The Significance of Being an Honest Person

Being an honest person is a requirement by God and is the most basic of requirements He has for everyone who believes in Him. What, then, is the significance of being an honest person? It is that one can only be able to truly live before God by being an honest person. If one is otherwise, he will deceive and fool God or even betray Him. By being an honest person one is able to live before God, to live before God in accordance with His requirements and will for His satisfaction. A person who is not honest cannot open himself up to God in an artless manner and is not able to hand himself over to Him. Only an honest person is able to truly offer himself to God and expend himself for Him. God therefore likes honest people. People who are deceitful and cheat cannot be faithful to God even if they perform their duties, and they can only be perfunctory toward and fool God in doing so. In addition, they cannot receive God’s entrustment; they can abandon their responsibilities and betray God due to their own notions and negativity even though they are performing their duties. An honest person, on the other hand, is able to be faithful to God and satisfy God in performing their duties, and so God likes honest people. If a person who comes before God to pray to and commune with Him is not honest, he would often deceive God and exaggerate in his speech. In addition, he would not be able to give his heart to God and open his heart up to Him artlessly, much less be able to accept God’s examination. Only by being an honest person is one able to truly fellowship with God, open his heart up to Him artlessly and tell Him everything that is in his heart, and able to be mindful of God’s heart’s desire, be worried about what worries God and think about what He thinks about, and fulfill his duty in accordance with God’s will. God therefore likes honest people. Corrupt mankind dare not swear an oath to God even if they believe in Him, and neither do they dare to fully place their future and destinies in His hands. Only an honest person is able to remain faithful to God as he reveres Him in his heart, and dares to take up responsibilities for whatever duty he has to fulfill. Thus, he dares to swear an oath before God and dares to make a promise to let God examine him, and he would accept punishment willingly if he fails to meet God’s requirements. God therefore likes honest people, and this is the significance of being an honest person. If a person wants to achieve being commended by God and to be able to satisfy Him, there is only one way, and that is to be an honest person. If you are not an honest person even after having believed in God for many years, whatever you do before Him would surely be below standard. The things that you do would all surely be done in a perfunctory, slipshod, deceitful or lying way. All that you do would be damning evidence of your resisting God. Therefore, only an honest person is able to meet God’s requirements and fulfill His heart’s desires. Thus, God said, “You must be an honest person.” Upon reflecting on all that we have done after we have experienced God’s work for a few years, all of us must admit that all that we have done in the past have been nothing more than those things done in a perfunctory and slipshod way and things that deceive, disobey and resist God. We have not shown faithfulness to God. Why is this so? It is because in our nature there is cunning and deceitfulness and we are so selfish that we care only about ourselves and are not able to satisfy God at all, and we even want to make use of God. Our transgressions before God in the past were committed because of our nature. It is only when God has required us to be honest people over and over again that we suddenly have a realization: “So, we have actually not been honest people in the past. We have been deceitful and selfish people, and so we have not been able to satisfy God in all that we have done.” This is a fact. Now, more than ever, we have realized that it is so important and crucial to be an honest person! We can only have the real likeness of man and live out the normal humanity by being an honest person. Only an honest person can exalt, testify about, serve and satisfy God. All that a person does would be in vain and are meaningless if he is not an honest person, and they are but corrupt deeds. If we have truly become honest people before God, it would be a fresh start for us, a new beginning. We will only be people who truly live before God and truly submit to Him when we have become honest people. Only then will we be people who truly live by the word of God and live out the likeness of a human being. If we discover one day that we are still not honest people, it means that we have not been saved and do not have the likeness of a human being, and that we are still humans corrupted by Satan. Therefore, whether we can become honest people has to do with whether we will succeed or fail in our belief in God, whether we can receive God’s salvation and what our final destiny in the future will be. The significance of being an honest person is therefore very profound, and we are now clear on this point.