Is It Always a Sin to Lie?
What Should We Do When Moral Duties Collide?
“Do not steal. Do not lie. Do not deceive one another.” – Lev 19:11
Imagine yourself for a moment as a Dutch citizen living under Nazi occupation in the early 1940s. Authorities are rounding up Jews and shipping them off to concentration camps to face unimaginable horrors. You know the genocide taking place is evil, and your faith in Jesus compels you to risk your own safety. So you put it all on the line, join a local resistance, and begin hiding persecuted Jews in your home.
Soon, the authorities, having heard rumors of this, begin investigating and arrive at your door. They ask you plainly, “Are you harboring any Jews here?”
Is it morally wrong to lie in that moment?
Scripture clearly condemns lying.1 But Scripture also commands us to protect the innocent and love our neighbor as ourselves.2 Most would agree that handing innocent people over to face unimaginable atrocities is hardly an act of love.
At first glance, it seems there is no way to avoid sinning in this situation. But that doesn’t seem consistent with the character of a just and righteous God, does it?
So how do we, as Christians, remain obedient when moral obligations appear to conflict? And how do we respond to those who argue that God is unfair for placing us in situations where every option seems sinful?
Is There Another Way?
The scenario we just considered wasn’t merely hypothetical. For some, like the Ten Boom family, it was reality. They risked their own lives to hide Jews from the Nazis, ultimately paying a tremendous price for doing so.3 While most would recognize their actions as truly heroic, we sometimes find ourselves asking whether they also sinned by deceiving the authorities.
You may be surprised to learn that some Christians would answer yes. In fact, I recently heard this argument from one of my favorite evangelists. I disagree with that conclusion (more on that later), but how someone answers this question ultimately depends on their ethical framework.
As Norman Geisler puts it:
“Ethics deals with what is morally right and wrong. Christian ethics deals with what is morally right and wrong for a Christian.”4
I’ll spare you the page-turning details of an in-depth ethics lesson, but the position that lying is always sinful, even in a case like this, is often associated with Unqualified Absolutism.5 According to this view, genuine moral conflicts do not really exist, and sin is always avoidable. There is always a third option, even if we cannot see it.
The evangelist I mentioned earlier argued that someone could both love their neighbor and avoid lying by simply telling the authorities, “They’re not privy to that information.”
While this may appear to avoid lying on a technicality, it seems to miss our moral obligation to protect innocent life. In reality, such a response would almost certainly raise further suspicion, leading to the eventual discovery of those in hiding anyway.
Unavoidable Conflict
Scripture is filled with accounts of individuals having to choose between being truthful and saving a life. The Hebrew midwives preserving the lives of Israelite babies and Rahab hiding Israelite spies are two great examples.6 Some argue, however, that these are descriptive rather than prescriptive passages, and that while God blessed the outcome, the acts themselves were still sinful.
But let’s examine a moral conflict that is completely unavoidable for some and leaves no third option.
Suppose the government suddenly outlawed Christianity and the worship of God. What would you do? Reject God, and you are guilty. Refuse to obey the governing authorities, as Scripture commands, and you are also guilty.7
Again, this is not merely hypothetical. We see this scenario both in Scripture through the account of Daniel,8 and today in places like North Korea.9
Most Christians instinctively know the right answer is to disobey the government and continue worshiping God, just as Daniel did. Why? Because worshiping God is a higher moral obligation than obeying human government.
This ethical position, known as Graded Absolutism, recognizes that we live in a fallen world where unavoidable moral conflicts sometimes exist. In those situations, we are obligated to fulfill the higher moral duty, and guilt is not imputed for what we could not avoid.
There are many arguments for why this position is correct, but ultimately they all come back to one simple question: Is God perfectly just?
If the answer is yes, then it follows that He is also perfectly just in how He holds us accountable when unavoidable moral conflicts arise.
Our Ethic is Found in Jesus
One needs to look no further than Jesus to see that moral obligations are hierarchical in nature.
And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment.”
Matthew 22:37–38
Jesus clearly identifies loving God as the great and first commandment. The very fact that Jesus calls it the great command implies that there are also lesser commands. That does not make lesser commands unimportant. All of God’s commands are good and worthy of obedience. It simply means that Scripture recognizes a hierarchy of moral obligations.
In fact, it has been argued that if moral obligations were not hierarchical, Christ’s atoning work would be contradictory. Scripture teaches that each person is accountable for his or her own sin.10
Yet Jesus, who was perfectly sinless, bore the punishment for our sins.
One might contend that this is different because Christ willingly laid down His life. But simply volunteering for something does not automatically make it morally right. Suicide, for example, does not become righteous simply because someone chooses it voluntarily.
On the other hand, if a soldier throws himself on a grenade to save his fellow soldiers, we instinctively recognize that as a heroic act of self-sacrifice. His voluntary death serves a higher moral duty: preserving the lives of others.
“Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.”
John 15:13
Jesus’ atoning sacrifice was not a violation of God’s justice, but its fulfillment. He willingly and thankfully laid down His life in obedience to the highest moral good.
Heart Check
Please don’t hear what I am not saying.
I am not saying it’s okay to lie or deceive.
I am not saying that God's commands contradict one another.
I am not saying there are no real moral absolutes or that what’s good changes depending on the situation (situationism). It is never good that someone may need to lie to save a life.
I am not saying that whatever achieves the greatest good is therefore morally correct (utilitarianism).
What I am arguing is that God is just and His moral standard is perfect, unchanging, and absolute. But we unfortunately live in a fallen world, and as a result, moral absolutes will sometimes come into unavoidable conflict.
So how do we know what is right in these situations? How do we navigate responding to the higher moral obligation?
We must search and know the Word of God. It is how we strengthen our armor and learn to best navigate these dilemmas. We must also examine our hearts and ask whether our decisions are rooted in God’s moral truth or motivated by personal convenience.
It would have certainly been more convenient for the Ten Boom family to obey the governing authorities and hand over the Jews they were hiding. But they took the harder path. They knew the Scriptures, understood the higher moral obligation, and acted accordingly.
And so we must seek to do the same. To know God’s Word and do our best to fulfill our highest moral obligations, so that Jesus’ words below are never true of us:
“You are mistaken, because you know neither the scriptures nor the power of God.”
Matthew 22:29
Norman L. Geisler, Christian Ethics: Contemporary Options and Issues, 2nd ed., 15.
Ibid., chap. 5.
See Exod. 1:15–21; Josh. 2:1–24.
This was good. I like to look at it like this:
If someone asks if I am hiding someone whom they are after, either stay silent or tell them that I am not obligated to tell them.
I have never been in that situation, but that is how I view it because I have a hard time lying and would give myself away if I tried to lie.