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My hope here is to completely convince you that the truth is completely worth it, always, and lies are absolutely never worth it, under any circumstances.

First, consider these things Jesus said about the truth in the Gospel of St. John:

Jesus said to him, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father, but by me.

Pilate said to him, “So you are a king?” Jesus answered, “You say that I am a king. For this I was born, and for this I have come into the world, to bear witness to the truth. Every one who is of the truth hears my voice.”

Jesus then said to the Jews who had believed in him, “If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.”

Jesus said to them, “If God were your Father, you would love me, for I proceeded and came forth from God; I came not of my own accord, but he sent me. Why do you not understand what I say? It is because you cannot bear to hear my word. You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, and has nothing to do with the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks according to his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies. But, because I tell the truth, you do not believe me. Which of you convicts me of sin? If I tell the truth, why do you not believe me?”

St. Paul often mentions liars and all variations of that word in all his letters.

Jesus himself even names “liars” as one of the types of people who will be cast into the eternal lake of fire, in the Revelation to St. John.

But we don’t need to quote those, if we jump right to these words of St. Paul:

The coming of the lawless one by the activity of Satan will be with all power and with pretended signs and wonders, and with all wicked deception for those who are to perish, because they refused to love the truth and so be saved. Therefore God sends upon them a strong delusion, to make them believe what is false, so that all may be condemned who did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness.

This is the nature of sin: we choose to reject the truth in favor of something else. Just like Adam and Eve rejected the truth that God had forbidden that one fruit, so that they could live in the lie that “the fruit isn’t forbidden after all.”

Consider that lies are the native language of the devil. That there is no lie in Jesus, and no truth in the devil. That Jesus came to bear witness to the Truth, but people who preferred to believe lies chose rather to plot to murder Jesus instead of letting the truth into themselves.

How can you love Jesus and hate the Truth? How can you love the Truth if you also let lies into your heart, or even on your lips? Jesus came to save us from lies. “He came to destroy the works of the devil.”

How can you use for any reason the very weapon he came to take away from the devil, the father of lies, who only planned to use it to murder us?

How can you tell lies to anyone, which can only deprive them of the Truth? How can you use the devil’s own weapon by lying to anyone? This is not love, and it’s not compatible with love.

God is Love. Jesus is God. Jesus is the Truth. Love and Truth are inseparable. If you lie to someone, it’s not done in love. If you love someone, you can’t possibly want to lie to them and keep them from the Truth.

If you love Jesus, you will love the truth. If you love the truth, you will listen attentively to Jesus’s voice. If you love Jesus, his Word, the Truth, will have a place in your heart.

And then, “God’s nature abides in you” as St. John says, which is why “you cannot sin”: because you now live in the Truth, making all lies lose their allure and lustre and illusion.

St. James says that wandering from the truth is death, and being brought back to it is the saving of a life:

My brethren, if any one among you wanders from the truth and some one brings him back, let him know that whoever brings back a sinner from the error of his way will save his soul from death and will cover a multitude of sins.

(All Bible quotes in this post are RSVCE.)