Let Your Yes Be Yes: Oaths and Matthew 5:33-37

Matthew 5:33–37

“Again you have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not swear falsely, but shall perform to the Lord what you have sworn.’ But I say to you, Do not take an oath at all, either by heaven, for it is the throne of God, or by the earth, for it is his footstool, or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King. And do not take an oath by your head, for you cannot make one hair white or black. Let what you say be simply ‘Yes’ or ‘No’; anything more than this comes from evil.”² (ESV)

On May 30, 1778, at Artillery Park in Valley Forge, Benedict Arnold raised his hand and swore an oath of allegiance to the United States, a document that still exists today in the National Archives with his signature on it, witnessed by General Henry Knox and filed into the record of a nation fighting for its life. Less than two years later, he was selling battle plans to the British, and when his contact, Major John André, was captured carrying those plans, Arnold fled to the enemy while André went to the gallows. When the evidence landed on Washington’s desk, the man who had trusted Arnold most asked one question: “Arnold has betrayed me. Whom can we trust now?”

Arnold collected approximately six thousand pounds for the transaction, a fraction of what he had demanded, and spent the rest of his life broke and despised in a foreign country, buried without military honors while one Massachusetts newspaper marked his passing in a single line: In England, Brigadier General Benedict Arnold, notorious throughout the world. When a man’s word means nothing, people pay for it with their lives.

Jesus saw straight through the religious leaders and their elaborate oath-taking, recognizing it for exactly what it was, a ceremony designed to patch a credibility gap that the heart had already created. Their word had lost its value long before they started swearing by heaven and earth and Jerusalem, and no amount of ceremony was going to recover what corrupt character had already spent. This is a direct line back to Matthew 5:8, “Blessed are the pure in heart,” because oath-taking was never the real issue, and Jesus knew it.

Eisenhower said it plainly: “The supreme quality for leadership is unquestionably integrity. Without it, no real success is possible, no matter whether it is on a section gang, a football field, in an army, or in an office.”⁵ Every relationship you have runs on the same truth, because the person who consistently shows up, follows through, and does what they said they would do has already answered the question of their character before you ever had to ask it. So let your yes be yes and your no be no, and if you don’t know, don’t commit.

What is your integrity really worth? Arnold found out.

Your word is a picture of your character, and your character is the foundation of every mission you carry. Keep your word and stay on mission.

Challenge Questions

1. Where has your word become cheap, and what commitment are you currently not keeping that is costing someone around you more than you realize?
2. Who is waiting on a yes or a no from you right now, and what is your silence or vagueness already communicating about your integrity?

Stay on Mission

⁸Nathaniel Philbrick, Valiant Ambition: George Washington, Benedict Arnold, and the Fate of the American Revolution (Penguin, 2016). Washington’s response upon discovering Arnold’s treason, September 25, 1780.⁹ Dwight D. Eisenhower, as quoted in Edgar F. Puryear Jr., Nineteen Stars: A Study in Military Character and Leadership (Presidio Press, 1971), 289.