“A good name is to be chosen rather than great riches, and favor is better than silver or gold.” Proverbs 22:1 ESV

“Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator.” Colossians 3:9, 10 ESV

Or faith in Christ is built upon absolutes, on truth itself. Far too often, we are tempted to compromise a little here and a little there in order to please others and to keep from ‘stirring the waters.’ Maybe a little white lie keeps our spouse happy and a ‘soft truth’ helps to smooth over an incident at work. And then later another lie covers for us when we forget something important or when we are running late. And in the process, we convince ourselves that everybody lies, and it usually never hurts anyone, and that it’s really not that bad.

But in reality, God’s reality of truth, anything bad is simply that: bad. And any kind of lie is a sin. Plain and simple. Compromising and sugar-coating doesn’t change the fact that we are defying the character that we were intended to have and live out. And with every intentional and unintentional effort we make to ‘smooth things over’ with another person through deception or lying, we are taking divots and chunks out of our relationship with Christ and looking less and less like Him in the process.

Truth matters. Sticking with the truth matters. Every single little, tiny white lie and half truth matters. And as Christians, we must be concerned that the truth is what prevails in our lives. Even if it compromises our worldly status, the truth will always pay off in the long run. Walking in truth is freedom. Walking with lies is like walking through spider webs in a maze, you have to remember what you told to who and how the story went and what the next step was supposed to be and so on and so on…it’s a tangled mess and a constant point of stress.

Truth builds integrity and when we walk in integrity, we can be trusted and our words are not taken with a grain of salt, but rather at face value. We can be trusted to speak the truth in love. Lies are part of our old identity. If we are going to GoLove others in Christ’s Name today, then we need to do it in Christ’s character of truth.