Sermon: 'But I Say to You' (Part Five): Oaths
#1695
Richard T. Ritenbaugh
Given 25-Feb-23; 79 minutes
description: Though oaths seem to be less binding today than they were in feudal times (binding obligations and fealty, from the king to the serf, as well as the pontiff to the altar boy), euphemisms are practices of taking God's name in vain, namely careless oaths. An oath is an appeal to a higher authority to corroborate the truth of what is said. Politicians take an oath of office, soldiers take an oath of loyalty, doctors take the Hippocratic oath, and husbands and wives take oaths of fidelity. Even the Constitution can be considered an oath that an earlier generation bequeaths on future generations. The pervasiveness of a two-tiered system of communication, one off the record which is not binding and the other "under oath" carrying the penalty of perjury was well crafted by the pharisees looking for loopholes in maintaining integrity. Jesus, while agreeing that one must carry out the terms of an oath, warned His disciples, then and now, not to take oaths ever (Matthew 5:33-37) because their "off the record" speech should be coterminous with "on the record" speech. One must never violate his integrity by lying under any circumstances (following the example of the father of liars, John 8: 44). All the loopholes that the rabbis permitted, as well as current politicians and media pundits engage in (a violation of the third and ninth commandments are forbidden to God's called-out ones, who are commissioned to grow in personal integrity, providing a witness for the truth to those around them, speaking as we are always before God (which we are), not needing the crutch of an oath to guarantee our integrity.
transcript:
Compared to historical societies, our society, what we could call 21st century Western civilization, does not deal with oaths to any great extent. To us, an oath is something like a mild curse word like "By Jove!" or "For Pete's sake," or the currently ubiquitous, all over the Internet, "OMG," which I do not like at all.
Now, the meaning of this word "oath," as I have described it, is a sub-definition of the word, an irreverent or careless use of the sacred name. Such oaths can be heard just about everywhere all the time. People are always cussing, using God's name in vain.
The primary definition of oath, and the one that Jesus refers to in Matthew 5:33-37, is a solemn, usually formal calling upon God, or a god, to witness to the truth of what one says or to witness that one sincerely intends to do what one says. A sub-definition under this one is something like a promise corroborated by an oath. Like we are familiar in this country with the president taking the oath of office. That would be that sub-definition. In layman's terms, an oath is appealing to a higher authority to confirm what is said. That is the kind of oath that Jesus is talking about here. It is swearing on a trusted authority to validate a statement that is made.
As I said, here in this country, land of the free, the home of the brave, as we see it, we use oaths very seldom. We do not take formal oaths very much. We actually make them more often than you think just by the words we use that have becomes so common that we do not really understand what we are saying. I know some people who use the phrase, "I swear" blah, blah, blah, whatever it happens to be. Like, I swear I saw a UFO the other night. Those things are actually oaths. You are saying, I swear that this statement that I have just made is true.
Now, we often do not put the divine name in there. But when we say "by God" or whatever, that is a way of swearing an oath. But they have just become so common that we do not think about them as oaths. Even using the word like "Honestly," blah, blah, blah, you are in effect swearing that what you are saying is true. So we think of oaths very seldomly.
We actually use them more often than we think. Most often when we think of an oath we are thinking about taking an oath when we testify as a witness in a court of law: "I solemnly swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help me God." That is a formal solemn oath using God's name. Politicians, as I mentioned before, take an oath of office when they are sworn in, soldiers take an oath of loyalty to these United States and the Constitution, doctors take the Hippocratic Oath when they begin their medicine practice. Other than cussing, that is about as far as our knowledge of oaths go.
Let us compare this to how things have been in the past in premodern societies, anything, let us say, before maybe the 15th century or so, and maybe even a little bit after that. Particularly in feudal or monarchical societies, oaths were actually the thing that held everything together. Oaths were the bedrock of those civilizations, whether they were called oaths or vows or pledges or promises. They were bedrock elements of every relationship. Of course, there were personal vows that people made, like the vow that one makes to his spouse, the vow you might make to a church or to God in a religious sense, promises, contracts that you would sign with money lenders, and vows or oaths that you would make before magistrates. But beyond that, the whole structure of government and social relationship was built on a series of very solemn formal oaths.
Now, on top of everything, when he or she was coronated the monarch, the king or the queen, usually swore an oath to rule wisely and to protect and defend his or her subjects. Then immediately upon coronation, the king or queen would receive oaths of fealty, meaning assurances of faithfulness or loyalty from each noble in the realm: from all the dukes, all the counts, all the marquesses, all the lords, everyone would come before the king or queen, kneel down, and recite a formal oath of loyalty to that monarch. And in exchange for the lands that they received, the castles that they had, they would each pledge to obey the monarch and support him or her with food and certain monies. And they also pledged to muster so many fighting men depending on how big their properties were, when the need arose and other things as well.
So the king or queen made an oath to them and they in turn turned around and made an oath to the king or queen. But it did not end there. The nobles required oaths of loyalty from their knights, from their men-at-arms, and from their landed freemen, again, their positions, their lands or whatnot granted by the lord that they served obligated them to certain service or support as the lord needed. And sometimes the lord would ask more than they actually had promised and then you would have rebellion or you would have a fight of some sort. In turn, these knights or men-at-arms or landed freeman would require oaths or contracts from those who serve them, the serfs or the villeins or sharecroppers or servants, whatever you want to call them.
So you go all the way from king or queen, at every station there were oaths both ways that rendered obligation to both sides. And once you got down to the serfs, they were essentially slaves and they had no one below them to require an oath of. They were essentially slaves, the bottom rung of society; it was a ladder.
We talk about climbing the ladder. Well, this kind of society was also a ladder, with the king perched on the top rail all the way down to the lowest rung at the foot where the serfs suffered. The rails of this ladder going up and down were obligations in each direction, up toward the king and down toward the serfs. What held everything together were the oaths, the vows, the pledges, that everyone made and had to make to secure the relationships within the society. There was no trust of one another without an oath. Otherwise, it was each man for himself and when that happened, society would sink into anarchy and chaos. It was the oaths that they made that, I do not want to use so strong a word is guaranteed, but at least enforced a bit of stability on the society.
Now it took centuries for constitutional forms of government to supersede the oath-taking form. But if you think about it—think about it seriously—constitutions like we have in this country and most Western nations have, are merely overarching society-wide agreements. They are promises that government makes to us and we make to it in our citizenship. They are just oaths, we might say, in a slightly different context, a slightly different format. But we do not think of it that way. We do not think of a constitution as an oath. But in a way, it is.
By the way, just if you are wondering about it, you might after thinking about it a little bit, in those same feudal governments, the religious element functioned much the same way in that they used the hierarchy, a ladder if you will, as I described it, in which a series of vows put each person in his place within that government of the church or order. In Europe under Roman Catholicism it was the Pope on top rather than the king. The Curia in Rome under him, all the archbishops and bishops, and then deacons and monks and friars and priests, all the way down to the lowly layman. The church functioned as a religious image of the secular monarchies with which they coexisted and interacted. So it was the same on both sides, whether you were in the secular government or whether you were in the church, they both functioned in these hierarchies that were built upon the oaths that were made all the way up and down the ladder.
So we can see from this extended illustration that in historical times and in ancient times, oaths hit much closer to home than occurs today. We do not think of them in the same way that they did. It is not as important to us as it was to them. But they were important enough in the first century among the Jews for Jesus to comment on them right after speaking about the social contract of marriage and divorce. In secular society, the giving of oaths were parallel to the personal oath that one makes when getting married.
You might almost think of it, in terms of Matthew 5, that it was almost a stream of consciousness that He spoke about murder, and then He went on to adultery, and then marriage and divorce, and thinking about marriage and divorce and the vow that is made in the there, He also thought then of the oath that we make in the rest of society. So it kind of flows very nicely there in Matthew 5. Those comments, by the way, that Jesus makes are in Matthew 5:33-37 (and that is what I am going to speak about today, those five verses), but in this passage, our Savior makes a very bold statement about oaths through the lens of the spirit of the law and, spoiler alert here, He forbids them. He forbids oaths.
Now you might think oaths hold society together. Why does Jesus forbid them? Well, we will see. But notice I said, the spirit of the law just a moment ago. And we should have this in mind as we go through it, that He is speaking to His disciples and it was His disciples only who had the Spirit in order to use the spirit of the law. So His forbidding of oaths mostly concentrates on His disciples. It is within the church that He forbids oaths, among those who know the spirit of the law.
Matthew 5:33-37 "Again you have heard that it was said to those of old, 'You shall not swear falsely, but shall perform your oaths to the Lord.' But I say to you, do not swear at all: neither by heaven, for it is God's throne; nor by the earth, for it is His footstool; nor by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King. Nor shall you swear by your head, because you cannot make one hair white or black. But let your 'Yes' be 'Yes,' and your 'No' 'No.' For whatever is more than these is from the evil one."
This paragraph, as we have shown in the other sermons in the series, "But I Say To You" (this is Part Five, by the way), is set up a lot like the others. The only real difference in this "But I say to you" passage is the word "again." It begins with "Again you have heard that it was said to those of old. . ." I do not think we need to read too much into this addition of the word "again," except that it adds a little bit of emphasis on Jesus' proclamation of His authority. He is saying, "I have something else that I'm going to rule on. This is another thing that's wrong and we need to change, we need to improve." And what He says by "again," again meaning "one more," "one more time," or "an additional thing," He is saying that His authority does not focus on just one thing. He is saying, "My authority spreads out to cover many things. As a matter of fact, His authority is over all things. He is the Lawgiver. He is the ultimate authority on everything. And so He says, Ok, here is another point that you got wrong, meaning humanity, specifically the Pharisees, the Jews there, that He came to.
Let us dig down into verse 33 for a little bit. "Again you have heard that it was said to those of old, you shall not swear falsely, but shall perform your oaths to the Lord." Now, His quotation here, I mean, it is put in quotation marks, 'You shall not swear falsely, but shall perform your oaths to the Lord.' is not a specific quotation of any verse in the Old Testament. If you try to go back and find where those exact words are, you will not find them. Essentially, it is a kind of summary of the Old Testament teaching on oaths. He just puts it into a nice package.
It is possible that when the rabbis taught that, this was a summary statement that they used. Many of the people had gone to either a religious education under the rabbis or, they just knew it from the synagogue but this was the way the rabbis summarized the teaching on oaths in the Old Testament. So that is, 'You shall not swear falsely, but shall perform your oath to the Lord.'
But I think it is instructive just so we do it, so we have it in our heads to actually read what the Old Testament says. So we are going to be going through several verses in the Old Testament to see what God actually said about oaths. This is not all of them. I just picked out the most important ones so we have the gist of that. Let us go back to Leviticus the 19th chapter. This is in the Holiness Code.
Leviticus 19:12 "And you shall not swear by My name falsely, nor shall you profane the name of your God. I am the Lord."
Just hang on to that last part, "nor shall you profane the name of your God."
Numbers 30:2 "If a man vows a vow to the Lord, or swears an oath to bind himself by some agreement, he shall not break his word; he shall do according to all that proceeds out of his mouth."
Deuteronomy 6:3 "Therefore hear, O Israel, and be careful to observe it, that it may be well with you, and that you may multiply greatly as the Lord God of your fathers has promised you—'a land flowing with milk and honey.'"
That does not mention vowels directly but it does talk about being careful to observe these things that they would agree to because they did agree to the covenant.
Deuteronomy 23:21-22 "When you make a vow to the Lord your God, you shall not delay to pay it; for the Lord your God will surely require it of you, and it would be sin to you. But if you abstain from vowing, it shall not be sin to you. [That is kind of a interesting way to put it.] That which has gone from your lips you shall keep and perform, for you voluntarily vowed to the Lord your God, what you have promised with your mouth."
It is kind of interesting that he says right in the middle of that, it is not going to be sin to you if you do not take a vow.
Psalm 24:3-4 Who may ascend into the hill of the Lord? Who may stand in His holy place? He who has clean hands and a pure heart, who has not lifted up his soul to an idol, nor sworn deceitfully.
So those who can appear before God, in this case we can say those who will be in His Kingdom, if you want to put a New Testament spin on this, are among those are those who have not sworn deceitfully.
Psalm 50:14 Offer to God thanksgiving, and pay your vows to the Most High.
We will just leave that one there. Ecclesiastes the fifth chapter, to see what Solomon has to say.
Ecclesiastes 5:4 When you make a vow to God, do not delay to pay it; for He has no pleasure in fools. Pay what you have vowed.
So if you make a vow and do not pay it, God considers you a fool. Maybe it is Solomon who considers those kind of people a fool because you make a vow to God, you make a promise to God, and do not do it you are putting yourself in the crosshairs of the most powerful Being in the universe who could snuff you out with a thought. That is pretty foolish.
Zechariah 8:17 'Let none of you think evil in your heart against your neighbor; and do not love a false oath. For all these are things that I hate,' says the Lord.
Now, Zechariah is the closest one of all of these passages that we have gone over to Christ's time itself. So that would have been within about 500 years, maybe a little less, and he is commenting on the Jewish culture of the day. What we can glean from this is that this kind of an idea of swearing falsely, making a false oath was something that ended up existing all the way to that time. And probably even getting worse.
What we have in Zechariah's day are the beginnings of Pharisaism and God is commenting on it; that these are things I hate, especially for us today. Loving a false oath, that is, enjoying making an oath that you already know in your heart you are not going to keep, being false in your words, a promise to other people. So just keep that in mind here.
Back to Matthew the fifth chapter. Again, Jesus summarizes all of these things we have just read as, "You shall not swear falsely, but shall perform your oaths to the Lord." So it is essentially, you shall not break your oaths and you shall keep your oaths. They are basically the same thing, just one in the negative. Certainly the way Jesus words this is how the Jews commonly understood God's instructions on the subject.
The Pharisees interpreted the law on this point to mean that God prohibited swearing a lie. In practice this meant if one had not been properly sworn in, let us say to a trial or something that required speaking under oath, or if the person refused to make a formal oath, then he could lie without limit and without incurring guilt. Let me say this again so you understand. What they understood this to mean, if one had not been properly sworn in or if one refused to make a formal oath, one could lie without limit and be without guilt. That is how they thought of it. This is how they looked at the wording of what God said in the Old Testament and finagled a way so that they would not have to keep their oaths. The rabbis had twisted the words of the law to provide them loopholes.
They were great lawyers, you know, they found all the loopholes. This time, they found loopholes to continue to deceive so that they could take advantage. The biggest one here, the biggest loophole that they found was that without a formal, carefully worded oath, deceit was okay. That is how they looked at it.
Now, you understand maybe a little bit more why Jesus in Matthew 23 called them hypocrites time and time again. They were sneaky. They found their way around everything. They used their human reason to try to work their way through so that they could get the greatest advantage to themselves. But returning the law to its original intent, Jesus makes a statement that they cannot get around. I mean, He says it right there, "Do not swear at all." Jesus' instruction here expands both the third commandment and the ninth commandment. His mention of the Lord there at the end of verse 33 brings God into the picture here, which is expected. Obviously, Jesus was God and He was trying to teach them the ways of His Father.
This was expected because most oaths of the day, oaths of the time, and actually down to our day as well, are taken in God's name in some form, which is the subject of the third commandment. "You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain, for God will not hold him guiltless who takes His name in vain." So that is essentially an oath right there, or the way He expected oaths to be taken. (That is in Exodus 20:7 if you just want to write that down. You all know the Ten Commandments.)
If one made a vow or took an oath with God as witness and then failed to fulfill it, the transgressor failed to bear God's name in a worthy manner, and in doing so, in not bearing God's name in a worthy manner, brought dishonor and disgrace upon God's name. And also they, as the last clause of the law says there, they brought condemnation on themselves. "God will not hold them guiltless who takes His name in vain."
Now, the ninth commandment, Exodus 20:16, is "You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor." This commandment covers both legal proceedings, that is, formal testimony in a court of law in which an oath is almost always required, and in everyday conversation, in which many often glibly swear. Things like, I swear I saw this or I swear I heard her say that, and whatever it was was detrimental to the other person and they repeated it in the form of gossip or rumor. But they knew, because they heard it, that it was false or greatly exaggerated to make either oneself look good or the other person look bad.
So swearing falsely, in either case, is plainly lying and deceit. Both lying, perjuring oneself in a court of law, and one gossiping about another person or saying something false or deceitful about someone else, both break the ninth commandment. Jesus is trying to give His disciples in Matthew 5 a little bit more backing to these two commandments, the third commandment and the ninth.
Let us go to verse 34 in Matthew 5. This is where Jesus begins His commentary on this subject. He says,
Matthew 5:34 "But I say to you [remember when He says that He is making a change or He is emphasizing something that people did not notice before or He is showing a higher view of the law, the spirit of the law, on His own authority], do not swear at all: neither by heaven, for it is God's throne. . ."
Remember the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew is only to His disciples. They went up on a mountain and His disciples came to Him and He sat and spoke. So in Matthew 5, He is giving instructions directly to His disciples. And He says, "But I say to you [His disciples], do not swear at all." This is a big change. He, among His disciples, among the elect, abolishes oaths: do not swear at all. Despite many commentators and scholars concluding that some oaths are still fine, like swearing an oath in a court of law, it is difficult to get around the plain sense of Jesus' words here. "Do not swear at all."
Why are we always second guessing Him? He tells us things very plainly. We are, in many cases, a lot like the Jews trying to find out, oh, what is the secret meaning there? And how can I get around this here. But in this simple statement, where is the wiggle room? Do not swear at all. "Oh, he didn't mean that. Come on. He wouldn't abolish oaths. They hold society together. How's somebody going to know whether you are telling the truth or not?"
But the phrase here in Greek "at all," is a single word in Greek. It is the word holos. Holos is actually the root, the origin word for our word "whole." Holos in Greek has the sense of completely, wholly, totally, altogether. The whole sentence suggests, we want to just put it in different words, Jesus is saying in our own American vernacular, quit swearing oaths completely. No exceptions. Stop! Do not swear oaths at all. He is telling us that, for God's children, for the elect, oaths should be absolutely unnecessary. We do not need them. We will go into this a little bit in in a little while.
Let us go to James 5. Now, if you believe, as we do, that the apostle James was the half brother of Jesus, then it is understandable that James would echo what his Brother said, and His Lord and Master.
James 5:12 But above all, my brethren, do not swear, either by heaven or by earth or with any other oath. But let your "Yes" be "Yes," and your "No," "No," lest you fall into judgment.
That is exactly what Jesus said in Matthew 5. But this verse has always fascinated me. I have loved the book of James for a long time. That was the first book that I ever thought about doing a commentary on. And I actually started it during college, just by putting little notes by every verse. It was not anything formal or anything. But I have always liked James for some reason. But this verse has always intrigued me and it is because of the first words that are mentioned there, "But above all. . ."
What does he mean by that? That not swearing oaths is the top priority? It is kind of strange you would think, you know, loving God, loving neighbor, those are top priorities. But James says above all, let your yes be yes, and your no, no. Again, commentators try to work around the fact of what James writes here, just like they do in Matthew 5. But at the very least he is saying by this wording, pay attention! This is of highest priority. Do not swear.
Now some have suggested that instead of saying, "But above all, my brethren, do not swear," that we should kind of soften it and say, "Especially, my brethren, do not swear." Yeah, maybe. It is possible in Greek. But what is here, what starts verse 12 in the New King James version is pretty much literal. So why is not swearing so important? Why does James put so much emphasis on not swearing?
The context, if we would go all the way back up to verse 7 at least, the context suggests that he is concerned with personal conduct and integrity as the return of Christ nears. "Therefore [verse 7], be patient, brethren, until the coming of the Lord." So he talks about being patient as Christ returns.
Verse 8, "You also be patient. Establish your hearts, for the coming of the Lord is at hand." Verse 9, "And do not grumble against one another, brethren, lest you be condemned. Behold, the judge is standing at the door!" Christ is our Judge. He is saying as Christ returns and we are working on preparing for the Kingdom of God and all the things that will be happening there when Christ does return, James says it is most important that we not swear. Really interesting, because here in the context, he is highlighting patient endurance and not complaining amidst trial and suffering.
And in verse 11, the immediately prior verse, "Indeed we count them blessed who endure. You have heard of the perseverance of Job and seen the end intended by the Lord—that the Lord is very compassionate and merciful." So in this verse, he gives the example of Job and he implies that, as the time of Jesus Christ's return nears, we will need similar patience and faithfulness until God provides merciful deliverance and blessing.
All that makes sense and then he throws in swearing. Why does this thought, this command, "do not swear," take such a high place? In this context he commands us not to swear any oath. Not only does swearing an oath and perjuring oneself misuse the tongue. We know from our study of James that James wrote a lot about the use of the tongue. Most of the third chapter is about the misuse of the tongue. He calls it "a world of fire." "The tongue is a fire, a world of iniquity." And when we swear an oath, we are swearing with that tongue that is very apt to go astray.
So he tells us here, do not swear at all because you are using the tongue and the tongue is likely to start a fire. That is one thing. It is also a sign. Think of this: When you make an oath, it is a sign that you are relying on an outside integrity to confirm what you said, rather than your own. So you make an oath, "By God, I will be there in one year and rescue you," whatever. Well, you are saying that you are entrusting what you say to God and His authority is what backs you up.
Now, this is not a bad thing, not a terrible thing. Normally, in the world, we would think that if somebody was serious about invoking God's name in terms of making an oath, we would say, well, that is pretty good. You know, you believe in God, you trust in Him and that sort of thing. But we have to change our thinking a little bit because of the crisis of the times that James speaks about here. The crisis is all the stuff that is prophesized to occur at the end time right before Jesus comes. The world is in turmoil, the Christians are suffering persecution, many are dying. It is a very, very bad time and things are, even in our own time, getting worse.
And think of this, I am just throwing things at you here, all these things have to do with it. Oaths exist because people distrust others' integrity. So they demand an authoritative witness to another's testimony to force them to tell the truth. Right? That is what we do. We demand that somebody take an oath so we can guarantee that that person is telling the truth and the guarantee is the higher authority that one makes the oath on. So it is a way for people to validate somebody's truthfulness.
Without the demand of an oath, the witness is likely to lie to protect himself or to gain advantage for himself. That is the purpose of an oath. Remember the context is the coming of the Lord. James is teaching that as Christ's coming nears, we should set refraining from swearing oaths as a priority, which we do by growing in personal integrity. Personal integrity for ourselves in terms of growing in character and personal integrity in terms as a witness to others.
So we are doing this for two reasons. The first reason is that we want to grow into the image of Jesus Christ. And the second reason is that we want to make it a witness of the truth, for the truth, of the truth, or for Christ, of Christ, however you want to put it. So that is the reason why he is emphasizing personal integrity here. And he says, if you are making oaths on somebody else, you are not showing personal integrity. You are doing like the world and asking for somebody else to validate your truthfulness.
Does that makes sense? It is kind of a convoluted thing. But it is very obscure about where he is going here and the only thing we can do is try to understand it in context. So if our word is our bond, and it should be, then every word we say is true. If we say something positive, it is yes, yes. If we say something negative, it is no, no. And if we have personal integrity and the people who have been watching us, people we have been living with, people who know us one way or another, have seen by experience that we speak the truth, then we are making a witness to them. We will not hide behind an oath, even one backed by God, because it is our integrity that is on the line.
What he is saying, if I can put it all in one little packed nutshell here, is that, as the return of Christ nears, when we do not swear, we have become the truth. Or we have become true. Another way to put that is, we have become like Christ. He is showing us in this really obscure way that as the coming of Jesus Christ nears, we need to become as much like Christ as possible.
I just thought of something. Let us go back to John the 18th chapter. And remember, we have got to lay the life of Jesus Christ as a kind of overlay over our own life and particularly the life of God's people at the end time because James is talking about the time that parallels Christ's own life at the end. Are you with me there? That the coming of Christ at the end is very similar to Christ's crisis that He went through in His own personal life—the end of His life. Now notice what happened here in His witness before Pilate.
John 18:33-38 Then Pilate entered the Praetorium again, called Jesus, and said to Him, "Are you the King of the Jews?" Jesus answered him, "Are you speaking for yourself about this, or did others tell you this about Me?" Pilate answered, "Am I a Jew? Your own nation and the chief priests have delivered You to me. What have You done?" Jesus answered, "My kingdom is not of this world. If My kingdom were of this world, My servants would fight, so that I should not be delivered to the Jews; but now My kingdom is not from here." Pilate therefore said to Him, "Are you a king then?" Jesus answered, "You say rightly that I am a king. For this cause I was born, and for this cause I have come into the world [Here we go. We are also like Christ. This is the cause we have been called into, the church.], that I should bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth hears My voice. Pilate said to Him, "What is truth?" When he had said this, he went out again to the Jews, and said to them, "I find no fault in Him at all."
James is telling us back in James 5:12 that when we have this "push comes to shove" moment, we want our Pilate, as it were, to say the same thing about us. Jesus did not swear an oath here. He did not say, "By My Father, I am telling you the truth" or anything like that. He just simply told him the truth even on these very probing questions, Are you a king? Are you setting yourself up to dethrone the emperor? Jesus tried to get around it a little bit. Who told you to ask Me that? Are you saying this of yourself or did the Jews tell you to say this? But when Pilate applied the pressure a little bit more and would not back down, He said, "Yes, I'm a king. I was born for this reason. I came into this world to be a king and I came to bear witness of the truth."
And as His brothers and sisters, as the crisis at the close comes for us, we have to be like our Savior and tell the truth without need to call upon an oath to back us up because like our Elder Brother, we are true. We are embodied truth. That is how close we should be to the character of Jesus Christ by the time He returns, that we are acting in the same way under similar conditions as He did before Pilate. Above all, brethren, do not swear oaths, be the truth, speak the truth in everything. Let your yes be yes and your no, no.
We are to be growing in God's character image and thus, like Him, we must embody the truth in everything. Very, very high standard that James is setting here, and Christ Himself obviously.
So we do not need an oath to force us to speak the truth. Why? Because we always do. We never tell lies. We always speak the truth. This kind of righteous character, the character of Jesus Christ Himself, will see us through the dangers of the end times and bring no condemnation from God. That is what James says. He says, if your yes is not yes, if your no is not no, God is going to bring you into judgment. You do not want that when the end is just days or weeks away. You want to speak the truth. You want your yes to be yes and your no, no so that God knows that you have put on the character of His Son, that you have become the new man.
What it comes down to is a very simple principle: James and Jesus argue for truth in all things. If one is always truthful, the need for oaths disappears. In fact, the requirement of an oath due to the presence of sin and distrust in the world sets up here, among men, a two-tier value system on the truth. Have you ever thought of it this way? There are two tiers of truth that men expect. There is normal speech, you could speak the truth in normal conversation. But then there is speech under oath. You may say the same words in normal speech and speech under oath, but if you ask someone to say which they believe, they will say speech under oath is truer than normal speech even though the same words are spoken. Jesus does not want that. He wants every word to be true and there be no difference between the words you speak in normal conversation and the words you would say under oath.
So what Jesus is doing is looking at this subject and saying there is no need for oaths because My people always speak the truth. There is only one standard of truth, not two. Let us go to Ephesians 4. This is a very famous passage starting in verse 11 about what the ministry is supposed to do for church members. But I want you to notice what gets inserted in here about the middle of it.
Ephesians 4:11-13 And He Himself gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers, for the equipping of the saints [that is, for helping them to be complete] for the work of ministry [that is, helping you to learn how to serve], for the edifying [or building up] of the body of Christ, till we all come to the unity of the faith and the knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect man [This is coming into the the character image of Jesus Christ], to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ; that. . .
All of this work that the ministry does is for a purpose. There is the purpose of bringing us into the character image of Christ.
Ephesians 4:14 . . . that we should no longer be children [immature], tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine by the trickery [fraud, deceit, falsehood] of men. . .
See, truth and lies and all the ways that they are intermixed is a human thing. There are no lies in God's way of things so there is no trickery. It is all just out there as the truth. So what Paul is telling us is that it is the ministry's responsibility to get you to the point where you are mature enough to be able to determine what is truth, what is lies, and no longer be thrown about in all these different winds of doctrine, different kinds of teaching. That you glom onto the truth and you stay there, you are solid. Remember, we are supposed to be pillars—pillars are solid. They do not move about in the wind, they are immovable. So this is the job of the ministry, to bring you to the point where you are solidifying into a pillar.
Ephesians 4:14-16 . . . by the trickery of men, in the cunning craftiness by which they lie in wait to deceive. [That just tells you more and more about how the world is trying to get you to fly in the wind.] But speaking the truth in love [that is what the ministry does. The ministry speaks the truth in love and hopefully that rubs off on the congregation as well so that they begin speaking the truth in love. Why?], that you may grow up in all things into Him who is the head—Christ—from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by what every joint supplies, according to the effective working by which every part does its share, causes growth of the body for the edifying of itself in love.
If the ministry does not speak the truth, if their yes is not yes, if their no is not no, they are not doing their job and the people are the ones who suffer. And so we are all in this together. I am supposed to speak the truth, you are supposed to learn the truth, you are supposed to apply the truth, and you know what happens in the end? We are all true sons and daughters of God. We work with this together.
We are in the truth game, if you will. If we do not speak the truth, if we have a problem with the truth, then we are not going to grow to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, and then we have got some problems.
So the truth is very important to God, obviously. Jesus says, "Your word is truth." We are supposed to be soaking in that word so that by the time Christ returns, we essentially embody that truth. Everything we say and do follows that truth. Every word we speak utters that truth. Oaths are a way to get around it. It seems like a strange point that he wants to bring up here. Put another way, I could put it in a nutshell here, is that oaths are a crutch. Even though you are maybe relying on God to verify your truth, you are not learning it yourself, you are not putting it into practice yourself. And so He says, let us take away that crutch because you should always speak the truth all the time anyway. What good is an oath?
Let us go back to Matthew 5. I know that was long and convoluted. But it is something that maybe you had not thought of so I wanted to take the time to do that.
Matthew 5:34-36 "But I say to you, do not swear at all: neither by heaven, for it is God's throne; nor by the earth, for it is His footstool; nor by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King. Nor shall you swear by your head, because you cannot make one hair white or black. But let your 'Yes' be 'Yes,' and your 'No,' 'No.' For whatever is more than these is from the evil one."
Now, I do not want to get into too much detail on this about heaven and earth and Jerusalem and all that. Generally Jesus is here covering as many of the loopholes that the Pharisees had created to make oaths less binding on themselves and their truthfulness. So they they had worked with the wording of their oaths so that they could get around and not be bound to what they said.
For instance, the Jews of the time maintained that unless they specifically invoked God's name, an oath was not binding. So what did they do? They swore by heaven or they swore by the earth or they used some sort of euphemism for God that was not His name or however they wanted to word it. And they did this because later, if they were ever called on it, they would say that their oath did not bind them since they had not specifically mentioned the name of God. So they would make a sworn statement, but it did not contain the name Yahweh or Elohim or one of His other names, and they could say that that oath that I made was not valid. They were tricksey people.
But Jesus is also saying here, "Do not swear by heaven," and then He would make counter statement, "for it is God's throne; do not swear by the earth, for it is God's footstool; do not swear by Jerusalem, is because this is a city of the great King." What He is doing here is saying that God counts all those oaths that you made with all these euphemisms as valid because heaven is where God lives and earth is where He has planted His feet. And Jerusalem is where His temple is or where He rules on this earth. He has made it His home. You cannot get away from God by using these terms because they all point back to Him.
So whether you use these euphemisms or not with them, you are not getting away with anything. It is still deceit. Even swearing by one's head, which is to us kind of weird. But people would say, "May God strike me dead if" this or, "May I lose my head if" that or, "I pledge my life" because of this. Ultimately, that goes back to God Himself as well because who made us? He is our Creator. He is the one that gave us life. He made it possible for us to speak and say these things. Besides that, human beings are so weak and impotent and sinful that in swearing by any person, even oneself, is absolutely ridiculous. There is nothing in us with enough authority to validate anything.
Now, some have asked this question. Let us go back to Hebrews 6. Why did God swear?
Hebrews 6:13-18 For when God made a promise to Abraham, because He could swear by no one greater, He swore by Himself, saying, "Surely blessing I will bless you, and multiplying I will multiply you." And so after He had patiently endured, he obtained the promise [that is, Abraham]. For men indeed swear by the greater, and an oath for confirmation is for them an end of all dispute. Thus God, determining to show more abundantly to the heirs of promise [that is, us] the immutability of His counsel [that is, the unchangeability of His counsel], confirmed it by an oath, that by two immutable things [two things that never change], in which it is impossible for God to lie, we might have strong consolation who have fled for refuge to lay hold on the hope set before us.
Verse 16 states the fact that when humans make oaths to confirm the truth of their statements, they swear by something greater than themselves, usually by God, or their god, whoever that happens to be.
From our point of view, as I just mentioned, to swear on oneself is sheer stupidity. And Jesus points this out back in Matthew 5:36 about swearing on one's head. What about God? What about God swearing by Himself? If He makes an oath, who does He swear by? There is no one greater in all the universe so there is no one higher that He can swear by except Himself. So in this case, when He swore to Abraham, as the writer of Hebrews says here very plainly, He swore by Himself. But if Jesus says, "Do not swear at all," why did God, the preexisting of Jesus Christ, the Lord of the Old Testament, why did He swear by Himself?
Now, the answer is here in this passage and that is, He did it for human benefit, is first reason, and the second reason is He did it is to emphasize the certainty of what He had promised to Abraham. You have to look at this in terms of the cultures of that time relying so heavily on oaths, on promises, on vows. And so God said to Abraham that He swore it to him by Himself. He swore by Himself these things as a concession to humanity's need for an oath. It was not something He had to do. It was something that He did in order to satisfy men that God, He Himself, was telling the truth.
That is totally unnecessary. God always tells the truth. But men do not have that knowledge or if they have that knowledge, they do not believe it. They think that God is like them and easily lies. But the author says here, it is impossible for God to lie. But God Himself deciding to make His case before mostly unconverted people who require an oath to validate the truth, made an oath by Himself or on Himself. It emphasizes to us, the heirs of promise, just how sure His promises are and they will be fulfilled.
So He went above and beyond to verify both to the world and to ourselves as the heirs of promise that what He says will come to pass. So it is doubly binding. This promise is doubly binding because it is confirmed by His promise, that He made it. He is God. And that is sure, as all of God's words are.
And the second thing is His oath. The oath, though unnecessary, adds an extra guarantee of validity. He did not need to do it. He did it to make sure that we would have hope, that we would have faith in that promise, and that that would give us, as it says here, strong consolation, so that we would go forward toward the fulfillment of that promise, knowing that God went above and beyond to assure us that it would come to pass. So it should give us real hope that Abraham's seed will be able to inherit the Kingdom of God so we can move forward.
Matthew 5:37 [He says] But let your 'Yes' be 'Yes,' and your 'No,' 'No.' For whatever is more than these is from the evil one."
The first sentence here, "Let your 'Yes' be 'Yes,' and your 'No,' 'No.'" may be better translated as "But let your word be 'Yes, yes,' 'no, no.'" This is the gist of Jesus Christ's teaching. Well, let me just back up just a second and tell you that a common Hebraism is to strengthen something by repeating it. You have seen this. The Song of Solomon is really the Song of Songs, the Holy of Holies, the Most Holy Place, that sort of thing. When the Hebrew doubles up, it becomes stronger. And so this is what He does. He uses a Hebraism here and says, "Let your 'yes, yes;' let your no, no.'" It is very strong, telling us, speak the truth whether positively or negatively. You do not need to add in wiggle room to your statements, just speak the truth.
So like I said, this is the gist of Jesus' teaching here. Truthful people do not need to qualify their words or promises to others. It is the truth. You do not need validation from anywhere. If it is the truth, it is the truth. If we live out the life and example of Jesus Christ, if we are growing in His image more and more every day, oaths are unnecessary. All qualifications, stipulations, conditions, or provisos on our speech, those things that must be added among men to get people to believe you, to realize that you are telling the truth, Jesus says are the result of the influence of the great liar and the father of lies, Satan himself. The reason men have to have oaths to validate truth goes right back to the source of the lie or the lies that are in this world—Satan.
Let us go back to John 8, verse 44. Just pick out this one verse where Jesus describes the Devil.
John 8:44 "You [speaking to the Jews here] are of your father the devil, and the desires of your father you want to do. He was a murderer from the beginning [Remember he talked about that in Matthew 5. That is what He started out with.] and does not stand in the truth [also one of the "but I say unto to you" sections] because there is no truth in him. [Notice how strong that statement, there is no truth in him.] When he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own resources [or his own nature], for he is a liar and the father of it."
All our needs for oaths come directly from the father of lies. He has spread, by his attitudes, a thick and cloying atmosphere of distrust among men which should be absent from the godly elect, His people, from His flock. If we require them of each other in the church, we can be sure the Devil still wields influence among us. We should not need it in our relationships with each other.
Sadly, in this world, men will always need guarantees like oaths. If anything, the world is becoming less trustful. People of God, however, the church of God, are exhorted to act as the counter, the foil, to this trend. We should be becoming more truthful and more trustful with each other. We are to shun or abstain from oaths and simply speak the truth in love, as Paul added there in Ephesians 4. To speak as if we are always before God, which we are because He lives in us. He is always with us. He is always listening to our words so we should always be speaking the truth.
Remember Jesus' reply to Thomas' question in John 14. Thomas had asked, how can we know the way, meaning the Kingdom of God. Because He had just described that He was going away and He was going to prepare there many mansions. Thomas said, how can we know the way? How can we get there? What path do we take? And Jesus says, "I am the way, the truth, and the life."
That is the answer if we wish to follow Him to His reward. Remember, we are co-heirs with Christ. His reward is eternal kingship, eternal life, owning everything, directing everything under the Father. So if we wish to follow Him to that same reward, knowing, understanding, practicing, and speaking the truth is the way—the way to eternal life.
RTR/aws/drm