15 (Message) aptly refers to it as “devilish conniving”.
We have now spent a good amount of time on the first and most characteristic manifestation of the spirit of lying. There are also various other manifestations that speak of its presence, for instance: murmurings, accusations, superstitions, false prophesy, flattery, delusions, grandeur, scepticism, an imaginary world, etc. Each of these aspects could be argued at length, showing how they result in granting the father of the lie greater access to the lives of believers. But all these facets also confirm man’s aptitude to be misled, and how we need to guard and pray to loosen ourselves from this attack from the spirit of lying.
- Selah: Make a covenant with your mouth.
- Read: Lev 20-27
- Memorise: Lev 26:12
