Bible Truth FAQs
THE NATURE OF ABRAHAM'S SIN
When God called Abraham out of Ur of the Chaldees, out from his country and his kindred, unto a land which God would show him (Gen. 12:1), the Hebrew writer states that Abraham obeyed and by faith he went out, not knowing where he went (Heb. 11:8). Abraham became one of the greatest examples of faith; yet, like other great men of the Bible, he committed sin.
After settling in the lend of Canaan there arose a famine so that Abraham and Sarah went down into Egypt. Upon arriving there, Abraham reasoned because Sarah was a beautiful woman the Egyptians would presume she was his wife and would kill him so that she could be taken in marriage. So he arranged with Sarah to tell the Egyptians that she was his sister. Later on (Gen. 20) in the land of Gerar this was repeated under similar circumstances.
Was this an untruth? In Gen. 20:12 Abraham revealed that Sarah was the daughter of his father but not of his mother. She was, in fact, Abraham's half-sister! Where was the sin? It was not in telling an outright lie but in using deception to conceal the fact that he and Sarah were husband and wife. It may be possible for a half-truth to be innocent, but in most cases it is an effort to deceive, and such is tantamount to lying.
20050123.ch