SWEAR NOT AT ALL

The use of the tongue is thoroughly scrutinized in the Bible. Proverbs has much to say about the dangers that thoughtless or deceptive speech poses to other people. For example, Proverbs chapter 26 verse 28 says: A lying tongue hateth those that are afflicted by it; and a flattering mouth worketh ruin’. Perhaps the most scathing denunciation of this little member comes in the third chapter of James. Our Lord’s command to ‘swear not’ must be understood against the backdrop of the testimony of these Scriptures. Believers must beware of any statement that mis­leads or undermines the truth. God calls them to be factual and scrupulously honest.

The Lord’s solemn statement of the danger of idly swearing oaths throws an interesting spotlight on first century Jewish practices. He tells them not to swear by heaven, earth, Jerusa­lem, or their heads, vv. 33-36. Apparently, His contemporaries had fallen into the habit of swearing by these things, thinking that their oath was not binding unless it was stated in the name of God. Their repeated, pious-sounding declarations of accuracy were actually empty promises and thinly-veiled lies with inbuilt escape clauses. However, Christ disabuses them of this notion, assuring them that the Lord’s authority extends over all of these things. They had no control over heaven, earth, or Jerusalem let alone their own heads. In fact, their heads sat atop their bodies in the closest proximity, yet they could not change the colour of one hair by their own volition.

Rather than traffic in semantic deceptions, the Lord Jesus instructs His followers to ‘swear not’. Instead, they are told to let their word be their bond, pronouncing things straightfor­wardly and truthfully. To play verbal games in order to delude one’s hearers resembles the work of the arch-deceiver Satan. Christ intimates as much by saying that ‘whatever is more than these is from the evil one’, v. 37 NKJV. The Lord describes his character: ‘there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it’, John 8. 44. By contrast, Christian speech is to be marked by likeness to Christ, who is ‘the truth’, John 14. 6.