From “Growing in the character of a disciple”: Chapter 9 – What is ‘the love of the truth’ and why does truth matter so much to God?
It is not just non-Christians who need to be wary of telling lies. Christians will also have to face Jesus Christ one day in judgment. For them it will be at the Judgment Seat of Christ. The lies told by a Christian might not necessarily be publicly exposed, or punished, though my personal opinion is that they will be. But, at the very least, such lies will cause the loss of some, or perhaps even all, of the rewards that we might otherwise have received. (See Book Four for more details).
Given that you know that you will be judged in the end and that the consequences of that judgment will be eternal, it is much wiser to seek for God’s judgment here and now, If you are in a dispute with someone and you are unsure whether your own conduct is right or wrong, or whether it is you or they who are acting in accordance with God’s will, then positively ask God to judge between you now.
You could do as David did when King Saul was hunting him and seeking to kill him:
May the Lord therefore be judge, and give sentence between me and you, and see to it, and plead my cause, and deliver me from your hand.
1 Samuel 24:15 (RSV)
I do not mean that you should ask for God’s punishment upon yourself. Far from it. What you can and should do is to ask God to intervene and to do the following kinds of things now, in this life, rather than leave it all to be dealt with later at the Judgment Seat of Christ. You can ask Him:
a) to expose any wrongdoing on your own part and make those things very clear for you to see
b) to enable others to see your error or wrongdoing as well and to prompt them to point it out to you
c) to prevent you from doing any wrong to any other person, i.e. ask God to stand in your way
d) to intervene and stop you, or redirect you, if you are handling a situation or person wrongly, unfairly or misguidedly.
e) to expose any wrong motives on your part, even if the things that you are doing are right in themselves
f) to prevent you from going any further in a particular direction if it is wrong, i.e. to close doors so that your way is blocked by Him
g) to expose anything that you believe which is actually untrue, or about which you have been deceived
Why not pray to God along all those lines? Positively ask Him to expose your wrong behaviour, wrong attitudes or wrong beliefs, so as to enable you to change here and now. That way, you may feel some embarrassment or awkwardness now, but in the long term, and especially in eternity, you will gain, because you will:
a) avoid being rebuked (or even punished) for those things at the Judgment Seat of Christ
b) become eligible, instead, to be rewarded for what you go on to do from now on.
