What does it mean that Satan is the father of lies (John 8:44)?

But to all this their minds were blinded, and He questions why they did not understand. He Himself gives the answer: “Because you are not able to listen to My word” (v. 43). Basic, callous unbelief rendered them impervious to the plain, pointed declarations of His lips. They had given themselves up to the blinding power of the devil; and He pronounces upon them the awful truth that they are of their father, the devil, willfully determined to engage in the lusts that have ensnared their father (v. 44). We cannot at all say that every unsaved person is a child of the devil, though all are children of Adam and children of wrath (Eph. 2:3). A child of the devil is rather one who has, by hardening himself against what he knows to be true, given himself up to the service of Satan. Not that he would admit this, but his own pride and deceit are prominent. Two things are here said of the devil. First, he was a murderer from the beginning; not from the time of his creation, but from the time of his attempt to “be like the most High” (Isa. 14:14). His murderous spirit is seen in his temptation of Eve: he was determined to accomplish her destruction. Secondly, he abode not in the truth, for the truth is not in him: he is a liar, and the father of it. Terrible designation! Of course it was by falsehood that he deceived Eve. Only Satan and antichrist are in scripture directly called liars, as well as these to whom the Lord speaks (v. 55); though the term is used to describe the general character of the inhabitants of Crete (Titus 1:12-13). One must be soberly careful in his use of this term.

We have here the full result of Satan's power, and the perfect triumphing of the Lord over that power. Death is the result of the power of Satan. By bringing in sin, he brought in death: "the wages of sin is death"; this is the utmost of Satan's power. He brought in this at the commencement, he brought it in by deceit; for "he was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth." Such has he been ever since; he is called the old serpent and the deceiver; and having deceived, he became the murderer of the first Adam, and, in one sense, of the second Adam. He was and is a liar: that is his character, as exactly opposed to Christ, who is the truth. In like manner all the variations of his character are set in opposition to that of Christ: he is the destroyer, and Christ is the giver of life; he is the accuser of the brethren, and Christ the Mediator for them; Christ the truth of God, and Satan the father of lies. In this character he is first brought before us. By misrepresenting the truth and character of God, he became the murderer of the souls of men, and brought in death - this was his power. Christ came to destroy him who had the power of death, that is, the devil. The devil murdered souls by falsifying the truth of God. Here we learn his subtlety - presenting falsehood and death through the medium of the truth of God in part; and thus, from being a liar, he becomes a murderer.

Men are not aware of the depths of deceit practised by Satan; his plan is not to bring forward at once a broad intelligible falsehood, which carries the lie on the very face of it. Not so, brethren; he puts it forward under the guise of truth, in the form of truth, and in some sense mixed up with the truth. It was in this way he deceived Adam; he wanted him to eat the fruit which God had forbidden him; and how does he proceed? He says indeed, "Ye shall not surely die!" Now there was a palpable untruth; but he adds, "Ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil": and this we know in part was the real truth, for immediately we hear God saying, "The man is become as one of us to know good and evil." Here we see the lie presented partly in the form of truth: but the truth which was most necessary for man to know, this he kept away entirely, namely, the consequences which would result from the man's taking his advice: this he did not, this he does not, make known to him. He does not tell him it will end in death. This is the way Satan presents his destructive baits, not by simply telling falsehood, but so mixing it up with the truth as to destroy the very soul of man, thus from a liar becoming a murderer. Thus has he brought in the power of evil, the extent of which power is death: "Sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death."

People little realize how pre-eminently false doctrine is the work of Satan. Christ is the "Truth;" the Spirit of Christ, "the Spirit of truth;" Satan is the "liar from the beginning." By a lie of his, man was first seduced and fell. By the truth he is brought back to God, and sanctified. Satan's effort is therefore by counteracting lies to destroy the power of the truth, and his most successful method is not so much direct denial, as perversion of the truth. Knowing man's heart but too well by long experience, he knows how to combine truth and error so skillfully, that the truth shall give only the more speciousness to the error, while the error in the guise of truth shall appeal to the lusts and passion, and enlist them upon its side.

Even the devil, however, does not trade in nothing but lies. He added the words, "knowing good and evil" (ver. 5), which was true as far as it went. He did not add that they would only know both in finding themselves under the power of the evil and without desire for the good. Facts partially stated often do efficient service in an evil cause.

If the truth that we have is not held practically it is of no avail; it is just as much of the flesh as active sin. The flesh can be shown about truth, as much as about anything else; indeed it is by partial statements of truth, not by a direct lie, that Satan generally tries to deceive men. This is most strikingly shown in his mode of tempting both the first and the second Adam. We read that he whispered in the garden, "Ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil." Adam listened to him. What did God say? "The man is become as one of us, knowing good and evil." But then Satan told him the truth in order to lead him to disobedience, not to obedience. Thus it was also that He tried to tempt our blessed Lord; it was a real promise he presented, but by it he sought to lead Jesus into disobedience to the Father. He is willing to use the most blessed truths if he can but, by doing so, lead the heart away from God. It is against the "wiles of the devil" that we are called to stand; he does not show himself in his true character. The hook is hidden by the bait. We should seek to know the truth in holiness, in fellowship with God. The object of our search after truth should ever be, that we might know God.

11 Nor does Satan deceive the saints, or those under the form of saints, with an open and simple lie (they are not the subjects of that); he has not ordinarily done so. If Satan said, "Ye shall be as gods (Elohim)," One far above an created beings repeated, "The man is become as one of us, knowing good and evil." But oh! what a store of accompanying evils and ruin, come in upon the act of disobedience founded on this devil - used truth. Using it out of place, suppressing what went along with it when man acted on it, was the foundation of the ruin that came upon the world.

But John 8:44 supposes neither the measureless depths of eternity nor the commencement of creation, when vast periods preceded the time of man's earth. It means in time, though before man was formed. "From the beginning" is pointedly distinct from "in the beginning" either in its highest applications to the being of the Word or in its use to convey the entrance of creative energy. The devil was not always, but an angel that, inflated or lifted up with pride, fell. He had no standing in the truth and became a murderer as well as a liar, its father (cf. 1 Tim. 3). Thenceforward (ἀπ᾽ ἀρχῆς, from a beginning of this dark and baneful kind) he was a murderer. His hatred was against man, and especially in enmity to God against Him Who deigned to become man for God's glory and to deliver man. See also 1 John 3. Clearly it is impossible to make ap arches mean from all eternity, which would deny the devil to be a creature and simply that God made him originally a devil, instead of his being an angel like others that kept not their own original state.

This was a precise picture, and they "children," and in contrast with what He was who was the Truth. All the developed points of this reasoning are concentrated here; for as seed of Abraham and of God they had not abode in the truth, and because the point our Lord urges, and they sought to kill Him. When Christ spake He spake the truth, that which was indeed His own, but was also of the Father. But he, when he would speak a lie (abstractly, as we say the truth), he speaketh out of that which is his properly, out of his own goods or household. For He (our Lord) had right so to speak of him: he [the devil] is a liar, and from him it proceeds; he is the father of it.

A lie has no existence; it is the product of some storehouse, the proper fruit and vain progeny of someone so in character. The truth has, or it would not be truth; and Christ was it. They were a lie, not Abraham's seed, but the lie of it, not the truth. Christ was the Truth, therefore they were children of the devil; for this lie had no existence but as the progeny of him that was the father of lies, who spoke it; for when he would speak it he must speak it, and did, out of his own; he was the father (no word so correct) of it, being a liar. A liar is always the father of the lie. The argument is then strictly moral, as from the nature of a lie to their necessary childhood of Satan, which our Lord spoke in consciousness of truth. For indeed He was that in truth of which they assumed the place, denying Him while yet they had the responsibility, but abode not in the truth; for they were Abraham's seed. Nothing can be more complete than the depth of this moral conviction, while He spake it as the Truth, for He was the Truth; and His word and He, and therefore the truth of it, were one. The authority and the moral evidence went together. The to pseudos (falsehood) is abstract; the autou (of it) is necessary to the sense when the lie is spoken of as the born progeny of the lying person. So that the construction, though it seem obscure in general, is necessary to the sense. "But I, because I speak the truth, ye will not believe me." They did not believe it or Him, because it was, and He spoke, the truth; for the truth was not in them; it was the thing opposite to their judgment, to the truth of the lie which they were assuming themselves to be, and Him because He said He was of God, which was the only and saving truth. But therefore they did not believe Him. It was the cause why they should. Yet they could prove no sin against Him; and, if not, why not believe Him? Was He not speaking the truth? And therefore the truth, the connection of His being what He spoke, the Word of God, is the great force of all this argument as to the truth, etc.

John 8:38-41. The Lord then draws a formal contrast between Himself and those who reject His words. He was the Son revealing the Father, as speaking of that which He had seen in His eternal existence with the Father. In spite of their claim that they had no father but Abraham, they, as indeed all men, prove their true origin by their works. On the one hand, they sought to kill the Lord; on the other they oppose the truth. These are the two great characteristics of Satan, murder and absence of the truth, and prove that the Jews, whilst children of Abraham according to the flesh, were morally children of the devil.

Children of the Devil. — And now the time came for Him to speak with unmistakable clearness. Come from God, and sent by Him, He had authority to do that. "Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaks a lie, he speaks of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it. And because I tell you the truth, ye believe Me not. Which of you convinces Me of sin? If I say the truth, why do ye not believe Me? He that is of God hears God's words: ye therefore hear them not, because ye are not of God" (44-47). Plain speaking indeed! The occasion called for it. Children of the devil they were. God's words, which Christ spoke, who is God, they would not have. The truth they refused, and sought His death. Their ways and their purposes marked out their father. But this grave statement, let us remember, is never made in the Word of any of the human race, till they have shown by their ways who and what they really are. Further, let us remark, we have here a short account of the devil by Him, who is the Word, who was with God, was God, and was in the beginning with God. It is, it must be, therefore, a true one.