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God is a Liar, and Satan's Lie is True

Provocative title, isn't it?
Most Christians would never dare to say it out loud. But there's a sneaky way we still communicate the same message—just dressed up in church-appropriate clothes.

We say things like:

We rarely realize what we've just said about God.

I know what you're thinking: "But we do fail. We do stumble."
I'm not denying that.

I'm taking aim at this idea:

"We are doomed to disobey until the day we die.
No one can actually obey what God commands."

The moment we say, "Obedience is impossible; God's commandments cannot truly be kept," we are not describing weakness or quoting Scripture. We are writing our own theology. We are declaring something about God, about grace, about salvation, and about what the cross was actually for.

And that declaration collides head-on with Scripture.

Human Frailty ≠ Obedience Impossible

There's a difference between:

The first is confession.
The second is accusation.

To make the second feel pious, we quietly rig the game.

We start calling temptation sin.
We call intrusive thoughts sin.
We call normal bodily desires sin.
We call human limitations sin.
We call enjoying something someone dislikes sin.

Then we look at the bloated pile we've labeled "sin" and conclude:

"See? Sin is everywhere.
God's commands are too high.
No one can actually obey.
Obedience is impossible."

But Scripture draws lines we keep smudging.

When we erase those lines, we create an obedience standard God never set, then blame Him for "commanding the impossible"—and resign ourselves to a lie that breeds only despair, defeat, and spiritual death. Then we comfort ourselves by saying, "Nobody is Perfect."

The Lie Beneath the "I Can't Obey" Slogan

The subtle danger lies in how comforting it is.

If nobody can actually obey, then:

We don't say, "I want to keep my sin." We say, "I can't help my sin."
So we domesticate it, feed it, and try to keep it in a cage.

But that "pet" is a venomous snake.
And that snake refuses to stay in its cage.

Here's the hidden chain of logic:

Read that last line again.
Because you've heard it before:

"Ye shall not surely die…"
— Genesis 3:4

God said, "In the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die."
The serpent contradicted: "Ye shall not surely die."

Later God says again, "The soul that sinneth, it shall die."
The serpent still whispers, "You will not surely die."

God still says, "The wages of sin is death."
The serpent still insists, "You can have your snake and Eden, too."

So when a Christian says,

"No one can really keep God's commands.
Wholehearted obedience isn't actually possible.
God knows we can't obey, so grace is His way of giving us life anyway…"

what have they done?

They haven't made a humble confession.
They haven't merely admitted weakness.

They have called God a liar—
and called the serpent's lie the truth.

How "I Can't Obey" Makes God a Liar

Scripture says that believing false testimony about God is calling Him a liar (1 John 5:10).
And the "I cannot obey" theology does exactly that in at least three ways.

1. It calls God's commands unrealistic.

God commands wholehearted obedience (Deuteronomy 6:5; Matthew 22:37).
He never issues pretend commands.

So if we claim, "No one can obey with a whole heart—not even for a day," we're saying:

That makes Him unjust or delusional.
Pick your poison. Either way, God is not who He said He is.

2. It denies God's promise to actually free us.

Jesus didn't die just to remove the penalty of sin while leaving us under its power.
He died to break sin's dominion (Romans 6:1–14).

We say, "I can do all things through Christ,"
then add a quiet footnote:

"…except obey Him."

We quote, "With God all things are possible,"
then carve out the one thing we insist is impossible:

actually keeping His commandments.

That's not biblical.
It's not intellectually honest.

Grace trains us to deny ungodliness and worldly lusts and "live soberly, righteously, and godly, in this present world" (Titus 2:11–12).

If grace cannot enable obedience, then grace is weaker than sin.
That's not New Testament faith.
That's blasphemy with a worship playlist.

3. It redefines salvation as a cover, not a cure.

John is blunt:

"He that saith, I know him, and keepeth not his commandments, is a liar."
— 1 John 2:4

"Whosoever is born of God doth not commit sin… and he cannot sin, because he is born of God."
— 1 John 3:9

John is not saying believers never stumble.
He's saying a life of unbroken, unrepentant disobedience is incompatible with the new birth.

Paul is just as blunt:

"For if ye live after the flesh, ye shall die: but if ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live."
— Romans 8:13

So when we teach that actual obedience is impossible, and that salvation is God's promise to overlook the disobedience He knows we can't avoid, we aren't being cautious.

We are contradicting apostolic doctrine.
We are calling John a liar.
Which means we are calling God a liar.

The Garden Repeats Itself

The Eden pattern lives on:

God: "Obey, and you will live."
Serpent: "Disobey, and you will still live."
Modern slogan: "We cannot truly obey, but by grace, we still have eternal life."

Same lie, new outfit.

And it has the same effect it had in Eden:
It soothes the conscience just long enough to kill the soul.

Because the lie doesn't sound like rebellion.
It sounds like humility.

But humility doesn't say, "I can't obey, even if He commands it."
Humility says, "God said I can—so I will rely on Him." (Philippians 2:12–13)

What We Should Say Instead

This is not an argument that you will never stumble.
It is an argument that Scripture never calls settled, ongoing disobedience the normal Christian life—or "obedience impossible" the language of faith.

A Christian can say:

Because Scripture is clear—there is a sin not unto death (1 John 5:17).
There are dusty feet that need washing (John 13:10).

Walking in the light doesn't mean we no longer need the Savior who washes feet—
it means we no longer walk in the dark pretending we cannot obey Him.

Make no mistake: the works of darkness that manifest as the works of the flesh are not "inevitable slips" that the children of God must carry with them every week.

Paul tells the church, "Be not deceived… they which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God." God's grace does not offer an exception clause; it offers an exit strategy, and teaches us to deny ungodliness and live righteously in this present world (Titus 2:11–12).

I don't deny human frailty
— I define it biblically.
I don't preach perfectionism
— I'm rebuking defeatism.
I don't flatten the gospel
— I'm revealing its power.

God promises:

Only one kind of sin can survive such promises:
the cherished sin we refuse to surrender.

In light of what God has promised to those who believe, the issue is no longer that we are unable, but that we are unwilling.

A Christian must not say:

Those aren't humble confessions.
They're accusations against God.

They repackage apathy as frailty,
rebellion as weakness,
and insist that the father of lies speaks the truth.

The Real Question

God is not shocked by your weakness.
He is not surprised by your battle.
He is not demanding instant perfection.

But He is demanding that you stop making peace with what He died to destroy.
And the Word of Truth did not come to make Satan's lie true.

So here's the mirror:
Are we actually confessing human frailty… or just preaching the serpent's lie with Christian vocabulary?