According to blogger and author Tim Challies, “God reserves words like ‘hate,’ ‘abomination,’ and ‘despise’ to describe the sins for which he has the greatest revulsion. In his series on the things God hates, Challies delves into God’s hatred for deceit. Deceit, he says, “is the natural condition of those whose hearts are in rebellion against God.” Moreover, “deceit is a sure sign of our depravity.” In this installment, Tim Challies walks us through what it looks like when a person is in rebellion against God. He writes:
The Bible leaves no doubt that God hates deceit. Three times in the book of Proverbs he states it bluntly. In Proverbs 6 we read a list of “six things that the LORD hates, seven that are an abomination to him,” and two of them relate to deceit: “a lying tongue” and “a false witness who breathes out lies” (17, 19). Proverbs 12:22 echoes the theme: “Lying lips are an abomination to the LORD, but those who act faithfully are his delight” (Proverbs 12:22).
Zechariah adds that God hates the kind of deceit that takes shape in false oaths, saying, “do not devise evil in your hearts against one another, and love no false oath, for all these things I hate, declares the LORD” (Zechariah 8:17). As we assemble the evidence, it becomes clear: God hates any concealment of the truth, any denial of the truth, or any misrepresentation of the truth.
