Liars

The umbrella collects four passages on liars: a confessional admission about all humanity, the devil identified as the father of liars, a charge that Jesus' opponents are liars about God, and a final exclusion from the new Jerusalem.

Everyone a Liar

The Psalmist's outburst is brief but sweeping: "I said in my haste, Everyone of man is a liar" (Ps 116:11). The hedge "in my haste" softens the absolute, but the line has stuck — humanity, considered against truthfulness alone, fails the test.

The Devil, Father of Liars

In the Johannine controversy, Jesus traces lying back to its source. Addressing the opponents who claim Abraham as father, he says: "You⁺ are of the father the devil, and the desires of your⁺ father it is your⁺ will to do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and is not in the truth, and the truth is not in him. When he speaks a lie, he speaks of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of liars" (John 8:44). Lying is not just a behavior but a paternity — the devil is the father of liars.

A few verses later Jesus turns the charge on the opponents themselves. To deny what he knows of the Father would make him their kind: "and you⁺ have not known him: but I know him; and if I should say, I don't know him, I will be like you⁺, a liar: but I know him, and keep his speech" (John 8:55). Falsifying the Father's identity is what makes one a liar in this passage.

Excluded from the City

Revelation's last vice-list closes the door on liars among the others who do not enter the new Jerusalem: "But for the fearful, and unbelieving, and those who have become disgusting, and murderers, and whores, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, their part [will be] in the lake that burns with fire and brimstone; which is the second death" (Rev 21:8). "All liars" is not a small subgroup — it is one of the standing categories of the excluded.