What does it mean that there is no truth in the devil (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.

Then, again, we have in Satan a liar and the father of lies. There is no truth in him; he is off the ground of truth himself, and is a constant source of lies and falsehood. There is a peculiar' deliverance offered to the believer in the midst of all the importance of this world, and that is knowing the truth and being made free by it.

59 Mr. S. wishes us to "believe in the truth." "You believe in Jesus Christ: believe also in the truth." This is all very fine; but what does it mean? Truth is an abstraction. It must subsist somewhere. There is such a thing as the truth — moral perfection in relationship with the Supreme Being, or, at least, a just estimate of those relationships — a life and a position which expresses that estimate. A man who tells me things just as they are tells me the truth; but to tell of things just as they are in connection with God is to say a great deal. If everything in these relationships is in its normal state, it is moral perfection. In a state of sin the truth does not exist. All is a lie. I said, in the relationship with the Supreme Being; because, in the case of the creature, to exclude God is falsehood itself. It is what Jesus says of the adversary — "He abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him," John 8:44.

It would, I am persuaded, be impossible for anyone possessing even in a feeble measure the knowledge of God, to think that anything could enter His creation unknown to Him, or that a thought could spring up in the mind of any intelligent being without His cognition. Every enlightened soul will gladly acknowledge, that from no quarter could the omniscient One be surprised by an enemy. Nothing could possibly be hid from Him, before whom hell is naked, and destruction without a covering. At the same time the faithful heart revolts with horror from the doctrine that would make the holy and righteous God the Author and Inventor of the evil which has ruined His fair creation. Evil could not enter the creation without His knowledge and permission, but He is not the author of it, the devil is that; he abode not in the truth. “He is a liar and the father of it.” And this is just what sin is; it is lawlessness, and lawlessness is departure from the truth, for the truth is the right relation of everything to God, and sin is falsehood and departure from this, and becomes manifested in the lawlessness of the rebel creature.

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.

Jesus alone of men is the Truth; He is not only God, but the One Who reveals God to Man. In Him is no sin, nor did He sin, neither was guile found in His mouth.170 He was the manifest opposite, in all respects, of the devil, who, whenever he speaks falsehood, speaks out of his own store, because he is a liar and the father of it. Jesus is the truth, and makes it known to those who otherwise cannot know it. "But because I speak the truth, ye believe Me not." How awful, yet how just, God's judgment of such! For we are sure that the judgment of God is according to truth; and what can be the end of these things but death and judgment?

Finally, the Lord proceeds to challenge them, in order to lay bare their groundless malice. "Which of you convinceth Me of sin? If I speak truth, why do ye not believe me? He that is of God heareth the words of God: for this cause ye hear them not, because ye are not of God." He was the Holy One, no less than the Truth, and surely both go together. And thus were they convicted of being, in word and deed, in thought and feeling, wholly alienated from, and rebellious against, God. They were not of God, save in haughty pretension, which only made their distance from Him, and opposition to Him, more glaring. Instead of convincing Christ of sin, they were themselves slaves of sin; instead of speaking truth, they rejected Him Who is the Truth; instead of hearing the words of God, they hated Him Who spoke them, because they were not of God but of the devil. Terrible picture, which the unerring light failed not to draw and leave, never to be effaced, of His adversaries! To be not of God is to be wholly without good, and left in evil, exposed to its consequences, according to the judgment of Him Who will not, cannot, change in His abhorrence of it. Such were and are the rejecters of Jesus.

207 The Lord allows no uncertainty to remain here any longer: you have the devil for your father, and you will do his works; and "he is a liar, and the father of lies" (v. 44). As we have said before, the double character of Satan and of sin, is to be "a murderer" and "a liar"; man has added to it corruption. Such was the character of these poor Jews. They did not believe Jesus, because Jesus spoke the truth, and they were going to kill Him. They claimed, indeed, to be of God - sad and blinding effect of an official religion; but if they had really been, they would have listened to the words of God. There is a certain perception which belongs to the life of God, which recognises that which is of Him, and especially His words. It was, for a Jew, a monstrous thing, subversive of all his pretensions, of the whole divine history of the ages, to say to Jesus that He was not of God. Who, then, was He? A Pagan, a Samaritan? This was enough to shew whence Jesus was.

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.

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."