As Charles Spurgeon once said, “If Christ has died for me, I cannot trifle with the evil that killed my best Friend.” Let that sentence settle in your heart. Let it restrain your lips with holy reverence. Let it bind your conscience to truth like a chain of gold. And let it drive you to confession, not with shame alone, but with joy—because the One you crucified has risen. The One you slandered has forgiven. And the One your lies condemned has now declared you righteous in Himself.

Exodus 20:16—“You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.”

When I reflect on the Ninth Commandment, my mind drifts to a courtroom—dignified and solemn, framed in polished wood, charged with tension, where one man’s fate hangs by a thread and another man’s testimony decides whether he walks free or swings. In my imagination, the scene often ends in some dramatic way with the defense attorney catching a false witness in some complex series of lies, which leads to the innocent being exonerated.

But that is not the courtroom I want you to see today. Not on Easter. Instead, I want you to behold a darker room, a courtroom corrupted beyond parody. It was a midnight tribunal held under torchlight, absent all pretense of justice. There were no rules of evidence, no appeals, no defense attorneys. Only hushed conspiracies, staged witnesses, and blood money exchanging hands while the yawning pit of death opened beneath the feet of the only truly innocent Man who ever lived.

This was a different kind of courtroom, and a different application of the Ninth Commandment—one that soaked the Son of God in His own blood, not merely because He was hated or feared, but because the truth itself was hated and feared. He was not destroyed by a sword or a spear or even by the cross. He was destroyed by a lie.

Remember how the final hours of Jesus’ life unfolded. Under the cloak of darkness, He was arrested, manhandled, and paraded through the grotesque charade of a trial. False witnesses were summoned—carefully prepped with talking points and armed with lines rehearsed in secret. The trial was a farce. The charges were fabricated. The entire spectacle was a desecration of law and a mockery of justice.

And yet, their lies were potent. They said He blasphemed. They said He threatened Caesar. They said He was a deceiver, a fraud, a false prophet. They said He deserved to die. They cried out, “Let His blood be on us and on our children.” They lied, and the world believed them. The very God who created tongues was condemned by them. The One who had spoken galaxies into motion stood silent before their slander. The Way, the Truth, and the Life was crushed under the weight of a world hell-bent on lies. And the powers that be, both then and now, applauded.

But don’t flatter yourself by imagining that you would have done differently. Don’t presume that historical distance acquits you. You may not have stood in Pilate’s court, but every time your tongue twists the truth to suit your pride, you are there. Every time you embellish a story to flatter yourself or conceal the truth to protect your image—every time you spread gossip under the guise of concern or spin half-truths into self-serving narratives—you bear false witness against the Son of God.

Read More