A Simple “Yes Or “No” Will Do

December 15, 2025

MATTHEW 5:37 NKJV – (37) But let your ‘Yes’ be ‘Yes,’ and your ‘No,’ ‘No.’ For whatever is more than these is from the evil one.

One of the ways our society tries to ensure truth telling is by having people take oaths.  It’s a way of formally saying, “I am really, really, really telling the truth.” Jesus came into this culture and had new teaching about telling the truth.  

In Matthew 5:33–37, following the same pattern, Jesus addresses the subject of telling the truth. Jesus tells the crowd not to break their oaths. An oath was a promise to do or not do something, invoking God as witness and the One to bring judgment if the promise was broken. It was common for people to make oaths to emphasize their seriousness and truthfulness. The difference between righteousness and sin is not just a matter of following rules. It starts in the human heart. 

Here, Jesus attacks another way in which hypocrites would twist and abuse religious teachings. When Jesus speaks against swearing oaths, he's not referring to serious, formal commitments like marriage or a courtroom witness. He's condemning those who use the language of oaths to disguise dishonest intentions. 

Just say a simple, ‘Yes, I will,’ or ‘No, I won’t.’ Anything beyond this is from the evil one.” This is the ideal: if you say you will do it, you will, period. No oaths required. What Jesus does not refer to here are "oaths" such as contracts, marriage vows, or swearing in a witness in a courtroom. He is not forbidding believers to make promises, but to use oaths as an artificial form of honesty.

Taking a meaningless oath in order to create a loophole and retain the option of breaking it is wrong. If an oath is required in the course of civic duty, the Christian should have no problem making it. The proper application of Jesus’ principle of “let your yes be yes” is that the Christian must be truthful in all circumstances.

SCRIPTURE READING

EPHESIANS 4:25

THOUGHT FOR THE WEEK

"When you stop chasing the wrong things you give the right things a chance to catch you."