An excerpt from a Sermon on Genesis 12.
Here, we come to the most controversial part of this text: whether Abram should be praised or blamed for his deception. He plans to evade potential tyranny on the part of the Pharoah through a deceptive stratagem. When we consider God’s blessing of Abram and that the text gives us nothing upon which to suggest that Abram was wrong to prepare this deception, we can confidently say that Abram was righteous in planning this deception of Pharoah.
We want to be careful, however, in emboldening Christians to speak all sorts of lies, and so we ought to carefully define what is a legitimate use of deception on the part of a Christian and what is not. We want to preserve our character as a people of the truth and yet recognize there are appropriate ways to deceive a tyrannical and vicious enemy so that we may advance the church’s mission.
Let us get into the details. “When he was about to enter Egypt, he said to Sarai, his wife, “I know that you are a woman beautiful in appearance, and when the Egyptians see you, they will say, “This is my wife.” Then they will kill me, but they will let you live. Say you are my sister, that it may go well with me because of you, and that my life may be spared for your sake.”
So, what is Abram doing? Is he demonstrating a lack of trust in God? Is he lacking in a desire to protect his wife? There are several reasons to believe that neither suggestion is true. First, he must have heard through reports from those around him about the oppressive nature of the Egyptians and how they take what they want. He also knows that God has promised that he would be a great nation and that the promise certainly cannot be carried out in his death. So, he wisely strategizes in a difficult situation and trusts that God will protect him as God sees fit.
We might still object that he fails to protect Sarai, but that ignores the brother’s role toward his sister. It seems likely that the brother was the primary protector of his sister and the one through whom marriage with the sister was negotiated. This would certainly be true if the father had not been in the picture. We see this in the story of Rebecca and Isaac, where the servant of Abraham negotiates for Rebecca’s hand in marriage with Laban, the brother of Rebecca. So, calling Sarai his sister gave Abram a couple of advantages. If the Egyptians were tyrannical, as he had heard, Sarai would be taken either way. One way, he would immediately be killed, and the other way, he would live, and perhaps God would intervene. Potentially even tyrannical Egyptians would have followed the usual conventions about brothers and sisters, allowing him time to work out what to do next. If the Egyptians were not tyrannical, he would potentially enter into negotiations with them, and they would not have concluded until he was safely away from them.
With these things in mind, we can observe how this would have been a lesson to successive generations of Abram’s children on how to deal with tyrannical Pharaohs. So, Abram would use this deceptive stratagem twice. Isaac would use it once, and the midwives would use a similar strategy when the Egyptian Pharaoh sought to kill the baby boys of Israel.
Yet, because our hearts are often hard and easily misled, we need to discuss this very carefully. The Christian does not go out and say, “Oh yes, you can lie to your enemies anytime you want. “Christians are called to love the truth and characterize their lives by speaking it, especially to fellow Christians. In telling the truth, we also show love to our enemies. So, it is helpful to establish some principles from scripture for when we are authorized to deceive.
First, it must truly be a tyrannical situation. Abram is going to a place where the king will seize any woman he wants to be his bride. Where to do so, they will even kill the husband of the woman. This is an ugly tyrannical nation, that has lost respect for the natural bonds between men, likewise, with the command to kill the Hebrew children in Exodus 1. These acts represent a deep wickedness. We should be careful when identifying this sort of tyranny; the word gets thrown around a lot today. That doesn’t mean it is not true; it is just that we must be cautious in identifying everything we don’t like as tyranny, and not every act of tyranny is of the same weight either.
Tyranny, in general, can be identified in laws or leaders who do not recognize the rights we have to our bodies and property and ignore the traditions and boundaries that have been established between men or groups of men over time.
Second, as Christians, we keep in mind the church’s mission. Abram understood the importance of his life in God’s plan. He is to be the father of a nation. Christians are focused on the spread of the word and setting up places of worship throughout the world. Recognizing the difference in the mission means we are less focused on the promise of the Seed, for the Seed has been revealed. It is Jesus Christ. Instead, as the church, we are focused on bringing all things under the Lordship of Christ through the means appointed: the word of God and the establishment of the worship of God. That means there is a certain truth we will never deny. In light of this mission, the New Testament reveals that the Christian should never deny his Lord. Peter does so, and he weeps, so we should be careful not to deny our service to Christ. Further, binding by an oath also calls us to speak the truth. So, Jesus Christ declared who he was when bound by an oath by the High Priest. However, Christians have often used deceptive stratagems to spread the scriptures throughout the world, such as hiding Bibles and sneaking through borders. Christians have also met in secret and worshipped in many places, hiding themselves from tyrants using all sorts of measures to undermine the Christian calling to serve God.
Third, we act according to the law of love. We may deceive to protect life. And so we have the example of hiding Jews from the Nazis during WWII and deceiving the Germans about their whereabouts. This applies to acts of war as well. There is room for deception to preserve the men of an army. Remember the actual form of the ninth commandment: “Thou shalt not bear false witness against your neighbor.” This is not a direct attack against all forms of deception but a warning against using lies to hurt and destroy your neighbor. This is against words spoken in hatred and malice. As Paul says in Romans 13, “owe nothing to one another except to love one another.”
We ought to be careful that we are not motivated by anger, vengeance, pride, or any of the many other fleshly lusts that can lead Christians into ungodly action.
Even in our deception, however, we ought to be careful in directly contradicting the truth. We are creatures of habit and want to build up the habit of speaking the truth. In this sense, Abram uses the truth to deceive. We find this out later, but there is a sense in which Sarai is his sister, his half-sister actually, so even here, he is careful in his plan so he doesn’t have to develop the habit of contradicting what he knows is real. In the words of Jordan Peterson, “tell the truth” or “at least don’t lie.”
We can also make the point of Rod Dreher’s book “Live Not by Lies,” in which men and women in Eastern Europe and Russia avoided any affirmation of the Marxist establishment in the USSR as much as possible. In the same way, Christians rightly reacted with horror to those who offered incense to the emperor, for they participated in and affirmed the lies that kept the Roman Empire in bondage and so went directly against the mission of the church.
Finally, we must trust in the work of the Spirit of God. As Paul says, nobody judges me except for God. We trust that God works in various persons. This is not a “get out of jail free” card, for, of course, you answer to God, and if you are not careful about transgression in little things, you will follow up with transgressions of boundaries that clearly go against the word of God.
Some, including great men like John Calvin, disagree with the interpretation of this passage. Yet, even those who disagree, like Calvin, would allow for deceptive stratagems in the spread of the gospel.
Unfortunately, many go further, and deny the saints any Spirit-led wisdom in deceiving tyrants. Those who deny the right of the bride to deceive tyrants leave the bride defenseless against tyrants. Their supposed love of purity and righteousness undermines the love we owe to one another, our neighbor, and the Lord.
I have spent some time explaining this, and I hope in doing so, I have clearly shown my love for the fullness of God’s revelation of his righteousness. I take seriously the examples of scripture where the people of God are blessed in their use of deception, but I also take God’s call to be a people of the truth seriously, being careful never to deny the name of the one who bought us.