Please keep in mind that there was no Law of Moses to break at the time of the midwives lies.Ok, thanks for the explanation. I understand your point. However, in making your point, you averted addressing @Hoping's point, imo.
He said this:
after you said this:
It's similar to my point about integrity that you discuss more below. If lying isn't sin, and you're saying there needs to be other conditions for it to be sin, then you might be lying at any time, for some unknown righteous cause, and we can't tell the difference from you lying for an unknown unrighteous cause.
No, because if you lie all the time, even if righteously, you're destroying your integrity, defined by:
1. the quality of being honest and having strong moral principles; moral uprightness.
Your view maintains the string moral principles, but not the being honest part.
Here's the accompanying usage example:
"he is known to be a man of integrity"
Note that in the example, it is a characteristic that others recognize in someone, I.e., you can't just tell someone you have integrity--they have to observe you in your dealings with people over some period of time. And if you tell lies (even for righteous reasons) all the time, you WON'T be known to be a man of integrity. What if Pharaoh had heard that the midwives were commonly telling lies for righteous causes, and then asked them why they weren't killing the Hebrew infants? Would he believe their story? The answer is an emphatic no. They were able to lie successfully because they didn't lie regularly, even for righteous causes. That makes lying a bad thing except when there are extenuating circumstances, which I've defined as a potential for greater evil
I'm not saying they did wrong in lying in the circumstances. My point is that the circumstances presented, as you've just pointed out, a GREATER evil that needs to be avoided.
I'm not sure that deception is the same thing as lying, but it might be. Deception in war is ok, for instance.
The principle was stated by Paul to address people that were saying, "if I sin more, then it makes grace more abundant, so the total amount of good in the world is increased by my sin."
The midwives were preserving their own lives by lying, but had already (prior to lying) preserved Hebrew lives by disobeying pharaoh.
I explained this to Clete. God didn't reward them for lying, He rewarded them for saving Hebrew children.
Same thing.
Are you saying that lying is a violation of law?
I listened to it all. It's not persuasive that lying is ever not a sin. Even the examples Bob gave pointed to extenuating circumstances when a law or commandment needed to be broken. That's ALWAYS the case when lying becomes necessary.
No Law, no sin.