The Gag Reflex of the Godly Text: Proverbs 13:5
Introduction: The Great Antithesis
The book of Proverbs is not a collection of quaint, inspirational refrigerator magnets. It is a book of spiritual warfare, a training manual in applied theology. It operates on the fundamental, unyielding premise that there are two ways to live, and only two. There is the way of wisdom, which is the way of righteousness, and there is the way of folly, which is the way of wickedness. There is no third way, no demilitarized zone, no conscientious objector status. You are on one path or the other. Every decision you make, every word you speak, every thought you entertain, is moving you further down one of these two roads.
Our modern sensibilities chafe at this. We are the generation of "yes, and," the connoisseurs of nuance, the blenders of moral categories. We want our wickedness with a side of good intentions, and our righteousness to be non-judgmental, which is to say, not righteousness at all. But the wisdom of God, distilled for us in Proverbs, will have none of it. It draws a sharp, clean, sword-like distinction between the righteous man and the wicked man. And one of the clearest places this distinction is revealed is in the realm of words.
We live in an age of managed narratives, of spin, of carefully curated falsehoods. Our entire culture is marinating in a brine of deceit, from the highest levels of government and media down to the way we present ourselves on social media. We are suffering from an advanced case of what some have called "truth decay." But this is not a new disease. It is the ancient disease, the one that began with a serpent in a garden asking, "Did God really say?" The battle for the world is a battle over the Word, and therefore, it is a battle over words. It is a battle between truth and lies. And in this battle, your gut reaction to a lie tells you which side you are on.
The Text
A righteous man hates a lying word,
But a wicked man acts odiously and is humiliated.
(Proverbs 13:5 LSB)
The Holy Hatred of the Righteous
We begin with the first clause:
"A righteous man hates a lying word..." (Proverbs 13:5a)
The first thing to notice is the visceral nature of the language. The righteous man does not simply disagree with a lying word. He does not find it suboptimal. He doesn't think it's "not his truth." He hates it. This is a deep, settled, gut-level aversion. It is a spiritual gag reflex. Just as your body naturally recoils from spoiled food, so the soul of a righteous man recoils from falsehood.
Why? Because the righteous man has been remade in the image of God, and our God is a God of truth. Jesus Christ is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Truth. The Scriptures are the Word of Truth. The Father is the one who desires truth in the innermost being. To be righteous is to be aligned with the grain of God's reality, and that reality is fundamentally structured by truth. A lie, therefore, is not just an error. It is an act of cosmic rebellion. It is an assault on the very nature of God. It is an attempt to uncreate the world and remake it in the liar's own twisted image.
This hatred is not a matter of personal preference; it is a mark of spiritual health. You love what God loves and you hate what God hates. And the Scripture is clear that God hates a lying tongue (Proverbs 6:17). A lying word is an attempt to warp reality, to make something that is, appear as though it is not, or to make something that is not, appear as though it is. It is a little work of anti-creation. The righteous man hates it when he hears it from others, and he hates it even more when he finds it trying to crawl up out of his own throat. This hatred is the spiritual immune system kicking in, identifying a pathogen and seeking to destroy it.
A "lying word" here is comprehensive. It's not just the bald-faced, perjurious lie. It is also the half-truth, the calculated omission, the flattering exaggeration, the slanderous insinuation, and the self-justifying spin. It is any use of language designed to obscure reality rather than reveal it. The righteous man hates all of it, because he loves the God of reality.
The Stench and Shame of the Wicked
The proverb then pivots to show us the other side of this great antithesis.
"But a wicked man acts odiously and is humiliated." (Proverbs 13:5b)
The contrast is stark. The righteous man hates a lie. The wicked man, by implication, is comfortable with lies. He traffics in them. He uses them as tools. And the result is that he himself becomes the lie. His actions are "odious." The Hebrew here carries the idea of stinking, of being foul and repulsive. A wicked man makes himself a stench.
This is because a life built on lies is a life that is out of sync with reality. It is a life that is rotting from the inside out. The wicked man doesn't just tell lies; his whole life becomes a performance, a facade. He is trying to project an image that does not correspond to who he really is. This creates a foul spiritual odor. He stinks to God, and he stinks to the righteous. He may be able to fool some of the people some of the time with his perfumes of self-praise and flattery, but the stench of his corrupted character eventually leaks out.
And what is the ultimate end of this foulness? He "is humiliated." The phrase can also be rendered "comes to shame." This is not an "if," but a "when." Shame is the inevitable harvest of a life planted with the seeds of deceit. Why? Because God is not mocked. Reality has a way of asserting itself. The truth will out.
This humiliation comes in two primary ways. First, it comes in this life. The liar gets caught. The con man is exposed. The hypocrite's mask slips. His web of deceit collapses, and he is left standing in the rubble of his own reputation, disgraced and ashamed. His attempts to build himself up through falsehood result in his being utterly torn down by the truth. All his odious actions culminate in public shame.
But the ultimate humiliation comes before the judgment seat of God. On that day, there will be no spin. There will be no place to hide. Every lie will be exposed by the searing light of God's perfect truth. Every secret thing will be brought into the open. The man who spent his life weaving a false reality will have it all unraveled in an instant, and he will be left speechless and humiliated, covered in a shame that is final and eternal. This is the covenantal consequence. God has structured the world such that the path of the liar is the path to ruin.
Living in the Truth
So what is the application for us? This proverb forces us to ask a diagnostic question: What is my relationship to a lying word? When you hear a politician twisting the truth, or a news anchor peddling propaganda, or a friend gossiping with carefully selected "facts," what is your immediate, internal reaction? Is it a flicker of righteous hatred? Or is it a shrug of cynical acceptance? Or worse, is it a quiet sense of approval because the lie happens to serve your preferred tribe or narrative?
Your answer to that question reveals a great deal about the state of your soul. If you find that you have grown comfortable with lies, that your gag reflex is gone, you are in a place of grave spiritual danger. You have allowed the stench of the world to perfume your senses. You must repent. You must ask God to restore to you a holy hatred for every false way.
This begins by being ruthless with the lies in your own heart. Confess your own tendencies toward exaggeration, spin, and deceit. Call them what God calls them: wickedness. Ask for forgiveness and cleansing. Then, saturate your mind with the truth of God's Word. The more you treasure God's truth, the more you will despise every counterfeit.
And this brings us to the Gospel. There is a reason the righteous man can hate a lying word. It is because he is standing on a truth that has set him free. He is righteous not because of his own impeccable honesty, but because the perfect righteousness of Jesus Christ has been imputed to him by faith. He is a man who has faced the ultimate truth about himself, that he is a sinner deserving of condemnation, and has fled for refuge to the ultimate truth about God, that He is merciful and gracious in Christ.
The wicked man acts odiously and is humiliated because he is trying to cover his shame with the flimsy fig leaves of his own lies. But the righteous man is one who has been covered with the indestructible garments of Christ's righteousness. He is no longer ashamed, and so he has no need to lie. He can afford to be honest about his sins because they are forgiven. He can afford to speak the truth, even when it is costly, because his ultimate security is not in his reputation, but in his Redeemer.
Therefore, let us be a people who hate every lying word, beginning with our own. Let us be a people whose lives are built on the bedrock of God's truth. In a world that is making itself odious with its lies, let our lives give off the sweet aroma of Christ, the one who is Truth incarnate. For in the end, every lie will be humiliated and brought to nothing, but the man who builds his life on the truth will stand secure forever.