Read Hebrews 6:13-19 in a couple of translations for a fuller understanding. I use The Passion Translation, God's Word, NASB, and the New Living Translation in this article.
If God makes a promise or an oath, he cannot lie. It is impossible to change these two things.
God cannot lie when he takes an oath or makes a promise. These two things can never be changed.
Hebrews 6:18b, God’s Word
It is written that Father God cannot lie. It doesn’t say He will not lie, or He may not lie, but He cannot lie.
Hebrews 6:18, NASB reads: “so that by two unchangeable things in which it is impossible for God to lie.” It is impossible for Father God to lie. He is not capable of lying. Lying is not a part of His character.
So what is a lie?
- falsehood
- untruth
- fabrication
- fiction
- fable
- misleading
- deception
- misrepresentation
- misinformation
- distortion
- fairytale
- misguidance
- hoodwink
- myth
- sham
- con
- exaggeration
- half-truth
These are some of the things people accuse Christianity of being. People say the Father God is a liar when they claim Christianity is full of fairytale beliefs and myths. God’s character is dishonored.
Do you know what else dishonors His character? Christians who believe the same as unbelievers about His Word. The moment we fail to accept God at His Word, believing His Word is a bunch of fairytales and fabrications, and feeling deceived and misled when His promises do to come to pass when or how we want, we make Father God out to be a liar.
As far back as the Garden of Eden, Satan has been slandering the character of Father God.
“Now the serpent was more cunning than any animal of the field which the LORD God had made. And he said to the woman, “Has God really said, ‘You shall not eat from any tree of the garden’?”
Genesis 3:1
What was the spirit behind the question? It was cunning. The character of the serpent was, and still is to this day, crafty, tricky, foxy, slick, devious, sly, deceitful, calculating, dishonest, shifty, sneaky, and underhanded. When others question our faith, we must be able to discern the spirit behind the question.
Now, let’s get to the question this shifty, slick fox asked Eve. There was no greeting, no easing into his plot. The serpent went straight for the kill. So imagine Eve, minding her own business, as this calculating, dishonest spirit, through the serpent, out of the blue, asked the twisted question, “Did God really say you must not eat the fruit from any of the trees in the garden?” In other translations it reads:
- “Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?”
- “Has God indeed said, ‘You shall not eat of every tree of the garden’?”
- “Indeed, has God said, ‘You shall not eat from any tree of the garden ‘?”
- “Can it really be that God has said, ‘You shall not eat from any tree of the garden’?”
- “Has God truly said that you will not eat from all the trees of Paradise”?
- “Did God tell you not to eat fruit from any tree in the garden?”
- “Why hath God commanded you, that you should not eat of every tree of paradise?”
- “Did God really tell you not to eat fruit from any tree in the garden?”
- “Did God actually say, ‘You are not to eat from any tree of the garden’?”
- “Is it true that God has said, You do not eat from every tree of the garden?”
Have you ever had someone approach you and ask a question you knew was calculated and cunning? Especially when they already knew the answer? This trick is used to get you to rethink and become double-minded about what was said and what you heard. This planted a seed of mistrust, doubt, and suspicion, causing Eve to reconsider what she had already heard, trusted, and accepted. This subtly activated a reprocessing of God’s Word through the lens of mistrust, doubt, and suspicion.
Eve innocently corrected the serpent in Gen 3:2-3, reciting Father God’s command. The serpent had Eve repeat the command so he could refute it in Gen. 3:4. Eve told the serpent what God said, and the serpent outright stated God was a liar.
“Of course we may eat fruit from the trees in the garden,” the woman replied. “It’s only the fruit from the tree in the middle of the garden that we are not allowed to eat. God said, ‘You must not eat it or even touch it; if you do, you will die.’” “You won’t die!” the serpent replied to the woman.
Genesis 3:2-4, NLT
The serpent had a bait to lure Eve toward sin, but he had to back it up with a trap to capture her into the bondage of sin. The bait was to twist and question Father God’s actual command, present it as more restrictive than it was, and outright state that He was a liar. But the trap was in what the serpent said in Gen 3:5, NLT “God knows that your eyes will be opened as soon as you eat it, and you will be like God, knowing both good and evil.”
The serpent tempted Eve’s flesh to want to become God instead of being content in being in His image. Adam and Eve were in the image of God but were not God, and they knew this. They were aware that there was a distinction between them and God, as they were the likeness of God but were not God. Satan tempted her to see if there was anything in her that would go for the bait. There was. She took it and was trapped.
As a result of the serpent’s influence, Eve spread her disobedience like a leaven. How? When you add leaven to flour, the living organisms in the leaven grow so that the entire quantity of dough has been affected. This is how the whole camp in the Old Testament came under judgment when only one person was in sin. As Christ’s body, we must deal with the disease of our personal unrepented, perpetual sin so that Jesus might present the church to Himself in glorious splendor, without spot or wrinkle; but that the church would be holy [set apart for God] and blameless (Ephesians 5:27). Eve presented the bait to Adam, who took it, was captured, and trapped. All humanity and creation have been trapped and held captive by satan as a result of this act of disobedience, waiting for the revealing of the children of God.
For all creation is waiting eagerly for that future day when God will reveal who his children really are. Against its will, all creation was subjected to God’s curse. But with eager hope, the creation looks forward to the day when it will join God’s children in glorious freedom from death and decay. For we know that all creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. And we believers also groan, even though we have the Holy Spirit within us as a foretaste of future glory, for we long for our bodies to be released from sin and suffering. We, too, wait with eager hope for the day when God will give us our full rights as his adopted children, including the new bodies he has promised us. We were given this hope when we were saved. (If we already have something, we don’t need to hope for it. But if we look forward to something we don’t yet have, we must wait patiently and confidently.)
Romans 8:19-25, NLT
It is written in Hebrews 6:18 that Father God cannot lie. This means He is faithful, loyal, devoted, trustworthy, reliable, constant, dedicated, committed, unwavering, honest, sincere, and genuine.
It is written in Hebrews 6:16 that one may add a vow or oath to something greater than themselves to their promise to back it up “…for the oath will confirm their statements and end all dispute.” There is no one greater than Father God when it comes to commitment and loyalty. When He made the promise to Abraham, He added a vow upon Himself, by which there is no greater.
All of Father God’s purposes are unchangeable in the first place, but He “wanted to end all doubt and confirm it even more forcefully to those who would inherit his promises,” so He “added His vow to the promise.” (Heb. 6:17). We must catch the revelation that Father God desired to end any dispute against His promise by adding a vow, which He didn’t have to do. He knows satan and his kingdom work relentlessly to slander his character and declare Him a liar, so He further secured the promises in our hearts with a vow.
And now we have run into his heart to hide ourselves in his faithfulness. This is where we find his strength and comfort, for he empowers us to seize what has already been established ahead of time—an unshakable hope! We have this certain hope like a strong, unbreakable anchor holding our souls to God himself.
Hebrews 3:18b-19a, TPT
It is written that we will find strength and comfort as we run into His heart and hide in his faithfulness. We have the Holy Spirit, which empowers us to obtain that which has already been established before the beginning of time: all of Father God’s promises. We must hold onto the reality that we not only have promises made by Father God, but they are promises fortified with His vow. As a result, our hope is unshakeable, an anchor that binds our souls to the Father.
Let us hide in the reality that God keeps His Word.