Exodus 20:16 (ESV) “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.
What is a witness? A witness is someone who claims to have seen or heard or come to know the matter. Witnesses ought to speak the truth they know. They testify. Jesus, for example, tells His disciples that they will bear witness about Him because they had been with Him since the beginning. Meaning, they will attest to what they’ve seen and heard. False witnesses were and are a threat to individual lives and the life of the community at large.
James 4:11 (ESV) Do not speak evil against one another, brothers. The one who speaks against a brother or judges his brother, speaks evil against the law and judges the law. But if you judge the law, you are not a doer of the law but a judge.
A false witness is one who stands up and swears before others that something untrue is true, especially with the intention of hurting another or ruining their reputation.
When the wicked Queen Jezebel wished to procure a vineyard for her sulking husband, king Ahab, she employed two false witnesses. Naboth, the rightful owner of the vineyard, was seated in an honourable place on a day of fasting.
1 Kings 21:13 (ESV) And the two worthless men came in and sat opposite him. And the worthless men brought a charge against Naboth in the presence of the people, saying, “Naboth cursed God and the king.” So they took him outside the city and stoned him to death with stones.
As a result, an innocent man was killed.
The only possible cure for an evil heart that bears false witness is to receive a new, pure heart, which can only be given by God.
Ezekiel 36:26 (ESV) And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.
Ephesians 4:22-25 (NKJV) that you put off, concerning your former conduct, the old man which grows corrupt according to the deceitful lusts, and be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and that you put on the new man which was created according to God, in true righteousness and holiness. Therefore, putting away lying, “Let each one of you speak truth with his neighbor,” for we are members of one another.
Let’s speak the truth in love.
Ephesians 4:15 (NIV) Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of him who is the head, that is, Christ.