The Nature of Deception

“Now it happened, as we went to prayer, that a certain slave girl possessed with a spirit of divination met us, who brought her masters much profit by fortune-telling. This girl followed Paul and us, and cried out, saying, ‘These men are the servants of the Most High God, who proclaim to us the way of salvation.’ And this she did for many days. But Paul, greatly annoyed, turned and said to the spirit, ‘I command you in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her.’ And he came out that very hour” (Acts 16:16-18 NKJV).

Note the exact words this slave girl cried out: “These men are the servants of the Most High God, who proclaim to us the way of salvation.” What’s wrong with that? Wasn’t that the truth? No! It was ONLY factually correct. A lie is deeper than what mere factual data or mental misinformation or mistakes can tell us; if we fail to strike to the core of the essential nature from which a lie occurs, we cannot sufficiently define what it is. James Strong (in the New Testament Greek section of his “Exhaustive Concordance”) defined “lie/liar” as “a falsifier,” or more broadly, as one who utters “an untruth or attempt[s] to deceive by falsehood.” The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines “falsifier” as “to make (something) false: to change (something) in order to make people believe something that is not true.” To “make” or to “change” implies intent, and here in this definition of a falsifier, it is expressly done to deceive. Intent matters, no matter how accurate a statement is.

How many times have you understood and agreed with every word a person said technically, yet you knew intuitively that something was wrong, something off-center? Though the words spoken—taken at face-value—were correct, somehow you knew they spoke lies. Something just didn’t ring true!

Jesus made it clear that a liar is someone who speaks from his own nature. In one place Jesus said that those who speak from themselves seek their own glory; but in another place Jesus told the Pharisees that they spoke from the lying nature of their father the devil. “You are of your father the devil, and you want to do the desires of your father. WHENEVER HE SPEAKS A LIE, HE SPEAKS FROM HIS OWN NATURE, for he is a liar and the father of lies” (John 8:44).

We must discern deeper than words or wonders, even deeper than humanly perceptible. A liar is not a liar because he occasionally misspeaks or gets facts wrong. Anyone can and does that. No, a liar is someone off-center from his created purpose, someone expressing himself in both word and deed from that false premise. He is dispositionally off-kilter; he speaks from his fallen nature. Fallen man before redemption is a liar, “off-center from his created purpose.” Thus scripture describes man thusly, “Men of low degree are emptiness and men of high degree are A LIE AND A DELUSION. In the balances they go up; they are together lighter than a breath" (Psalm 62:9). Additionally, because a liar hates truth, DECEPTION is inevitable.

As T. Austin Sparks observed, “The great apostasy of the last days will have as its ground an absence of genuine love for the truth for its own sake. A craving for the demonstrations, sensations, manifestations, and then the satanic production of an imitation apostolicalism with power, and signs and lying wonders will create such a strong delusion that ‘if it were possible even the elect would be deceived’ (Matthew 24:24).”

THE NATURE OF DECEPTION is darkness disguised as light. As THE prime example, Satan—the father of lies and prince of darkness—masquerades as an angel of light. Also, the “imitation apostolicalism” Sparks spoke of is “in accord with the activity of Satan” (2 Thessalonians 2:9)—but what came first, the activity of Satan or unprovoked unbelief? To not believe the truth concerning Jesus Christ is no small matter, satanically influenced or not. In fact, God, who knows the hearts of all men, judges those who fail to love and believe truth harshly. He unleashes Satan and “All the DECEPTION of wickedness for those who perish, because they did not receive the love of the truth so as to be saved. For this reason God will send upon them a DELUDING influence so that they will believe what is false, in order that they all may be judged who did not believe the truth” (2 Thessalonians 2:10-11).