When I was a kid, the phrase, “I swear to God!” was the one thing we could use to validate or refute an argument. If someone from within our group of friends made some wild claim that was hardly believable, he would verify the truthfulness of his claim by “swearing to God.”
In the fourth grade, a friend once claimed that he had kissed the prettiest girl in the class. Obviously this was an unbelievable claim. At nine-years old, none of us would have had the guts even to approach a girl, let alone kiss her. However, we knew he was serious when he verified his claim by saying, “I swear to God I kissed her!” Even a fourth-grader wouldn’t swear to God like that if he didn’t actually kiss the girl.
On another occasion, the wimpiest kid in class once made the claim that he beat up a notorious neighborhood bully. After a series of investigative questions and getting nowhere fast, I asked, “Do you swear to God you did?” His silence told us all we needed to know.
“I swear to God” was also the phrase we invoked when we wanted to make a promise. If a friend was going to the candy store and I wanted him to bring back some Pop Rocks for me, I wouldn’t give him my dollar unless he swore to God that he would get the Pop Rocks and give me my exact change.
By around the sixth grade, we became clever. If a person swore to God while having his fingers crossed, the promise was not binding. The first time you fall for that one and your so-called “friend” keeps the change, you start to insist on seeing his hands before he makes his oath. A friend who “swears to God” with a hand behind his back or in his pocket is no friend at all!
Once junior high began, we started to get the feeling that we couldn’t trust anybody: somebody always had something crossed, whether fingers, toes, legs, or eyes. Whereas in the fourth grade, “I swear to God” was the phrase that verified the validity of a claim, by the eighth grade, that phrase became so suspicious that if someone did use it, you knew they were a liar.
Apparently, we didn’t invent swearing to God to reinforce our truth-claims. That was what prompted Jesus to turn his attention from divorce—the violation of a specific kind of oath—to taking oaths in general. As with previous issues, he begins by saying, “You have heard it was said to the people long ago, ‘Do not break your oath, but keep the oaths you have made to the Lord.’” In Numbers 30.2, Moses gave guidelines for taking oaths, and it was actually pretty similar to what Jesus’ hearers had heard: “If a man vows a vow to the Lord, or swears an oath to bind himself by a pledge, he shall not break his word. He shall do according to all that proceeds out of his mouth.”
It isn’t a sin to swear, or make an oath, or even to invoke God’s name behind a promise. If you are called to place a hand on the Bible in a court of law swearing to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, you need not feel guilty about that. Deuteronomy 10:20 permits affixing God’s name to an oath. Paul invoked God as his witness on several occasions, and even God himself swore oaths (Gen. 9.9-11, Ps. 16.10, Luke 1.73). It is certainly sinful to intentionally break your oath, and I wouldn’t recommend swearing to God as a habit, but if you must, you can without a guilty conscience.
However, the problem came as a result of the phrase “to the Lord.” Pharisees had taught that if you swore to God himself, the oath you took was binding. However, if you swore to Heaven, or to earth, or any number of other “things,” that promise was not binding. Those can be broken without condemnation.
Back to the fourth grade. A kid could swear to Heaven that he kissed the girl. He could swear by the earth that he beat up the neighborhood bully. He could swear by his own head that he would rightfully return exact change. He could do all those things, and it would be the same as if he crossed his fingers while making his claim.
It was really a loophole around truthfulness and honesty. Swearing to anything became a formula for verifying the validity of a claim. You could easily trick someone into believing you were honest if you swore to heaven instead of to God. They might not know the difference anyway. And if you kept your oath that you swore to heaven, that’s like extra credit. But if you broke your oath that you swore to heaven, then the other party had no reason to believe you would keep it anyway, and God has no right to punish you for breaking the oath: it was an inferior oath to start with, having been made to Heaven instead of to God.
Murder is unacceptable, but so is hatred. Adultery is unacceptable, but so is lust. If all that is true, then breaking an oath to God is unacceptable, but so is breaking an oath to heaven, to earth, to Jerusalem, to your own head, even to your mother’s grave!
Jesus’ remedy for this is just simple honesty. Let your “yes” be “yes” and your “no” be “no.” You shouldn’t have to swear to anyone or anything if you are simply an honest person. “Anything beyond this comes from the evil one.”
There are many blatant ways we can violate this. It is possible simply to be a dishonest person, bent on telling lies. It is possible to make promises that we never intend on keeping and letting people down with empty words. For that record, we can even invoke the name of God or anything else we want and it really doesn’t matter. Certainly there may be someone in our life who even if he or she told us the sky was blue, we should certainly believe it is red. Yet the question for Jesus’ hearers and Matthew’s readers is not, “Who can I believe?” but “Am I a believable person who doesn’t need to invoke God’s name to verify the truthfulness of my claim?”
There are also subtle ways we can violate this, which are no less devious than blatant lies. More than once in my life, I heard someone retell a story inaccurately so as to make the storyteller seem tougher, smarter, and just generally better than he or she acted in reality. Once, a person found a mistake on a utility bill and told a crowd of friends how tough she was, by calling the utility company and giving the other person a piece of her mind. “You made a mistake! You’re going to fix this now! I want my reimbursement! If you don’t do it now, I’m talking to your manager and having you fired!”
That was how the story was told. However I was in room when that call to the utility company happened. It didn’t go like that at all. The actual phone conversation was filled with, “I think there may have been a mistake,” and, “Would it be possible to address this within the next week?” and, “Please,” and “Thank you!” There was no yelling, no giving anyone a piece of anyone’s mind. The way the conversation actually happened was quite pleasant and charitable. The way it was told to others made it seem like the storyteller was far tougher than she actually was.
Far from condemning her, I am equally tempted to puff myself up to make it seem like I am better than I actually am. I have a tendency to embellish stories in order to impress others. Let’s be honest: sometimes stories are just too boring on their own. They need some help in making them interesting, and as long as we are embellishing a little, why not make it seem like I am always the winner?
Embellishment to make yourself appear better than you actually are is not letting your “Yes” be “Yes,” and your “No,” be “No.” Making a promise you never intend on keeping, whether or not you invoke the name of God, comes from the evil one. The life of the believer is to be marked by honesty and truth. We don’t make promises we do not intend on keeping. When we do make promises, we keep them. And we report facts as they actually happened, not as we wished they had happened. We who have been redeemed by Christ are to be different. We are not a “finger-crossing” people. We are a people whose lives and speech are governed by truth, and we don’t need to invoke God’s name to do that.
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